A few days more await me in Mendoza, before I get back to work on lake monsters. I've decided that I haven't committed much time on this web site to the finer details of what I'm experiencing at each of these locations. If I were a psychologist I might use the 1 to 10 scale with some Scantron paper. But I find it much more telling to use the makeout scale. This is: take a taxi from the bus terminal to the center of town (where ostensibly your hostel will be) Count the number of couples making out on the street. Turns out Mendoza is a 4 on the makeout scale, which I find to be quite high even by Argentine standards. Seems like a very loving city.

And indeed, there is a more patient pace to things here. Every street is a shady lane, since there's large trees on every single block. There's a huge plaza in the middle that is respectably maintained. And there's plenty of parilla's for a dinner night out. It might not be as large and developed for tourists as Buenos Aires, but of course that's not entirely necessary. It's probably a fantastic place to live.

Today, I decided to help a local group of geologists locate some ideal positions for future GPS antenna, so that they could track the movement of the South American fault lines. Geology has never been a focused interest of mine, but as one UPS student once told me, it has it's advantages. After all, your job often entails nothing more or less than hiking around the hillsides. Today's events fit that surveyal perfectly.

The object of the day was to, gasp, use an SUV for its marketed purpose, and aventura across the desert landscape searching several hotspots for ideal antenna positions. This entailed the following:

• A solid rock, big enough to withstand being drilled into without cracking
• The rock being relatively accessible from the roadside
• The rock having remote to no chance of moving in the slightest for the next 20 years due to erosion or other potential pitfalls.
• The rock having a clear "skyview" so that the antenna could communicate with the GPS system.

Well, as it turned out, after 8 hours of searching 3 separate locations, we couldn't find any rocks that fit these criteria. Hence, the mantra of the afternoon: "we have succeeded to fail!" ...More out of humor than pessimism, naturally. It's surprising how difficult it is to find a large stable rock in a vast desertlike environment. Even more amusing is that I grew up in a town where the local sports team was called the "Flat Rock Runners" ... but that's of no help to us now.

The high point of the day might have been the arrival at our second location, to a neaby farm. The owners appeared to be siesta'ing somewhere in the hillsides, so we decided to have our lunch by their house. This was to a high degree of curiosity for their livestock of geese, goats, and chickens, which gave us a bestial orchestral welcome of sorts. I have heard goats before, but I have never heard a goat sound like someone being stabbed in the lung. Every 10 seconds. I could hardly eat my food it was so hilarious. Imagine yourself in one of the most remote places in Argentina, finding a nice oasis to eat your lunch beside, and the ambience is consistently peppered with the most feral scream of terror you've ever heard in your life. Every ten seconds. This wasn't a "baa" it was a "BLEAAHH!" It always was the simple entertainment for me...