Viva Las Vegas!

Dan: This weekend we decided that we needed to get away from the city, at least for a day trip. You see, we have a very nice apartment in a convenient central location that just happens to have dentist office being remodeled right above it. Each day from 8:30 a.m. until sometime in the afternoon (irrespective of the siesta rule), our kitchen is converted into a torture chamber of pounding sounds. We have been told that this will soon pass, but there is also a building next to ours being constructed from which we hear saws, drills and more pounding. Louann says it reminds her a little bit of her childhood, growing up in a house under construction. I have headaches every day already, so I don’t really need the help. As I type this, there is the unpleasant sound of metal on metal overhead. So, we are back to searching the classifieds and looking at apartments, and we certainly needed to get out of town for a day.

We got up and took a bus to Potrerillos, only due to a misunderstanding we failed to get off the bus at Potrerillos. We continued a few more stops until we heard a name that sounded like a good second choice, Las Vegas. As we got off the bus, we asked the driver when the next bus back would be. He told us it would be at 6:30, or 8 hours later. We got off the bus and immediately knew that we probably wouldn’t want to stay that long. (Teo, if you’re reading this, it was much like our abbreviated trip to San Francisco el Alto) The scenery was stunning but we simply didn’t know what there was to do or see. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to completely relax and wait for a bus. So we climbed the hill with a shrine on top and enjoyed the panorama of snow-capped mountains. We walked up and down the few streets. Then we tried to hitchhike, but it seemed that everyone was coming into town and no one was leaving. This was understandable given that it was only noon, Monday is a holiday and people from Mendoza come to this area to rent cabins and chill out with their families on gorgeous weekends like this one. After 30 minutes of failed hitching (where’s Reinhardt’s magic thumb when you need it?), we decided that maybe we’d have to sit it out. And sit we did, on uncomfortable rocks, by a trickle of a mountain stream, eating crackers, watching leaf-cutter ants and goofing around. Eventually we needed more water so we left our idyllic little picnic area. Once rehydrated, we thought it might be a good idea for us to walk back to Potrerillos. People said it might be 2 or 3 hours on foot, but its downhill and its a very nice day! We were maybe 30 minutes into the journey when my thumb finally brought us a ride that took us into Potrerillos. The big attraction there is a reservoir that was created only 2 or 3 years ago. The townspeople who were displaced by the new lake were given nice, dry homes up on a hill nearby. We wandered around the shore for a couple of hours and took a bus back home. If we had waited in Vegas, we still would be in transit, so the hitchhiking gambit paid off.

Food: Zapallo is the word for pumpkin here. Zapallito means little pumpkin, and it does look like a little green pumpkin. It tastes like a summer squash. We’ve been slicing them and using them is pasta sauces or in soups. They bring me back to eating chayote at Doña Norma’s house in Costa Rica. When we first bought one, the lady who sold it to us said people stuff them with beef. This is Argentina after all.