Remembrance of Things Unblogged (Part 1)
Having not updated in a while, I've decided to split this post up into several posts. I hope to return to the present soon, and with pictures.
Our sojourn to the States, which was to be quick and easy, ended up mutating into three weeks of travel drama. Shortly after leaving Chile, we discovered that American Airlines—my mother’s former employer; she’s now retired—had revoked our standby privileges while we were in the air. Given the fact that this is the only way we can afford to use words such as “sojourn,” we were a little worried. After some research and problem-solving, it turned out that Texas was to blame. Yes, Texas, where American (airlines) corporate is metonymically headquartered. Through some random, but extremely inconveniently untimely act of homeland bureaucracy, a mistake was made, we were erased, and they were sorry. So we cancelled our jaunt to Germany—no problem, really—went to Newport, Rhode Island instead, visited the Newportian version of Oktoberfest (as good as it sounds), and then, after things were finally sorted out with Texas, began the lengthy process of leaving for Argentina.
I have to say though that, after several weeks of understanding everything everybody said to me, I felt a tad spoiled by my upgraded level of discourse. In Chile I had become accustomed to the role of village idiot, to that awkward status as a sentient, but incredibly hard-to-communicate-with lifeform. In New York everything was guiltily comprehendible—myself included—and I feared that what little Spanish I had pocketed in Chile was fading. But this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess. Chilean Spanish is notoriously idiosyncratic; not only does its lexicon contain words virtually unknown and/or unrecognized by other Spanish speakers, but it has a rapidly receding phonology: sounds, like the sound of “s” for instance, just simply disappear mid-word, leaving the learner of Spanish a Wheel of Fortune puzzle to _olve every conver_ation...
So, fast-fowarding: Since all the flights were too heavy in New York—literally, they exceeded their weight capacity and wouldn’t let any standbys fly—we flew back to Chile via Dallas. After landing in Santiago, we took a bus through the Andes to Mendoza, the heart of Argentina’s wine country. Mendoza was nice enough—and it broke up the 20+ hour bus ride to Buenos Aires, so we stayed two days at some family-run hostel, drinking the free Malbec wine and listening to Australian backpackers play foosball/get publicly naked all night.
Mendoza is shouldered to the west by the Andean corridor and the dusty, desolate Pampas to the east. The weather was warm and strikingly clear—you could see the peaks in the distance, still sugary with snow. Shortly after arriving in this lovely town, we discovered how rough our Rough Guide to Argentina really was. As it turned out, the guide was an inventory of error from the very first page, repeatedly sending us to imaginary addresses with its faulty, fictional maps. It was questionable as to whether the authors ever bothered visiting Mendoza to begin with—it was that bad. Anyway, we learned quickly enough to leave it behind and rely on locals for info.
We caught a night bus to Buenos Aires. There are many options when traveling by night bus in Argentina, with your seat and its permutations of comfort determining how much you will pay. We chose the “semi-cama,” which in Spanish means “semi-bed,” which in reality means you’re getting a night of "semi-sleep." Sitting was fine—a spongy throne for eating dinner, a lazy-boy for watching all those Eighties music videos—fine, but if you’re a finicky sleeper like me, the semi-bed transforms into a chiropractic experiment at night. But whatever. Dacia didn’t get much sleep either, so we arrived in Buenos Aires with our eye-shades half-drawn and our tolerance for each other waning.
To be continued. Thanks for reading.
Our sojourn to the States, which was to be quick and easy, ended up mutating into three weeks of travel drama. Shortly after leaving Chile, we discovered that American Airlines—my mother’s former employer; she’s now retired—had revoked our standby privileges while we were in the air. Given the fact that this is the only way we can afford to use words such as “sojourn,” we were a little worried. After some research and problem-solving, it turned out that Texas was to blame. Yes, Texas, where American (airlines) corporate is metonymically headquartered. Through some random, but extremely inconveniently untimely act of homeland bureaucracy, a mistake was made, we were erased, and they were sorry. So we cancelled our jaunt to Germany—no problem, really—went to Newport, Rhode Island instead, visited the Newportian version of Oktoberfest (as good as it sounds), and then, after things were finally sorted out with Texas, began the lengthy process of leaving for Argentina.
I have to say though that, after several weeks of understanding everything everybody said to me, I felt a tad spoiled by my upgraded level of discourse. In Chile I had become accustomed to the role of village idiot, to that awkward status as a sentient, but incredibly hard-to-communicate-with lifeform. In New York everything was guiltily comprehendible—myself included—and I feared that what little Spanish I had pocketed in Chile was fading. But this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess. Chilean Spanish is notoriously idiosyncratic; not only does its lexicon contain words virtually unknown and/or unrecognized by other Spanish speakers, but it has a rapidly receding phonology: sounds, like the sound of “s” for instance, just simply disappear mid-word, leaving the learner of Spanish a Wheel of Fortune puzzle to _olve every conver_ation...
So, fast-fowarding: Since all the flights were too heavy in New York—literally, they exceeded their weight capacity and wouldn’t let any standbys fly—we flew back to Chile via Dallas. After landing in Santiago, we took a bus through the Andes to Mendoza, the heart of Argentina’s wine country. Mendoza was nice enough—and it broke up the 20+ hour bus ride to Buenos Aires, so we stayed two days at some family-run hostel, drinking the free Malbec wine and listening to Australian backpackers play foosball/get publicly naked all night.
Mendoza is shouldered to the west by the Andean corridor and the dusty, desolate Pampas to the east. The weather was warm and strikingly clear—you could see the peaks in the distance, still sugary with snow. Shortly after arriving in this lovely town, we discovered how rough our Rough Guide to Argentina really was. As it turned out, the guide was an inventory of error from the very first page, repeatedly sending us to imaginary addresses with its faulty, fictional maps. It was questionable as to whether the authors ever bothered visiting Mendoza to begin with—it was that bad. Anyway, we learned quickly enough to leave it behind and rely on locals for info.
We caught a night bus to Buenos Aires. There are many options when traveling by night bus in Argentina, with your seat and its permutations of comfort determining how much you will pay. We chose the “semi-cama,” which in Spanish means “semi-bed,” which in reality means you’re getting a night of "semi-sleep." Sitting was fine—a spongy throne for eating dinner, a lazy-boy for watching all those Eighties music videos—fine, but if you’re a finicky sleeper like me, the semi-bed transforms into a chiropractic experiment at night. But whatever. Dacia didn’t get much sleep either, so we arrived in Buenos Aires with our eye-shades half-drawn and our tolerance for each other waning.
To be continued. Thanks for reading.
posted by This is borrowed time at 5:03 PM
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