Gracias, Difunta Correa!!

Hola!!! Where were we.... Oh I remember...

Kaia, whom I’ve known since I was 3, decided to come visit!! Fun!!

First, we tooled around Bariloche while we waited for Zig to return. I finally went up the Teleferico at Cerro Otto, a main Barilochense tourist attraction.

On the way up, we saw a poster of Smokey the Tero. Only you can prevent forest fires SQUACK SQUACK. I’m not sure if he’s quite as effective as good old Mr. Bear. Plus the acronym is SPLIF, which is just funny.

Also, we shared our teleferico car with this guy who was from Mexico City and spent the whole ride telling us how he liked Argentina because he didn't have to hire bodyguards to be there.

They had many unexpected things at the top of the mountain....

like replicas of David,

and some more expected ones...

like really bad sandwiches. I fail to be disappointed anymore.

The restaurant at the top of the mountain revolves, so we got lots of good pictures of Lago Nahuel Huapi in all its glory.

Oooooh pretty!! And here we are enjoying our sandwiches...

And there were the usual Swiss-Argentinean St. Bernards. This one seemed to be on break.

When we got back down, I took Kaia to see the square, and we accidentally ran into a parade.

This was not a fun parade however. At first we couldn’t figure out what was going on because there were some signs for Communism, and some for students, and some for the Mapuche, and even some for the Centro Atomico. It seemed like a very strange mix of protestors.

This is the Mapuche flag.

Then Nicolas popped up out of nowhere. I think he has an “Austin is confused and needs an explanation” Spidey Sense. That day was the anniversary of the start of the most recent Argentinean dictatorship, which lasted from 1976-1983.  This dictatorship is remembered for its brutality. People were regularly kidnapped and “disappeared.”  It is suspected that the Desaparecidos were drugged and dropped out of airplanes into the Rio de la Plata while still alive. Parades were happening all over the country commemorating the people who were murdered by that government.

Nicolas explained that the word button is used for people who informed to the government on “dissidents” who were subsequently disappeared, which is why they had this buttons on sticks. They displayed the names of some of those people.

I was really glad that we accidentally happened across the parade and that Nicolas was there to explain. It seemed that generally, people use that day to exercise their right to free speech, which is why so many different groups were there with so many different messages. Nicolas said that the only people who aren’t invited are the military and the Nazis.

We had a couple of days before Zig came back, so we spent that time doing pretty much nothing. Doing nothing is one of my favorite activities. Its very relaxing.

We did see another parade, which was of crazed La Boca fans celebrating a win. I was glad they won, because if they lost I don't know what would've happened.

We also had an adventure at the post office.  Kaia had to mail some stuff home. If you mail everything in packages less than 2 kilos, then you don’t have to talk to customs, even if its like 5 packages. The man at the post office REALLY wanted to help Kaia do that. Then he wanted me to tell her that she stole his heart and was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and that he was deeply in love. I suspected that since he didn’t speak English and she didn’t speak Spanish, it wasn’t going to work out.  We got those packages mailed real quick though.

Then Zig came back!! So we went to El Bolson. It was just like its been the last few times. We bought some crafts. We also saw a very large group of Kumbayah Kids wearing earthtone hemp outfits, and Bat Dog. We were sure he’d take flight at any moment.

And then Zig got accosted by a lady who kept saying if he gave her money she would give him something, so when he did, she gave him a piece of wood. It was amusing to watch from a distance. He will cherish that piece of wood forever.

Zig had to stay an extra day to finish up some work, so Kaia and I decided to go on to Mendoza and meet up with him the next day.  This turned out to be one of the most eventful bus rides of my time in Argentina.

First, apparently, we were on a First Class bus. I had no idea they had those.  If I had, I wouldn’t have been riding with the peons this whole time!! Just kidding.  Also apparently, the only difference between a First Class bus and a regular bus is that you play bingo for a bottle of wine before dinner. Some people were really into it. There was a tense moment when the microphone stopped working, so someone in the back of the bus made the man repeat all of the numbers from the entire game. I SO almost won. But I didn’t.

