Rain Rain Go Away

Joel and I arrived in Mendoza on Wednesday, after a 13 hour night bus ride. I didn´t sleep much since it was semi-cama (semi-bed), still better than a Greyhound bus but no pillows or blankets and my seat didn´t recline too much. (My gosh, I sound like a spoiled brat with these cushy buses of SA). We got in around 9:30, decided to walk to the hostel since it didn´t look tooo far on their map. Started walking, realized the map´s north arrow wasn´t pointing north at all - turned around and started going the right direction. I was pretty grumpy from no sleep and no caffine and ranted along the walk about the not-north-north-arrow. Seriously, if you´re going to put it on a map, make sure it´s pointing the right way. Basic first lesson of cartography. Or just plain common sense. Sheesh. I was also grumpy because we had to pay for an extra night at our hostel in BA. The receptionist claimed we didn´t cancel our reservation once we booked bus tickets, but I clearly remember talking to her about it. I think she just forgot to take us out and made us pay for her mistake. So that really sucked for the budget.

Then we got to our hostel in Mendoza, where Susan and Leana were waiting for us. We went to pay for our hostel, only to find out its 3x the price as quoted in the Lonely Planet guide. This has been a fairly common occurance, and it sucks to be on the recieving end. But the place has a pool so we decided to stay and relax here. The first day we spent sun tanning and lounging in the pool. Joel´s gotten pretty dark, I got burnt (no surprise) but it´s faded to a nice light brown. The next day we did a bike wine tour, since Mendoza is the wine growing area of Argentina. Mmmm, it was sooo much fun. I´ve discovered that I really like Melbec wine, and price really does make a difference! I wish we were allowed more than 2 bottles of wine back to Canada since we´ve found some really nice ones and their sooo cheap. There was also a chocolate factory along the way, mmm, the coffee flavoured one was my favourite.

Susan and Leana left the night of the bike wine tour, so Joel and I were on our own yesterday. Our plan was to lounge by the pool, but we woke up to cloudy cold weather. Then I was hoping it would clear up today, but I woke up to rain. Ugh. This hostel is not worth it´s price if I can´t be in the pool. Oh well.

We leave tomorrow morning to Santiago (7 hour bus ride). I hope crossing the border goes well, since we don´t have enterance stamps into the country. We´re spending one night in Santiago and leave at 9pm Tuesday night. We´ll be in Vancouver around 12:30 on Wednesday. Since we´ve been in SA I´ve thought our flight was on the 14th, but I checked our tickets a couple of days ago to discover we actually leave on the 15th. Good thing I checked!

Joel´s not to stoked on getting home, since the Canucks are out of the playoffs. He´s been following closely down here and it pretty put out that they didn´t make it. I´m stoked that Alex Burrows (my favourite player) scored 12 goals and sooo sad I missed it all. Oh well, next year.

If anyone has been following the news about American Airlines - who we´re flying with - will know they grounded over 1,000 flights last week due to safety concerns. Read BBC´s news report here. Joel´s a nervous flyer (*shhh* don´t tell him I told you) so this just makes it worse. Not going to lie - it freaks me out too. I really hope we´re not stuck any longer in Santago than we´re suppose to be. American Airlines says their flights have returned to normal.