When I go on these weekend excursions, like the current one, in Mendoza, Argentina, there are any number of reasons I go, but one of them is always for better/faster/devil-may-care use of wifi. I'm at a small bed & breakfast, where the host Marcelo is very nice, and said he likes his guests to feel like they are at home. Little did I know that he intended to help make that happen by having wifi worse than what I have at home. And since my phone is roaming without an Argentina sim card, there's an excellent chance I will be completely unreachable this weekend. Which isn't the worst thing, except that it kind of sucks. I was hoping to have plenty of time to just hang around Casa Aristides and do all manner of internetty things.
There is plenty to do in or probably more accurately around and from Mendoza: bicycle wine tours (so apparently, drinking and driving isn't a thing here), horseback riding with unlimited barbeque (which is the one most appealing to me right now, only because of the last part), white water rafting... but I came largely unprepared for 4 summer days in a tourist/expat renewal post, in that I did not pack jeans as I always do (it's supposed to be hot in Argentina!), nor did I pack a bathing suit. Honestly, I didn't think about needing a bathing suit, since I didn't think I'd be doing much of anything but laying around wherever I was staying. And I thought of packing jeans briefly, but as I said, hot. It's actually more pleasant than hot, but likewise, I didn't think I'd really be doing anything that would really require jeans.
No, I came prepared to do what I always like to do during my weekend trips: use the damned internet. Now that that isn't an option, I'm not quite sure what to do. While Mendoza is a little cleaner and nicer looking, ultimately I'm not optimistic that I'll be finding better fare here. Oh, also? Thanks to my not being a hippy in at any point in my current or former lives (despite the nonsense that Mark & Bill are so fond of spewing), I don't have a backpack. I likely will go walking in a bit to see what's around, but the only way to do that is with a plastic shopping bag I brought to carry food & my tablet while on the bus.
Speaking of, I was in temporary freak-out mode for a little bit. As I alluded to before, the Mendoza trip is made very often by expats like me because if you DON'T want to go through the Migracion office in Santiago like I did that first time to renew your tourist visa, the other option is to take a bus through the Andes (which is lovely scenery)
for about 5 hours, and get a whole new tourist visa on re-entering Chile. Because there can be traffic & waiting at the border, I guess, the ride is billed as about 6-8 hours, and they strongly suggest you bring your own food, since stops along the way aren't really a thing. So I brought the last of 2 meals, only to start filling out the customs forms in the bus & see that familiar thing about not bringing food across borders. Shit. Thanks Lonely Planet! I was fairly freaked out, until we got there. The shopping bag kind of fit under my seat, and what was visible looked only like there were some papers on the floor. Fortunately, they didn't go through the bus, nor do you have to take everything with you. In fact, after getting our stamps (oh, which they forgot to change to 2015, so everyone who went through customs today actually came here a year ago... not that any of us noticed 'til we were on our merry way in Argentina), our bus driver collected a "tip" for the customs officers, probably a total of CP$10,000 so we didn't have to take out our bags. So I am relieved to say that while customs on Monday may be a bitch since it appears I overstayed my visa by over 9 months (assuming they change the year on their stamps by then), at least I didn't get stopped for bringing the ever-illegal produce/meat/food. Or jeans. Or a bathing suit. Or a backpack....
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