Argentina: Evicted

“I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” -James Dean

For the first time in my life, I’ve been evicted...terminated...shown the door... sayonara... ciao... adios... goodbye. Whatever language you’d like to use, it meant I had to find a new home. 
It all started with a knock on the door this morning and the house manager, in her best English, explaining that since we were not students, we could no longer take advantage of the cheap “student pricing.” I wish that, instead of them evicting is, they had explained on the house posting or verbally, that we were among a bunch of studying students and to keep the music at night to a minimum. We never saw anyone studying, nor we were told of any problems, until the knock on the door. Even though no one said we were a problem at the time and others were loud at night too, especially considering it was a very, very cheap hostel, we didn’t put up a fight and feverishly began our search for a new home.

This temporary setback definitely sent me for a loop and was my first travel roadblock. Neither of us have had a bad review on Airbnb and I’ve fortunately never been evicted from a living situation. In that regard, I’m thankful. However, at the moment, I was definitely flustered and annoyed. Not only did we have to pack unexpectedly, but we had to gather all of our food and case of wine and transport our bags to our new spot. I’m glad Samson kept it together because that allowed me to keep it together. Our walk to collect his pants from the seamstress was a quiet walk, as we both (I imagine) contemplated next steps. Prior to the walk, we had spent an hour or so on housing sites and putting out feelers and requests, but no one had responded that was in our price range. We definitely didn’t want to break the budget, nor did we want to live in a mixed dorm.

We were meeting the house owner in two hours to get our refund and return the keys and still hadn’t heard anything. As we got back to the house, one of our requests were granted, but it was about 15 minutes away by cab in the neighboring town. We sat on the request for about an hour and then accepted it after no other requests were accepted. The taxi picked us up, saw that we were lugging a case of wine and vowed to drive carefully to protect, first and foremost, the wine. That was the turning point of our day and made us smile and chuckle.

The wine (and us) made it safely to our new host in Godoy Cruz. Lupé greeted us at the door, showed us our room and then quickly got us coffee and treats. As the three of sat drinking coffee, we chatted in Spanish about where we were from, where we’re going, and other topics. She also explained how odd the temperature is currently in Mendoza due to El Niño. Typically, temperatures are close to freezing at this time of year, not 65 to 70 degrees and sunny as it is now. Our conversation moved to the adorable terrace outside, with wine in hand, and we talked for another hour. We ended the conversation with Lupe saying she’d call her son in Buenos Aires to see if I could stay with him for the days that I’m in town next month. After Lupé left us on the terrace, Samson and I remarked at how much our day had turned around and essentially, we took our morning lemons and made afternoon lemonade.

Making things even better, we realized that once again, we had a clean, functional kitchen and located a grocery store that was 10 minutes walking distance away. Off we went to grab some meat and veggies and promptly had a proper meal cooked, like we had been able to do in Chile.

After a rotten start to our day, our evening has ended in a better situation than we began our trip with. We are only 15 minutes away from the center of Mendoza and yet we have another new area we can explore.