The third installment of my updates from Argentina, and the one which induced the most responses too.

Alright so this ones a little long-winded and some of you may find it boring as hell but I´m some 1000 miles away and don´t care about your fragile emotions....so ha.

Mendoza is freakin awesome, of all the towns I´ve been to this one is definitely the greatest. The people are friendly, the streets are clean and unpolluted, the parks are just amazing and vast, and everything is just really...nice. The hostel which I´m staying at is right in the center of town so I´ve been able to easily explore most of the city, and think that I might one day end up here. Which brings me to my next point, moving down here. I´m pretty much already committed to next semester at UPS but I´m thinking after that I may fly down here and take a semester to learn fluent spanish and then go to an Argentine University (although I´m not quite sure which yet) the following year. With the exchange rate as it is I´m thinking I´ll be able to get a place for really cheap and maybe even start up a hostel and learn some business skills. Anyways, on to other things, like skiing! So I had my first day on the slopes today at a place called Los Penitentes, a small little resort tucked into the peaks of the northern Andes. The mountain had absolutely no trees which kinda freaked me out initially, it appeared so much more vast than it really was. After about three runs I came to the disappointing conclusion that I was not in the least bit in shape for skiing and had to take a break and do some much needed stretching. When I went back out I wandered over to some of their so-called "extremo" runs to huck some cliffs but soon realized this was not a suitable action according to the ski patrol. I did manage to pull off a pretty sweet yardsale from a 20 footer though before they caught me, I´ll send some picks of the mayhem as soon as I get a chance. A storm blew in around 3 so visibility dropped to nothing, so I thought I´d call it a day and went in for lunch. When I got out of the restaurant though (they had nothing at all resembling a cafeteria like in the states) the weather had cleared and I thought I´d put in a few more runs. Now, back at the hostel my legs are all cramped and done for, so I think I´ll just take it easy tomorrow and maybe go wine tasting, then it´s off to Melargue for some shreddin´ of the gnar at Argentina´s largest resort: Las Lenas.

Ok so sorry about the whole not caring about your emotions thing earlier, I do care, kinda. And I really appreciate all the responses from you all, they make me all warm and fuzzy inside, or maybe it´s the wine...

Hasta Luego,

Dave

Previous