So then after the exciting game of bingo, we had a group trip to the bus bathroom because Kaia didn’t know where it was. While I was in there, I hear some chatting going on outside the door. Then when I came out, Kaia was nowhere to be seen. Where could she have gone, you ask? Well, my confusion was remedied by the bingo man, who pointed to the bus cockpit. I leave for 30 seconds and Kaia manages to get invited into the bus cockpit.  I’m sensing a theme.

So I followed. Then the bus driver goes, “You speak Spanish??” in Spanish. “THANK GOODNESS!” Then the second bus driver made me tell Kaia that she was a “gift from the moon” and that he was deeply in love as well. I have no idea what they could possibly have been talking about until I got there.  Then they invited us to have mate with them after dinner.  Then I told them we had to leave, and after dinner I pretended to be asleep. Kaia has a way with service industry employees.

On to Mendoza!! Many of you Specs patrons may recognize the name, as it is the main producer of Malbec wines. 

There was a stained glass window of the Virgin Mary in the bus station.

Our first day, we just sort of wandered around. I introduced Kaia to the medialuna, which is Argentina’s version of a croissant. I would estimate there’s about a cup of sugar in each one. Kaia really enjoyed it. Also, there was a very misleading sugar packet. See if you can figure out why I was so confused. Maybe Argentineans sometimes just feel like skipping the tea part and just going with sugar water, so then the word tea means sugar.

We went to this church too, which has a statue of Virgin Mary (I think its the same one that was in the bus station), which survived an earthquake that knocked down the whole rest of the church it was in.


Also, we had pizza for lunch, which of course was terrible, but we didnt want to throw it away. Then, people begging kept on coming up and asking us for peices, so we got rid of the whole thing! It was a win-win situation.

The next day, Zig showed up. I asked immediately if he got to play bingo, and he pulled out the bottle of wine he won!! He said he and this girl tied, and he was going to split the bottle with her on the bus but the bingo man made them have a play off. Bingo isn’t a game for compromise. He also said that he thought she was Dutch (we really like Dutch people, they’re always nice), so he was sad he couldn’t make friends with her.

First, went to the old town center, which has a museum of the city’s history. We were early, because apparently Wednesday morning is Field Trip Day!! They were having a reenactment of colonialism out front and we accidentally walked through it. Then we had to crouch and hide from the indigenous people or they might cut our heads off. And then a priest yelled at Kaia in English that she was going the wrong way. Close call.

Then this old man (like 90 years old) came up and started telling us about the history of the square and how the daughter of General San Martin (a hero of Argentinean independence). And then about how Mendocinos are so much nicer/better than people from Buenos Aires.  Then he said he had to go take his medicine and wandered away.

As the man told us and we learned later in the museum, Mendoza was leveled in 1861 by a really violent earthquake. After that, the city center was moved to its current location and everything was rebuilt to better withstand earthquakes.  The museum is located at the site of the old Cabildo, and you can see remnants of the original buildings, like this church.

This monument thingy shows what the square used to look like.

We had to kill some time until noon when Field Trip Day was over, so we wandered around and saw some churches and a pomegranate bush....

 
Then I noticed that the map had a SNAKE MUSEUM. So we went there.

It was super homemade looking and slightly gerryrigged. Who knows where they got the snakes.

Finally we got to go to the museum without being accosted by angry conquistadors. Here’s some stuff we saw in the museum...

The foundations of the original Cabildo.

and some old pictures, one with a "Naranja Crush" billboard. Who loves orange soda??

Next we wandered around town some more.  We saw this giant Menorah. Did you know that Argentina has the largest Jewish community in South America??

These houses were right across the street from our hostel. Zig's taxi driver told him this first one is particularly old (like 1700s old), as are many in the neighborhood. I just liked the pretty color of the second one.

Then Kaia had to visit the "Cash Dispenser." Random time to choose English guys.

 Next we went to a restaurant called Winery to do a wine tasting. It was going to take too much time to rent bikes and go out to the wineries, plus it was flipping hot and I don’t like to sweat.  We tried 6 different wines. And they were tasty. Apparently there were flavors, like cherries and oak and even cigarette smoke. Thats about all I know about that. PLUS, we had CHEESE. Which is one of my favorite foods.

THEN, we went back to our hostel and they were having a free olive oil tasting, which is the other thing they make in Mendoza. It tasted like olive oil.

