First of all, I'd like to point out that I added Glenn Greenwald to my links. He's an awfully good alternative to TF and all the other pompous jackasses who circle-jerk each other on the hallowed Op/Ed pages of the major newspapers. Really, check out those links. They're pretty good. And Salon is a much better news outlet than, say, The Wall Street Journal.
This weekend, extended to four days because May Day was on Tuesday and the universities (which means COPA, too, because it is in a Universidad de Chile building) closed Monday as well. Vale and I decided to go to Mendoza, but she'd been there a few times already, so when we got there we figured we'd go somewhere else that sounded cool and that she hadn't been to, i.e. San Juan. The town bills itself as the gateway to Argentina's own Valle de la Luna, and all the pictures we saw of it were pretty and nice. So we hopped on another bus and made reservations at Hostel Triasico (a reference to Valle de la Luna, which apparently has lots of fossils). On the bus, we saw a very strange movie called "Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School," which had an absolutely great cast (Marisa Tomei, John Goodman, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Astin, Adam Arkin, Donnie Wahlberg--who's terrfic, by the way--and even Danny DeVito) but didn't really work. Anyhow, we got to San Juan, took a cab to the hostel, and basically went right to bed. Not very comfortable beds. The next morning, we ate the scanty (and I do mean scanty) breakfast and walked around. San Juan is booooooring. Also, Valle de la Luna is FIVE HOURS AWAY. not exactly your ideal day trip. So we packed up and headed back to Mendoza that afternoon.
After lots and lots of calls (thank you, long weekend and beauty-salon-workers' convention--I'm not kidding), Vale and I found a hostel and took a cab there. It was the worst hostel I've ever been in, bar none. In fact, it's not even close. The mattresses were nothing more than two-inch-thick foam pads, with eighth-hand, hole-filled sheets, a bathroom that brought to mind a very dirty locker room and, if this is even possible, a worse breakfast than the one we got in San Juan. To top it all off, I'd started to cough a lot Sunday night, and by Monday morning, when I woke up unbidden at about 6:30 and couldn't fall back asleep, I was feeling like crap for real. We found another hostel, a bit more expensive (still not THAT expensive, but really, why does everyone say that Argentina is so cheap? It's like one of those things that someone says once and then everyone believes it and repeats it until it becomes gospel), and moved over there. I was feeling really bad at this point, so as soon as the room was ready (hours and hours after they said it would be) we took a nap. We woke up around 3 and Vale needed to go change money. I'd told her I'd go with her, but I was feeling terrible, coughing a lot, having trouble swallowing, aches in all my joints, and so stayed in bed. About an hour later she came back and decided to take my temperature. Guess what? 102.6 Fahrenheit. Oh BABY. But it had gone down to about 100 a little while later, and I was damned if I was going to get all the way to freaking Mendoza and not go see the prime attraction, Parque San Martin. So we walked over there, gingerly, and then walked around the park as the sun was setting. I have some nice pictures, I'll put them up as soon as they're on the computer. I needed lots of breaks. We ate dinner at a kind of crappy little restaurant and that was basically it. Tuesday morning, I was feeling much better, the fever had all but disappeared (99) and so we took another walk around the town, which I actually liked. It's interesting and has at least two good cafes. I wish I'd had more time to explore the myriad parks and plazas and the Independence Theater, which looks very nice and apparently beautiful inside.
Tuesday afternoon, we hauled ass once more to the bus station, bought tickets on the only line that still had tickets (May Day, everyone going home), and settled in to wait. The bus, first of all, was not a bus but a large van, which is apparently not that unusual for Argentinean bus lines. I started to feel shitty again as soon as we got on, and when Vale took my temperature again around 7 it had gone back above 102. Customs was a nightmare, it was freezing and dark and the guards stopped Vale and searched her bag because one of the dogs (Chile's customs is very serious about not bringing agricultural products into the country without permission, thus many dogs) smelled the remainging smell of the apples that she had thrown out before we left Mendoza. Ugh. At least they showed good movies: "Heat" and "Saturday Night Fever." We got to Stgo absolutely JUST in time to get on the last metro train. Finally, I got home.
Blah blah blah I went to the hospital today, once again with Saint Isa. I have a bad flu, I got some drugs (antihistamine, light non-ibuprofen painkiller and antiinflamatory) and an order to change environment temperatures as little as possible, i.e. "Do not go outside if you can help it." If it gets worse or doesn't go away by Sunday, it's back to the doctor. Once again, though, I was pleasantly surprised by A) the professionalism of the staff at Clinica la Catolica and B) the cheapness of it all. Including the prescriptions and the full checkup with two nurses, a resident and an attending, it cost about 60 bucks. Crazy. Anyhow now I'm at Vale's, the drugs seem to be working at least a little and I'm going to go to bed. Oh, in all my whining and complaining about how much the trip sucked for me (and it doesn't look as bad up there as it was, believe me), I forgot to mention that on Sunday night, Vale fell on one of Mendoza's treacherously uneven sidewalks and badly sprained her wrist. So she was at a different hospital this morning, dealing with that. Awesome. That's all for now, good night, maybe the next week be a better one.
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