Rio Dulce stays north, Costigan's go south

Traveling to Mendoza

The day arrived….the bags were packed….each of them, we would come to find out, was 2 to 6 lbs overweight…scramble, shuffle, reload into back packs…and we are off. Security, passports, more security, more showing of the passports, and we are off.

Fast forward…Wednesday Morning out the windows…The Andes..WOW with snow on top! The sky is gray and overcasts. It appears that no one lives in Santiago. We change planes and fly into Mendoza. But wait… it looks like the moon….a desert moon…it is brown with tumble weeds as far as the eyes can see.
This is bad.

The airport is like Akron/Canton… in New Mexico or West Texas, as Dick likes to say. It is dry and cement colored and scary…what have we gotten ourselves into….
The driver picks us up. Now we are driving through Beirut….There are tin and cement shacks everywhere…some with sheets for walls and roofs.
The cars driving by are every color, style, and overhaul imaginable from 1972. Did I mention the shacks, the rows and rows of shacks.
This could be bad.
Brian is afraid and wants to go home. This has been a horrible mistake. I am starting to agree with him.

After a half hour we begin to see trees and green things…then a little shop…than a restaurant…..than a school…a little square.
We turn onto a driveway behind a wall with a gate. It is an oasis. There are trees and grass and flowers and the house… is lovely.
But wait…who are all of these people….the owner, his girlfriend, the house keeper, another woman ironing, in what I think is my kitchen…wait…the owner is staying in the small bedroom off the kitchen? What? Who is the man walking by the window 10,000 times? The gardener. Who is the man with the dog? The other gardener. We have not rented a house but have rented a house in a small village.
I am afraid.

It is now day three. The sky is blue, the temperature is perfect.
Now I notice the little things…everything in the grocery store is unfamiliar. I can, however, recognize all of the meat, fruits and most of the vegetables. Checking for food allergies is difficult but soy flour has not found its way here yet it seems. Milk, OJ, tomatoes sauce, mustard, and ketchup, comes in bags (like drink bags) or small boxes (like juice boxes). They do not have grape jelly or peanut butter. They do not seem to have pretzels but I am told they have pizza. The local shops are all mom and pop shops…you go to the butcher to get your meat. They really do go out to eat at 10pm for dinner. There are a lot of restaurants close by but I doubt we will be able to stay up that late!

The Kitchen (for you Sandra) has two big pots, two skillets, and a strainer. There is one kitchen towel. No hot pads, no measuring cups, no measuring spoons. 4 wooden cutting boards from 1945 that are as black as coal. There are two big knives, both as sharp as the side of a plastic fork. But you can drink le aqua.

It is an old style Posada. All of the lights are bare bulbs….all the lights are bare bulbs..all the lights. The floors are tile. I think the housekeeper ran off with the broom and mop. I can not find them.

Each night I do the dishes before bed (no dishwasher). The first night I left a pan to soak. In the morning it was clean…
Last night I again left a few things in the sink undone….in the morning they are done….
I put a bottle of oil in the cupboard….this morning it was on a paper towel in a little wooden bowl in the cupboard……I am again afraid…..is it the gardener?