THEN ADDITIONALLY, we went to dinner at this other place with lots of wine, and had really tasty tasty food.  On the way there, we walked through the town square, which seemed to be the center of Mendocino nightlife. They had a really cool crest of the province (also named Mendoza) made out of Christmas lights. I was thoroughly impressed by their civic pride.

The next day we took the bus to San Juan, which is slightly north of Mendoza. We had to go there because there were no more rental cars left in the City of Mendoza, it being Easter weekend. San Juan was definitely not a tourist town, and pretty much everything was closed for Good Friday. There was a man with a pony and a llama, however.

Then, Zig had an accident. This is how it went from Kaia's perspective: Zig drops his thermos. He picks it up, opens it, and his face turns furious. Austin says, "It broke!!" Kaia thinks, "No kidding. Why is she being sarcastic to Zig?"  Zig says, "It DID break!!!" as if this were a revelation to him.  Apparently, he was making an angry face because he instead of realizing it broke, he was thinking "Some JERK put glass in my termo!!"   Kaia then pointed out how lucky I was to have found a man more out of touch with reality than I am.

This is Mr. Sarmiento, the founder of  Argentinean public education. I like how he's protecting the little girl from the pigeons.

Next, we got our car. We had two things to see on our drive: 1) Parque Provincial Iguachilasto and 2) Barreal, the home of carrovalismo, or wind surfing on a little car. Google it.  Here's a map with all the places we stopped at.

Because these are in different directions, we had to drive lots.  So even though we didn't get our car until 5pm, we started driving north towards the park right away. But we were waylaid by an interesting cultural phenomenon, the Difunta Corea. Because I had read the guide book (something which other people do NOT do), I knew what was going on. We were intrigued, and decided to stop on our way back, so more on that later.

Apparently, Easter weekend is a big weekend for this part of Argentina. Lots of families are visiting the park, and lots are visiting Difunta Correa, so all of the biggest (still small) towns had no room in the inn.  Luckily, we speak Spanish. So at Chucuma, the first town after the Difunta Correa in Vallecito, we asked at the kiosco if there would be a hotel somewhere. The lady said, "Go on to Astica, ask for Sr. Fernandez. Tell him Betty sent you." Betty? Really? Thanks Betty!!

So we spent the night in Sr. Fernandez's hotel for 70 pesos. There were farm animals.

The next morning, we were on our way to the park.  We saw a herd of horses and donkeys...

And several small churches which were very pretty. Heres one.

We finally made it to the Parque Provincial Ischigualasto around 10. Its a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  To get around the park, all the cars caravan. So we lined up.

This park consists of spectacular geologic formations from several periods, specifically the Jurrasic, Triassic, and Mesozoic. This is the site where they have found most of the dinosaur fossils from Argentina (which is alot).  Apparently, they were found first by the indigenous people, who thought they were llamas. Second, they were found by the gauchos, who thought they were dead cows. Minds always jump to the most relative thing, don't they.  Finally, the geologists came and decided they were neither llamas nor cows.  There were lots of pretty colored rocks (copper and iron and something else that I couldn't hear). Also, to make it better, they've named lots of the rock formations.

Behind us is The Worm.

Can you see the leaf fossil prints??? How cool is that??!!

Number 2 thing I hate most: When people touch/break/take things out of/litter in national (or provincial) parks. First, these two ladies kept scraping pieces of rock off The Worm. Nature is for everyone, NOT just for YOU. What if everyone scraped pieces off The Worm??? THEN THERE WOULD BE NO WORM LEFT. Second, we saw someone litter out of the car in front of us, so we made Zig tell the tour guide at the next stop. He proceeded to shame the Argentineans by telling them how embarrassing it is that a FOREIGNER saw them destroying their own national treasures.

PS, Number 1 thing Austin hates: People who talk in libraries. Dante forgot a circle in hell, and its reserved for people who have cell phone conversations in libraries. Think about THAT. Number 3 thing: pigeons.

The tour guide started talking about physics, so Zig got RILL attentive. And Kaia and I got definitively less so.

Then he started to talk about how the different stages of life throughout geologic history could be explained using 5 fingers (no life, bacteria, water life, dinosaurs, and man; or something, it was in Spanish and I got confused). So I took a picture of him waving his arms around.

This stuff is all supposed to remind us of the moon. The last thing is called The Cat. And this next stuff just looks WEIRD.  Aliens?? I think so.

