I´m in Mendoza...but my camera isn´t

Oct. 8, 2007

Confluencia Hostel
Mendoza, Argentina

A camera is just a piece of metal. You have your health. I keep reminding myself of that to ease the pain of having my camera and a memory card with about 500 pics lifted from me about 48 hours ago.

Let me start with fun Buenos Aires stuff.

After flying in from chilly El Calafate I spent a warm night in Buenos Aires on Saturday, eating at Desnivel, a restaurant in San Telmo, famous for their excellent grilled Bife de Lomo (tenderloin). A full steak dinner, and I never tire of the deals over here, cost about $12USD, with a small bottle of Malbec, salad, and bread. Fantastic.

Sunday I woke up and went to El Caminito in the La Boca neighborhood. It´s a pretty touristy area, with street vendors everywhere, but it is fun to check out on a warm Sunday afternoon. And I actually learned that between 1880 and 1930 about 6 million immigrants came to Buenos Aires, 50 % of them Italian from Genoa.

Many of these immigrants worked and lived at the port, and were presumably very poor, so they would paint their buildings with the leftover paint from the shipyard. Which consisted of very bright colors. The result is a very eye-catching couple of blocks, where outdoor cafes are in abundance, and it´s hard to choose a particular Tango band and performance to watch - all are entertaining. Each cafe it seems features a show (it´s been debated that THIS is where Tango started, and also the origins of the refrigerator magnet that says ´Buenos F-ing Aires´).

I then cabbed back to my hostel in San Telmo, stopping at the Hippie Fair on Defensa street, a Sunday tradition. This is the place to be on Sundays, especially when La Boca Juniors play their cross-town rivals River Plate in soccer.

You are probably wondering where the pictures are.

The quote on the site goes:

´By the time the victim even realizes what has happened, the pickpocket is long gone.´

I´m the woman in the blue jacket below.

On Sunday afternoon, I made my way to the Retiro bus station to catch an 8pm bus to Mendoza. Retiro is a gigantic metropolis inside the metropolis of Buenos Aires. Where seemingly disoriented people, appearing as if they are not sure where they are going, or which bus they are to take to get there, mix with a constant procession of Greyhound buses on ´roids, each doubledecker arriving at their platform with a promise of taking whoever gets on board a hell of a long way, and while on board promising no escape of Christian Slater movies to watch along the journey. I think I´ve seen 5 Christian Slater movies on bus rides here. Mindhunters? What is this? Christian Slater is the new Kevin Bacon.

Here is a quick glimpse of the Retiro Bus Station:

That must be on a slow day. This place was packed when I was there.

My bus was about 10 minutes late getting to the platform, and when it arrived at platform 11, everyone and their mother was making a mad dash to get to the luggage compartment. And when I say everyone and their mother, I mean it, there were like 5 mothers seeing their children off. And when I say seeing off their children, these are children of 40+ years.

So I´m standing in line waiting for my turn to give my big backpack to the luggage guy and I feel a strong but smooth push behind me..two times. I think it´s the dude behind me getting pushed by the person behind him so I really don´t think anything of it.I´m busy guarding my two bags facing forward.

Fast forward I get on the bus, sit down and as the bus pulls away from the station, and I IMMEDIATELY flash that something was stolen from my pocket.

I feel around my pockets. Nothing. I have like 53 pockets in my cargo pants, but none of them held my beloved Olympus FE-230, OR the 2GB XD card I had in there with all my penguin pictures, movies, along with numerous other great photos. For my 15-hour ride to Mendoza I had to sit and think about this. I felt sick. But as I woke up around 7am and looked out my window at the expansive dry terrain and realized we were close to Mendoza, I realized I could do nothing to get it back, I still had quite a bit of trip left...so many more photo ops left. Let it go.

So I got off the bus, checked into my hostel, and went out and bought another Olympus camera here in Mendoza. It´s an older model, but it will do. I decided against bringing it to the internet cafe here for safety purposes. So I´ll just give you photos I got off the web.

Today I went on a tour of the mountains of Mendoza. It was some beautiful scenery. These are the Andes people. Extremely dry terain on the East side of the Andes, which is essentially the Argentinian side. A little snow, but not much. Incredible colors of rock and mountains. The Incas lived here. And they named certain rock formations The Dog Face, The Turtle, The Puma, and of course my favorite, the Pregnant Mummy with Red Shoes.

We drove up to about 3,500 meters or so, stopping along the way to see different things. It was ice cold and the wind was howling. Dont know how people live in these mountains, but they do.

Below is the tallest mountain in the Americas, Aconcagua, which stands 6,962 meters, and the tallest outside of Asia.

As we passed this region of moutains on the way up to Aconcagua, the tour guide said something to the effect of ´Brae Peat´

Brae Peat? I asked him...what is Brae Peat...he said ´Brae Peat, Siete Anos en Tibet.´ Then he pointed over my shoulder out the window...I have never seen the movie, but apparently the terrain here is so much like Tibet, that they filmed 7 Years in Tibet here. With Brae Peat.

This is me with Indiana Jones shortly after lunch. Did I tell you I bought a new burka?

More pictures from the web of the area, I mean, here is me and our tour guide Jorge taking a ride on our horses, talking about stray dogs and of course plaid shirts. I explained to Jorge that in America, to look a little tougher, cowboys button up their shirts the whole way. But it was a little warm on the ride.

That was today. We actually got to the Chilean border, but didn´t cross...it´s a 3km tunned to the other side. And Argentinians don´t care much for Chileans. This is pretty universal.

It was a nice drive, a great lunch at a random spot along the route (bottle of great table wine, 6 pesos, $2US).

Tomorrow is a tour of three higher end wineries in the area. And then Thursday I fly to Santiago, Chile and take a bus to the northern desert called San Pedro de Atacama.

Having spent about 2 weeks in Argentina, I can say that it is a third world country, definitely. There are a lot of people that don´t work. And the Peso is weak vs. the dollar. But there is a sophistication among the city dwellers, and a sincere love of people and life across the board.

I´ve been in about 15-20 cabs while I´ve been here in Argentina, and by the end of my ride, I know the guy´s name, where he´s from, and he´s undoubtedly given me some helpful tips or places to go and wished me a great trip. And it is this mentality, along with a WIDE range of natural wonders to see in this the 8th largest country in the world as far as land mass, along with cheap steaks and great wine (of course) that makes me want to come back, and would have me recommend this as a place to spend a vacation. But with so much to see, it would take 2 months here to be able to see it all.

And despite someone lifting my camera and many great pictures and movies of my beloved penguins, it hasn´t tainted my appreciation and love of this country. It´s hard not to love Argentina.

Later amigos,

Dan