¿Como Manejo?

My friends and I left for Mendoza Argentina last Thursday for the Easter holiday weekend. We left during the night to avoid the cost of staying in a hostel and we were planning on arriving in the early morning, but that is not what happened. We left Santiago at about 10:30 pm and we did not get to Mendoza unitl 10 the next morning. A 200km trip throught the mountains was a lot longer than anyone could have expected and the reason wasn't even bad...too many buses. We arrived at the border crossing at about 1AM, and we were told that we might as well get comfortable because we would not be getting through until at least 8AM!! What!?!! 

This long, boring, cold wait was due to the Easter weekend. The amount of people that were crossing the border was very large. When we arrived there were 12 buses in front and 15 behind us. We waited for 5 hours at the border and finally got through and got to Mendoza at 10AM. When we got there we decided to walk around and get breakfast, but the town seemed like a ghost town...no one there. At this time of the morning there was almost no one on the streets and the stores were not open. We figured that it was due to it being Good Friday and that the shops would open on Saturday.We walked around Mendoza, had coffee, ice cream, chocolate, smoothies and finished the day off with an Argentinian steak. Lets just say the meat is great. 

On Saturday we decided to do a wine and bike tour excursion and only had one small problem before we got to the vineyard....the vehicle broke down on the off ramp. I was so happy when I found the 'How am I driving' sticker on the van, priceless. 'Como Manejo' Of course this would happen to us and when we were actually close to the place, but we were not the only ones with problems. There were two other vehicles that broke down just down the ramp or on the side of the highway. Wow..it was quite an experience and just made the day more interesting. The vineyards were quite interesting the for the most part the wine tasted great. 

Easter Sunday I sat in the hostal waiting for the skydiving company to pick me up...I had talked to them numerous times before and even the night before, but waited all day and they didn't come...Shitty. I had McDonalds for Easter dinner and we just hung out in the hostal. We were going to try to go out at night, but with the amount of food we ate and the fact that the people in Argentina don't go out until 3AM at the earliest there was no way. The trip was a success and on the way back the border only took about an hour. We went during the day and we able to see the Andes Mountains from the inside. The views were magnificent. 

Spring semesters are over back home, graduations are approaching and I would like to wish all of them congratulations and good luck with the next step. Also have a great summer, I will be able to get in on the end of summer right after the 4th of July. I will be ready to see some familiar faces and it will be great. Today I am hopefully off to go see some festivals today, but we have to see how homework is going. I will be starting my summer classes in a week so here we go. 

Ciao from Chile!