The tour guide spent a long time explaining these ball things. At first glance, it looks like they were formed by rolling down a hill, sort of like a snowball. But NO. See how some of them are stuck together?? That wouldn't happen if they were rolled down a hill. They were actually formed like pearls, around an initial small rock or something. How cool is THAT??  He said that some of them are broken because the gauchos that discovered this place played games with them, and that these games mainly consisted of crashing them together and breaking them.

also, the ever present Argentinean flag...

and a really sweet pink cactus!!

and some really awesome Engrish. Do you want to go to the Insomniac Pirates Party? "Nights are long and full of alcohol.... and snacks."

This one is called the submarine. Its on all the postcards of the park. It was pretty cool.

This is a big ridge of red rock, and a formation called the Mushroom. And cows.

So next we headed back to San Juan so we could make our way to Barreal.  Remember how I mentioned the Difunta Correa?????.....

So the Difunta Correa is a national hero. She is not a saint recognized by the Catholic Church, but is honored as such by Argentineans. Her story is that her husband was conscripted during a war, and she followed him through the desert with their infant son. She eventually ran out of supplies and died, but her son was found days later still alive because he was miraculously breastfeeding on her body.  People come from all over Argentina and Chile to honor her at the site of her death. Also, because her real birthday and deathday are unknown, she is most honored on Easter weekend and Christmas. How fortuitous!!!!  It was sort of like a carnival, but religious. This is probably the best thing I’ve seen in Argentina.

Some people came in cars, some on horses...

There were all kinds of stores and restaurants set up just for visitors. The building two pictures up is a Catholic church. Below is the actual shrine. People put plaques up on the outside thanking her for different things, and on the inside they place offerings. Usually people leave her bottles of water and food (because she died of starvation and dehydration), but they also leave other stuff, like tokens of what they are thankful for. Like old casts and license plates and pictures of themselves with their cars. We each left some pesos.

That sign says, "Here rest the remains of the Difunta Correa."

In the corner of the room there was an open closet FULL of stuff in a huge pile. I guess they have to clean up every once in a while.

 We browsed the shops, and ate dinner at one of the restaurants.  I had a humita, a regional specialty that is like a corn filled tamale, Zig had chivo, also a regional specialty (goat), and Kaia had chicken. Tasty tasty.

They even had go-cart racing for the niños...

Finally, we were on our way.  It was really late though, and we still had a ways to go before we got to Barreal.  There are two routes you can take from San Juan to get there. One looks longer on the map, and one is actually a lot longer because its on a winding gravel road through a mountain pass. We did not know that, and apparently the main at the tour office who told us to go that way didn't either.   Well, I won't go into detail, but it was really scary and it took us like 4 hours to get there when it should have taken 2.

THEN, apparently, Barreal is the Easter Weekend destination of choice for undersupervised youths.  We drove all around town looking for a place to stay at 1 am, and couldn't find a single empty bed. Although, we did accidentally find a huge party by a river, but everyone seemed to be about 13 years old, so we couldn't steal their beer.

So we slept in the car.  THEN, the next morning, we went to the tour office to ask about carrolvalismo, and they said it wasn't the right season so they weren't doing it now.

So we drove around town and then left. It was a really nice town, I can see the appeal to the youths.

After all that it took to get there, we were pretty dismayed at our lack of success. We decided to go back on the route we came though (even though the ladies in the Barreal tourist fofce were shocked that we had done it the night before), because even though it took longer, it seemed like it had some pretty good scenery from what we could see in the dark. We were so right!! It made the whole trip worth it.

We think this is where they do the carrovilismo, so Zig drove the car out and did some donuts for good measure.  The next picture is a roadside shrine. They have them all over Argentina for Difunta Correa, and another pseudo-Saint, Gaucho Gil.

Cows AND llamas.

Now for the part of the drive that was really scary in the middle of the night, but really awesome during the day!!  Look at all the pretty colors!!!  I now have a red and green rock collection.

Once we got in the mountains, the temperature dropped really rapidly from about 14 celcius to 3!!! It was cold, and I was unprepared.

Look at the swirls!

We made it back to San Juan just in time to drop off our car and catch an overnight bus to our next stop, Cordoba. I thanked Difunta Correa for our safe travels.

To be continued....