Mendoza

Two days ago, I skiied at a resort called Penititas. It is a smaller resort, with few forgieners. Unfortunatly, I got there at the begining of bad weather, and it was icey and hard to see. There are no trees there, even in the bottom of the valley. The only places were there were trees are at towns and military bases. If Chile was to invade, they would only have to bomb where they see trees.

It wasn´t a huge ski hill, but it was steep enough and the backcountry potential was limitless. There was a lot of amazing terrain right from the side of the road. The storm closed the pass to Chile and I passed hundreds and hundreds of trucks parked on the side of the road all the way to Mendoza. The storm was expected to last days and rather than wait around, I decided to abandon the region and head for Bolivia. This means I won´t see Chile, but I´m sure I will return for a ski trip in the future. Mendoza is a fantastic city with thousands of beautiful women. It is a contrast of a sofistcated university city and a gateway to the rugged mountains and wine country. I think I could even be happy living there for a while. The Hostel I stayed at,¨Andino Hostel¨ had really nice staff and was clean. I havent seen much poverty in Argentina, but people live off a fraction of the income we make. I´ve also been impressed with the city parks and large impressive statues that show pride and values that I wish we had in Canada. Having said that, I doubt that I would want to live the rest of my life there.

Last night I took a first class us to Salta which took 17 hours. My chair reclined almost into a bed and the trip cost about $40 can. When I booked my flight, for some reason I thought Rio was further north in Brazil. My plan now is to fly from Equador, Columbia or Venezuela to Rio close to the time to leave. I looked into booking a flight in advance, but the travel agent said it would be cheaper to do it in the country I am leaving from. It´s cold here in Salta, about 5c. I hope some better weather hits Bolivia when I get there as the extreme altitude can bring bad weather. I think that the Capitol, La Paz is over 10000 feet.

One funny thing happend to me the other night. I was eating in a resturant with a Aussie, and a couple of Brits who I didn´t think much of. A beautiful American girl came to our table, chatted a bit and asked us to joine her and her 7 friends. We played it cool, and then another beautiful girl from Belguim came andf invited us as well. We were pretty shocked. When we went to the table, we noticed that they seemed a little young. After talking to them for a bit, we found that they were all high school exchange students, maybe two of them were 18 at the most. I suppose you had to be there to see how strange and funny it was, the American girl wanted to get into our pants really bad. I actually had a good conversation with an Austrian girl about politics. She was ashamed that her father owned a factory that paid low wages and we talked about the exploitation of forgien workers. She was almost crying as she was telling me this. I told her that as long as the factory stays there, it acutally does benifit the community and that the reall problem would be if the factory moved somewhere else where wages were even cheaper as so many do.

I don´t think I will spend a lot of time in Bolivia. I´m most excited about Peru. Once I get there, I want to relax, and not worry about moving on as much. I may stay in a place for a while if I can get some Spanish Lessons. I was actually learning faster at home with my audio CDs. I know enough to get by, but I really want to learn Spanish now. Very few people here speak English. 95% of the time my Spanish is better than their English. I felt a need to get out of Argentina because it is a bit like Canada, and I do think that I will be back to ski. The back country looks so good. The Mountains are big, and the terrain were I was was really nice for skiing. It was steep, but there weren´t as Many rocky cliffs that are impossible like the ones around Banff. I´d have to rank the Mountains at home a little beeter just because you can go in the trees if there is a white out.

That´s it for now. I can´t wait to get to Boliva. Aregentina seems more European than latin american - not that it´s a bad thing, but I really wanted to be in the tropics and obseve some of the native culture.