mendoza

i am hanging out in mendoza with a family that gary, a friend of a friend of my parents got me in touch with. thanks gary! holy week is starting up, and last night i went to my first mass. i was a little wiped out, and so i had trouble paying attention to the priest, but all in all it was pretty cool. i don't know anyone who goes to church in the US, but catholacism seems a lot more important to peole in argentina.

all along the highway you can see little shrines erected for catholic saints or virgins, the most popular being "difunta correa". legend has it, that during some war, a women wandered through the desert with her child looking for her husband who had disapeared during the war. at some point she died of thirst, but her child continued to nurse (and her breast continued to give milk) even after she died.

there is a huge shrine for difunta correa near san juan (which is supposedly where she died). people come from all over argentina to ask difunta correa for miracles. then they build her these little houses that say things like, "thank you difunta correa for helping us buy our house." people are really intense about this shrine, and you can see them walking along the highway for miles before the shrine. some people walk for days to ask for miracles. i saw one guy crawling on his hands and knees up a flight of stairs to the shrine.

it's easy for me to understand how difunta correa died of thirst. in this photo the blue color is not the ocean. it's desert stretching on as far as the eye can see. vistas like this are not a happy sight for the touring cyclist because it means no food or water for a long time. the shrine for difunta correa was the first thing i saw after being in the desert for a while, and i was running really low on water. while camping, i didn't cook any dinner to conserve water, and so it was pretty great to go to a tourist restaurant and eat steak and drink tons of water. i still felt hungry after my meal, so i ordered a ham sandwhich for dessert.
a few days ago i spent some time in a national park called ischigualasto, which is another UNESCO world heritage site. in order to see the park, the ranger told me i'd have to find someone with extra room in their car. fotunately a whole tour bus of exchange students showed up, and so i got to ride around in the park with them and eat free snacks like cheese sandwhiches and candy. it was great. it was also so, so fun for me to speak in english. sometimes when i communicate in spanish i feel a little bit like tarzan trying to hold down a conversation. ischigualasto is considered to be a "paleontoligists' paradise". there are tons of dinosaur fossils that they have uncovered, and the park has a small museum where you can see some of the dinosaur skeletons. the rangers were so nice and let me camp behind the bathroom and use their internet for free. this would never have happened if i'd been in the US. anyhows.... today i'm going to check out mendoza, and then tomorrow keep heading south. hope everyone is good! love,
-jessie