Walking, Walking, Walking...

Walking, Walking, Walking...

Saturday, Feb. 25, San Rafael, Argentina

For the past two days I have been doing lots of walking. Yesterday, I walked out into the west of town to where there were wineries. Then I angled toward the south were I went to Isla Diamonte outside the city limits going southwest. From there, I crossed further east to the main street coming out of downtown going due south and returned to town on it. I don´t know how far I walked, but just from town to Isla Diamonte is 6 km (3.5 miles), so I probably went 20 km (12 miles). Today, I walked due east until I was almost to the edge of town. Then I walked northward out of town and into the countryside. I passed vineyards, orchards, groves of olive trees (olives and olive oil are products from here, too), small barrios, etc. Eventually, I turned due west on a country road until I came to the highway that enters town from the north. I returned downtown on it. Then this afternoon, I have walked about 2/3 of the way back toward Isla Diamonte to use a cyber cafe that I used yesterday and will be returning back to town. Probably the distances today are 15-20 km (9-12 miles). It makes me feel good to know I am getting the exercise, though. And the time I was in the countryside both yesterday and today was nice.

There are two reasons why I wanted to return to the same cyber cafe. Cyber cafes here are cheap--cheaper than anywhere I have ever been except China. Almost all of them here charge 27 cents to 33 cents per hour. Yesterday, I went back to another cyber cafe near my hotel in the evening to spend more time, since the rates are so cheap. But I had an interesting experience. I was allowed to sign-in for my e-mail and to compose messages to send, but I was not allowed to retrieve my messages and read them. Each time I tried to do so, I got a message saying there was pornography on those pages and the screen would automatically be closed. And it was closed!! I don´t know why that computer thought there was pornography in my e-mail; now that I have opened it today I can see that there wasn´t. I resent the fact that the cyber cafe wanted to censor what I could see anyway. So, the two reasons I returned to this cyber cafe are (1) I knew I could see my e-mail because it had allowed me to do so yesterday, and (2) many other cyber cafes are closed due to it being late Saturday (and I remembered this was was big and nice and looked like it probably caters to all the area kids who would want it open on Saturday).

I returned to the Italian restaurant that is so popular today. I got the last table for 1-2, and the place had a waiting line within 2 minutes after I was seated. At the waiter´s suggestion, I had the spaghetti with the house sauce today. Because of the Italians who immigrated here, every place selling spaghetti uses fresh spaghetti they have either made or have bought that day from one of the many pasta factories selling to their neighborhoods, so the spaghetti was good. The sauce is one that is made with red bell peppers (pimiento) and was delicious. And the parmesan was freshly grated and served in a bowl for me to spoon onto the food. It was a great lunch.

Last night, I ate the last of my "picnic" supplies from the night before. I opened the bottle of wine from the Rivier Bodega I had bought earlier in the day. It was so good!! How nice it would be to be able to buy wine that good at home at such low prices!! Here´s the website for the winery:

http://www.jeanrivier.com

Their wines are available from an importer in California if anyone wants to investigate:

DCD Enterprises LLC (dba DCD Undiscovered Wines)
7963 E. 6th Street
Downey, CA 90241
869-9847

I´ll be leaving San Rafael tomorrow. It will be another bad travel experience, I am afraid. I want to go to Merlo in the mountains southwest of Cordobá. I can get there from Mendoza, but not from here. But there is a major bus company that sold me a joint ticket for going from here to Mendoza and then transferring an hour later to another bus going to Merlo. The problem is that the bus going to Merlo will arrive at 3:15 a.m.!! I can´t go to a hotel at that hour. I won´t even be able to search for one at that hour, since it will be dark and Merlo is a village with things spread out rather than a town with normal streets and blocks. I doubt if there will be an inside place to wait either. The bus station will probably not be a true station. I just hope there will be a bench or something where I can sit and wait (and maybe sleep) for about 4 hours. I also hope there will be a room available. I think there will be. School is starting next week here in Argentina. I´ve seen teachers leaving in-service sessions this week, and I´ve seen reports on returning to school on the news. So tourism should drop dramatically now, although high-season rates remain in effect through the middle of March everywhere. Anyway, the next time I post to the blog, I will be able to report on all of this.