Leaving for Mendoza

Leaving for Mendoza

Tuesday, Jan. 18, San Luis to Mendoza, Argentina

I was unable to get a ticket to San Rafael for today. The only bus was already sold out. It´s too bad, there is a road straight from here to there that looks interesting on the map and would allow me to make a triangle going to San Rafael and then Mendoza. Now I will have to backtrack on the same road between San Rafael and Mendoza. There is one advantage, however. I will stay in Mendoza for 2 days before heading to San Rafael so that I can see a doctor there to take out my stitches either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning and put a permanent cast on my had. Mendoza has 1 million people while San Rafael has only about 150,000, so it may be easier finding a doctor in Mendoza to help me.

Yesterday was a nice day here in San Luis. I walked a lot exploring the city. It´s a pleasant place. I made a bad choice for lunch, however. I saw a place having a promotion. Quite a few people were entering, so I decided to try it. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet for about $2.75. There was Chinese food, Italian food, Argentinean mixed grill, etc. All of it was okay, but nothing was great. A woman saw me cutting my food with the side of my fork and came to my table insisting on cutting my food into bite-size pieces to make it easier for me to eat. That´s the first time anyone has done anything like that for me since I broke my thumb.

I stopped at the local tourist office again yesterday hoping someone would speak English. One man said he did, but then he managed to totally misunderstand what I needed and to not communicate anything meaningful to me. First, I asked him about buses from here to San Rafael and whether it was necessary to go through Mendoza. He heard that I wanted to visit San Martin de Mendoza and showed me where it is just off the map for San Luis Province. Even showing him my map and San Rafael on it did not clear that up. Then I asked him where a street is that has a restaurant that my guidebook highly recommends. He made a face about the restaurant and never showed me on the map where the street is. He proceeded to tell me about two places. For one, he had a brochure showing it to be the usual overpriced tourist place with Argentinean mixed grill. I wasn´t interested in that. Then he told me about another place nearby that sounded like it might be okay. I asked him to show me its location on the map. He gave me very poor oral directions and never pointed to the map. I went to where I thought he said it would be and could not find it. If he had pointed to a location on the map, there would have been no problem for me! Anyway, seeing him did not help me in any way. He thought he had been very helpful, however. I had given up searching for the restaurant he recommended when I found the crummy place where I ate. How sad he couldn´t have just pointed to the map to show me the street I wanted and to show me the location of the place he recommended.

I went to the local mall late yesterday. I had hoped there might be a film to see. But nothing they were showing was anything I wanted to see. Both Pride and Prejudice and Munich are coming, and I would have liked to have seen either of those. Instead, I bought some cola and returned to my hotel. There is a small place next to my hotel that sells pizza and empanadas to go. I bought two meat empanadas and took them to my room for dinner. Even though lunch hadn´t been good, I was still mostly full from it.

I have finished reading Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsouka. It´s a book about the end of the Shogun era in Japan as outsiders began to come to the islands. I had never heard of the book. It was given to me by Robert when I was in Copenhagen. It´s a good story, however, and rather well written. I give it 3 stars out of 4. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0440240859/qid=1137507723/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-7164460-4706467?s=books&v=glance&n=283155

My bus is scheduled to leave San Luis at 2:30 p.m. today for the 3-hour trip to Mendoza. Since the bus comes from elsewhere, it may be late. But the sun doesn´t go down here until 9:30 or so at night. That should give me plenty of time for finding a hotel once I arrive in Mendoza. I have already picked out 4 possibilities from my guidebooks and have marked them on my guidebook map.

Spending Update: Not including my medical expenses of approximately $3200, I spent $100.33 in Brazil over 6 days for an average of $16.72 per day. Since leaving Texas, I have traveled 146 days spending $1632.13 for a daily average of $11.18 and a monthly average of $338.40.