Juan From Argentina...

"...such a strange predicament we find ourselves in.
Baby it's a long way to South America.
Every option I have costs more than I've got.
If you trust in me, if I could, I would be there..."
-Grizzly Bear, "Plans"

It's somewhere around cuerva 13 where you start feeling indignation for being raised somewhere so topagraphically boring. Seriously, there is no comparison to the majesty of the Andes. Anything that simultaneously can make my stomach lurch and my heart leap for joy has to be at least as awe-inspiring as crossing these cordilleras.

Mendoza, Argentina is not actually very far from Santiago, but when you factor in winding dirt roads and a three-hour stop at customs, it ends up taking at least 8 hours by bus to mosey in to this tiny tourist town.

Like any good Girl Scout, I thought I had come fully prepared: I had brought along some bottled water, remembered to pack deodorant, and stashed away some Chilean pesos in the back pocket of my wallet. So you can imagine how crestfallen I was when I discovered, while approaching the ATM, that I had left my debit card safely tucked away in my apartment. Luckily, I was traveling with some very awesome and generous friends, who helped me out with cash for the weekend (and who I still need to pay back). A minor glitch in our major scheme for fun.

We feasted like kings that night at a wonderful (and wonderfully cheap) restaurant called Estancia la Florencia. Our sinfully scrumptious steak dinner prompted my brilliant and witty roommate, Brittaney, to exclaim, "I'd slap my momma for that steak!" We went to bed with wine and red meat rolling in our over-full stomachs.

The next day could be properly described as an epic fail. Upon waking, I realized our hostel bathroom lacked a toilet seat, my bed lacked clean sheets, and the hostel owner lacked any sense of class. However, we made the best of it and headed into town on the hunt for a Bikes and Wines tour (a fabulous invention where you rent a bike and cycle to various vineyards marked out on a map. Basically, you get tipsier with each stop, leading hopefully to hilarity and some interesting moments drunk-biking on the sides of highways). However, since we had slept in fairly late, we had missed out on any opportunity to participate in the tour that day. (In hindsight, this was probably for the best.) We spent the rest of our day planning activities for the rest of our trip.

Being the avid equinist that I am, I signed myself up for a full day (five hours) of horseback riding, and Brittaney thankfully obliged to join me. That morning we drove into the Mendoza suburbs. A woman swept leaves out of the dust of her driveway. Willows dripped their heavy branches over the bumpy lane. Chilren innocently stole grapes from the edges of vineyards. And amidst all this beauty, I shivered in the backseat of a van, desperately wishing I had brought my long-johns and a hot cup of tea.

The riding was just what I needed: a complete escape from city life. The smell of dirt and horses felt good in my nostrils, and we plodded along peacefully up the sides of mountains. Halfway through we stopped to have mate (a traditional herbal tea with a unique type of caffiene called mateina, which is a traditional drink among friends in South America), and not much later we were treated to a delicious asado (barbeque) on the side of a mountain. Chileans, Argentines, Americans and Italians alike loaded up on wine to keep ourselves warm, and we were off again, this time literally scaling the sides of cliffs on inclines that made me a little woozy. I had a blast and went home feeling sore, cold, and happy.

That night we had another feast at Bistro Anna, a new restaurant that offered Italian-Argentinean fusion. We were happy until we arrived back at the hostel, where we found that the hostel owner had allowed 30 random people to come and party the night away, turning our already unsafe hostel into a raucous nightclub. Around 3 a.m. we found ourselves bargaining for some sleep, but when they broke their agreement to end the party, we took revenge, unplugging their sound-system and disabling the toilet for the evening. We left the hostel early the next morning, bleary-eyed and thoroughly ticked off.

All that stress melted away as Brittaney and I embarked on our day-long spa excursion. I don't think I've had that much fun being covered in mud since I was a child. We were massaged, pampered, and oiled back into relaxation (and an acceptable state of personal hygiene), and spent the rest of the day at the park and the bus station, waiting for our red-eye to arrive.

Our bus whipped back across the Andes toward Santiago. Relaxed, I peered out the window as my eyelids drooped with sleep. The Andes were my first glimpse of South America. I woke to them as I flew into Santiago; the lazy blue, and pink, and stronger orange of the dawn breaking to reveal clouds as thick as Arctic snow beneath the wing of the plane. And through this snow, the humpback whales of mountains. And finally the cordilleras, serpentine, rivers rippling over their surface as the veins of the heart. It was so beautiful and so hard-looking at the same time.

That is kind of the metaphor for life here: sometimes beautiful and sometimes hard-looking. But, peering out at a thick cluster of stars in the inky black sky, I could not help but smile. The mountains tower like black obelisks beneath these endless heavens. Some things might be hard here, but these peaceful moments, these sights that occur nowhere else on earth, remind me how lucky I am to be here.