onward to mendoza

hey hey, the strike here in peru was resolved yesterday afternoon, so today i am off to mendoza. i was able to get a bus direct from here to there (60 hrs), which means that i will be in tunuyan on monday. damn right! yesterday was an interesting day, the morning was spent with other travellers trying to figure out the strike situation, since everyone has been somewhat ansy to get outta here. then in the afternoon i went with francis, the guy who runs the hostel i've been staying at, to run some errands. he had to go to the hospital to straighten out some things, and it just so happened that we ended up near the office of my bus company so we were able to straighten out that situation. along the way we went to one of francis' favorite sandwich joints and got a pan con chicharon. this sandwich was the size of my head with thick slices of roasted pork, sweet potatoes, and an onion/pepper relish. our final errand was to a metal shop to get some good hooks for putting up a hammock. it was awesome, these guys just started looking around the shop for different scraps and we watched them make some heavy duty hooks........ bending half inch thick rods into hooks, cutting up scraps into support pieces, welding everything together, the whole nine yards. anyway, it was a nice day for kind of stepping into everyday peruvian life. off to the bus here soon, all my love.....................