When they let morons design cities, but first the cool parts:

The picture on the left is an acequia and the sign for the university. The picture on the right is my building at the university.

Last night it rained. Mendoza is a desert, officially, but because of the climate changes (aka global warming, humans really are screwing up the world), they get these huge thunder and lightning storms. What you need to know as background is that many years ago, when Mendoza was founded, there was no rain. They constructed a city with irrigation channels called acequias. They are everywhere: every street has them, even though some have covered them. They are either covered with wood in construction sites or covered by the sidewalk and then have grates to let water pass. Because of the acequias, Mendoza’s central plazas (there are 5) and all of the cities street have huge trees which grew from the water they used to carry. Now, the acequias function for water removal as well. Most of the time, as I walk, the acequias are dry and like every other Latin American city (if it had acequias) filled with garbage. They are also refered to as tourist or drunk traps as people do occasionally fall into them. (I will post when I see this happen.)

When it does rain; it rains like mad and the next day, the acequias get to show off their absolute necessity. Each one becomes a river and gushes with water. My favorite acequia is the one on Bolounge Sur Mer because it is twice the width of any other acequia in the city. Also the houses on Sur Mer are really huge (they face San Martín Park, which is 1/3 of the city space). Some of the people have covered the acequias with vines and other plants to make them fit with their houses. Its really interesting to see how people have incorporated them.

The average center of the city acequia and the ones on the university are a good 14-18 inches wide, which means you have to watch where your feet land when getting off a micro (city bus) or getting out of a car. It is entirely possible to step off a bus and wind up nearly two feet below street level. If this were a city in the US, every acequia would be painted bright orange to warn people, or more likely, they would all be covered by the side walk with grates to allow water to enter. Even the park and the plazas have acequias running through them. That’s what allowed man to do things like plant pine trees next to cacti. (Its ironic to look at too.)

One does get used to crossing acequias by taking large steps, but this can be difficult in a skirt and flip flops. However, acequias make crossing the street a challenge because you might have to make the jump upon reaching the other side. There are little bridges (aka parts where the side walk has been built to cross the channel), but they are few and far between on the university.

So, the city planners were really thinking when they designed the acequias, but they really screwed up the city in one way: every street running east-west has three names. Ok, so if you want to have the streets change names when running through a central axis, that’s one thing. Its another when the center is a plaza and there are two streets functioning as an axis. The city is long and narrow; it is only about 25 blocks wide, which means that every eight blocks, the streets change names. Its not just the main streets that do this, in the central part of the city, all streets change when crossing Belgrano and San Martín. I am lucky enough to live on one of the main streets, its called Colón where I live, Aristides Villanueva between Belgrano and the park and Emilio Zapata between San Martín and the eastern city limit. Each part of the street has its own character, too. Aristides is the party street; its where most of the bars are located and where most of the population can be found on a Friday night. (Note, this is most of the human population, taxi cabs are still few and far between.) When it becomes Colón, it has more businesses like banks and supermarkets and hardware stores, with fewer bars and residential buildings. Then, Zapata has some businesses and stores, but its distinction is that when you cross San Martín, Zapata starts a two-way street.

Its not that hard to figure out, until you have to cross Belgrano. I’ll look at bus routes and they say the bus runs Ortega. Ok, but that’s in the western part of the city; then I have to figure out what that means for me. I have to think about it: Ortega is San Lorenzo for me, here in the center. Or for going to friends houses, “Sure, come over, we’re drinking mate (traditional, biter Argentine tea). I live on Avellaneda.” There is no Avellaneda where I live, so I have to consult my map and discover that Avellaneda is called Gutierez before it crosses Belgrano. Its actually more likely I would walk Belgrano and find the street, but I would have to know the direction first. Even though Mendoza is a small city, the street names do make it a bit confusing and the bus lines are an absolute hell.

Its because of Mendoza’s size that most bus lines are complete circles and go to the surrounding towns, called departments, as well. This means that even though I take the 112 or the 103 from the corner of Chile and Rivadavia, taking either of those buses back will not bring me to the same location without going all over the world. So, I have two different lists of buses: one for going to the university and another for returning. All of the buses have a line number and then a specific route number. You can only see the line number from far away. The route number is written on a much smaller sign and behind the glace window (hello, glare!), which means you get about three seconds to glance and the route number and decide if it’s the one you one. This isn’t so much a problem when I’m going to the university, but when I’m on my way home, buses I can take are constantly passing me without my realizing until its too late. At least I live in the center which is pretty easy to get to and from. I feel really badly for all the people who live on the outskirts or outside the center because there are fewer buses that go towards their houses and most of them wind up taking the bus in the wrong direction and finding out they are in one of the suburbs. This has never happened to me.