Mendoza and Colon

So I finally got the chance to get out of the city a little bit during the last month and we ended up going to Colon and Mendoza.
Colon is a little town about 5 hours away by bus that is famous for its thermal springs. Funnily enough, that ended up being the least cool part of Colon. They were these outdoor pools with white stuff floating in them...sketchy! But our skin did feel great afterwards, so maybe I could go back to some "termas" in the future.
Our other adventures in Colon included going to a Palm tree park and going horseback riding through the palms, going to the most luxurious private residence in the country where Urquiza was assasinated and you can still see the bullet holes, and hitting "Dia del Estudiante/Dia de la Primavera" festival with a bunch of high school kids who were burning an effigy and then having a giant outdoor concert. Kind of nuts.
Mendoza was two weeks after, and is a 14 hour bus ride. So we left Thursday night after I got my Visa (yay I'm almost a resident!) and had my last class. The buses here are great! You can get "cama" or "semi-cama" which dictates the reclining-ness of your seat and the size, as well as whether you get a blanket and pillow. But there are movies (although sometimes the "movie" is a reggaeton/rap megamix music video that we couldn't believe they were showing in public) and the 3 course meals with wine, champagne, and coffee.
Mendoza is wine country, so we decided to bike through the vineyards, do a tasting, hit a house party, go on a midnight wine trek that included the best food and wine I've had in a while, and then horseback riding. Malbec (a kind of red) ended up being our favorite. You can get a great bottle here for under $10. As in 25 pesos. The horseback riding in Mendoza was tons of fun because we got to ford rivers and trot/gallop a bit. My horse actually listened to me, so that was great! The mountains were beautiful, and we took tons of pictures.
Some of the girls are heading to Salta/Jujuy for the salt desert and other attractions this week, but my parents are coming tomorrow and I have 2 midterms (my first grades-aah!) so I'm staying in BA.
The weather is finally starting to get warm here, but portenos (people from BA) have such disparate concepts of the temperature that we went to the Ecological Reserve the other day and saw people in bikinis etc on one size and winter coats and scarves on the other.
In short, BA is a little crazy.