Pickpockets, techno drag shows and fine wine

I´ve done a lot of things in the past week or so that I´ve never done before. After spending a few days checking out the museums, craft markets and architecture of Buenos Aires, Gus and I decided that we´d seen all of what the city had to offer while the sun´s up. While there are a few good museums and some fantastic places to eat, I think growing up an hour outside of NYC has made me a bit spoiled when it comes to cities. For all the talk about BA being really European in terms of architecture, Gus and I were never really in awe of what we saw. The people on the other hand...they are very european. And incredibly attractive. In that sense I was in awe about three times a minute. And while they daytime activities aren´t out of this world, the night life certainly  is. On Thursday, after a nice meal with some friends of Mr. Hobbs who live in the city, we did a bit of bar hopping then headed to this club called Niceto. Every Thursday night (actually, starting Friday morning at 2:30 am), they do a drag show complete with techno, strobe lights, incredible break dancing, and lots of female and male near-nudity. We had a great time, and the club was still packed when we left at 6 am. At least we got to watch the sky brighten on our trip back to the hostel! After sleeping it off for a few hours, we did a bit more daytime tourism and moved from a comfortable, clean hostel in the microcentro (city center, with lots of hustle and bustle going on during the day but empty streets at night) to a funky, cheap, dirty and disgusting hostel in Palermo, which is an area packed with great restaurants and bars. So location was great, but dealing with used feminie products sitting in the sink and a kitchen with one pot, no pans and one barely functioning burner was less than desireable. But we were happy to sacrifice cleanliness for a few nights if it meant being a short walk home from all activities, and the hostel did have some really interesting artwork on the walls, as well as an absolutely gorgeous hostess. If I´d only had money for a wedding ring... We went on a very touristy pub crawl the next night, following a delicious meal of flank steak, sweet potato mash, rice, fries topped with a fried egg, and a big slice of fried parmesan cheese. Although we had to fight off the urge to vomit after eating so much, our stomachs were eventually settled enough to grab a quilmes, the Argentine equivalent of bud light. At the pub crawl, we made friends with a Dutch couple, a German woman and a guy from Toronto. We had a great time swapping travel stories and hearing about hometowns and cultures. And now we have a place to stay if we ever want to go to Amsterdam! After the pubs, we got vip access to a popular club. I felt really awkward as a tourist cutting past hundreds of people in line, but I soon forgot my worries when Hello by Martin sloveig came on. After fighting off an increasingly strong urge to lean against a wall and fall asleep from 4-5 am, we decided to head home. Unfortunately, upon leaving the club we discovered that we had 4 pesos (about a dollar) between us and we weren´t even on our map of the city. Exhaustion and seriously aching feet led to a pessimistic attitude, and we decided that we had at least a 50 block walk to our hostel. So much for staying close to the action. Luckily, after asking a few people for directions, we found that we were only about 20 blocks away. We made it home, fell asleep immediately, and enjoyed two more relaxed days in the city. We went to the zoo, which has some shockingly small cages, saw plenty of animals going crazy in their prisons, got annoyed, then did some craft shopping. Also had one of the best meals of my life...a huge flank steak from this famous cheap parrilla called El Desnivel. Only cost about $12 US!  Here we are two days later in Mendoza. We were very relieved to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city. It´s a cool city in terms of culture, which can be summed up in one word: wine. They live wine. And although we´re in a semi-arid region with a few cm of rainfall a year, they have a really cool irrigation system that diverts water from snow runoff. It runs next to nearly every street in the city, and parks are decorated with cool fountains. Having said that...the city is not pretty. Kind of ugly, in fact, and people have a habit of throwing all their trash into the trenches. They also still drive cars from the early eighties, and it´s less than nice to walk through a thick cloud of exhaust every few blocks. It´s also at a fairly high altitude...the province has the highest vineyards in the world...anywhere from 900 to 3000 meters! We did a wine tour yesterday by bike, learned a lot about how it´s made (I can be a wine snob now!), tried some seriously tasty and fine wines, especially at Trapiche, and endured pounding headaches and upset stomachs later that night, from something in the wine or the water (or maybe the altitude...good call mom). Now we´re taking a day off to plan our hiking and camping section of the trip. We may have to rent a car. Based on my experiences on the roads so far, I´m a bit worried...