Now's As Good A Time As Any

I’m thinking about maybe going to Ecuador this summer (among other possible places). The only thing is that I feel like I’d like to go to a new continent rather than revisit one I’ve been to. But it’s rather quite expensive to get to places in Asia.

1. Teach English in China. The Olympics.
2. Something to do with the 2008 presidential election.
3. Be a trucker.
4. Something in Africa.
5. Get a book published somewhere along the line.

I am really glad I went to South America. Hard to say when I would be able to do such a thing again…except if I was going somewhere to work teaching English or some such.

I’m glad I went on a big trip when I did, because I can’t quite figure out when I’ll be able to do it again. If I get a job after I graduate this summer, it will probably start a week or less after graduation day. Then winter break usually isn’t long enough for “big” travel. So that leaves summer of next year. 2007. The far future. At least I’ll have time to save up money.

My provisional top choices (many as they are): China, Turkey, South Africa, India, Kenya, Ghana, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and (if they manage to quell the Maoist insurgency by then) Nepal.

I slept over 12 hours last night…possibly as many as 16. My apartment is still in one piece. I think I stopped my mail delivery, or I didn’t get any mail for 18 days.

I thought when I got home I would be in the mood to do all the time-consuming, boring things I have to do for school, as if they would suddenly be exciting and new. I am in the mood to: 1. Sleep. 2. Eat. 3. Sleep more.

I won’t get into the unpleasant details, but I totally got South America’d yesterday and today. I’m ready to get some Northern Hemisphere love right quick. My flight is supposed to take off in about three and a half hours.

Basically, Santiago is a little less interesting than anywhere I went in Argentina and much more expensive. It’s like a lot of other places I could have chosen to go to but didn’t, in that it’s a different country, but it’s not a cheap different country. On the bright side, by flying into Buenos Aires and out of Santiago, I avoided both the US$100 Santiago entry tax and the other, somewhat lesser but still annoying, and I forget how much, Buenos Aires departure tax. So part of that money I saved went to the cab driver who pulled a fast one on me for a dollar or two in Mendoza and the guy who scammed me into giving him about $3 for “children with autism and Down’s Syndrome” in Bellavista here in Santiago. And hopefully someone found my Lonely Planet Argentina on the bus who can speak English and put it to good use.

Oh, I think I just heard an ad on the radio for something called “Ohio National Financial Services”! Ah, a taste of home!

The bus ride over the Andes was pretty awe-inspiring. Santiago is bustling and loud and busy, perhaps even moreso than Buenos Aires. I’m a little confused with the currency…you pretty much have to divide everything by 1000 to get reasonable numbers. 1000 Chilean pesos is like $2. Stuff is more expensive here, as expected. And oh yeah, I thought there would be a time change when I crossed the border, but there wasn’t for some reason. Some kind of Daylight Savings difference, maybe? Ah, yes, that’s it…Chile observes DST but Argentina doesn’t.

My plane back to the U.S. leaves tonight at 11:40 PM.

I’m looking forward to the bus trip today and a day in Santiago, but I’m ready to wrap things up and go back to English-speaking, family land. I think when I lost the Lonely Planet guide, it knocked the snot out of me just a little bit more than I wanted to admit. I’ve felt like I was kind of flying blind since then. But cheap rooms and meals are a big part of the fun of the kind of traveling I like, and I’ve had them in spades. A word of warning, though: don’t try Mexican food in Argentina, even if you’re a little homesick. It is not very good. Right now, I can’t wait to get back to good ol’ El Acapulco and be able to talk to the proprietress in passable Spanish.

So basically, I went for this really long excursion to the CaГ±on del Atuel on Christmas Day. It was like a 14-hour trip and it was a bit long for my tastes, especially in terms of an amount of time to not be able to choose what I want to do. I even went rafting! I got soaked.

Yesterday, it was really hot. I took my laundry to be washed and went to the mall and walked around. Then I took a cab downtown and walked around pretty late at night. I think I already told you about that.

Today, I picked up my laundry, took a cab downtown again, and narrowly missed getting colossally rained upon. I ducked into the Modern Art Museum and got my art on for a while until it stopped raining.

Now I’m walking around more, walking for the Mexican restaurant to be open for dinner. I feel like a taste of home and nothing is more American than Mexican food.

Tomorrow, I take the big bus ride over the mountains to Chile.

I’ll be damned, I forgot to tell you about the trip to the CaГ±on del Atuel…but I only have four minutes left on this computer so it’ll have to wait for next time.

They’re still showing highlights from the Copa final on all the sports channels here. I keep going, “I was there! I was there!!!”

Um, otherwise…I went to another mall today and looked around. I caught some TV. Now I’m walking around downtown Mendoza waiting for my appetite to return. I probably have an hour and a half before the restaurants start to close.

Darn it, what else was I going to tell you? I have a good picture to show you, but I don’t have my USB cable with me to upload it just now. I even have the caption…darn it…

Wow, Mike Vrabel had two touchdown catches in the first half! O-H!

You can definitely tell some differences in accents depending on where you go, although it turns out Mendoza isn’t as different from Buenos Aires and Rosario as I thought it would be. In Rosario, they really didn’t pronounce their “S”s. So they would say “d’oh!” instead of “dos”.

I feel like I keep making these fascinating observations that I should really write here, but they keep slipping away, usually after another amazing observation comes to me. Yeah, because I’m just so perceptive and stuff…just forgetful, right?

An eleven and a half-hour cross-country bus trip is still an eleven and a half-hour cross-country bus trip, even if they serve you dinner and a cup of Fanta. And they seemed to not think people needed the air conditioning on most of the time. It was like an exquisite interrogation technique: they would turn on the air conditioning for about five minutes every hour, and I would just bask in the glory of the tiny vent above my seat, hoping against hope that they would leave it on this time so I could stop drowning in sweat. I would have confessed to pretty much any wrongdoing to get them to leave the #$%&@! A/C on.

This hotel is great, it’s a chain hotel with clean rooms and (wonderfully!) cold A/C, but it’s a cab ride away from anything at all. But it’s Christmas Eve, so stuff may well be closed anyway.

It was kind of hard to get a reservation for a hotel in Mendoza, but I picked the suburban chain one instead of the more “charming”, but sold-out one in the city center. The way I figure, much of the fun of that area is the side trips. I’m hoping it will be a little cooler than here since it’s at a higher elevation, but Yahoo! Weather isn’t helping me foster any illusions. I dunno…I hear there’s shade trees and stuff!