MONDAY/TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9-10
Mendoza is a clean safe modern city of shaded streets and watered parks and squares cooled by fountains. Plaza San Martin is the centre. I check half a dozen hotels before taking a $13 room on the 3rd floor at the Imperial for two nights. The room has a full size window and hot shower. The towels rate as adequate, the elevator works, staff are helpful. I write eight hours straight at a table in the ground-floor restaurant (prices are reasonable for acceptable food). Three further hours on the internet and I am up to date with Blogs and correspondence. Late evening I sit at a sidewalk café and people-watch. The temperature is ideal, no flies nor mosquitoes. I think of Mendoza as a European city. I am wrong. In any European city I would see African and Asian faces. Here there remains a thin sprinkling of dark mestizo amongst older citizens. Amongst the young, Europe is triumphant, the indigenous visible only in a slight tanning of skin and in a bright blackness of eye. Dress is casual. The young are confident in their sensuality. These are beautiful people and they are having fun.