We have recently emerged from Argentina, and like grazing guanaco are still foraging for food to which we have become dearly accustomed.  Just three hours off the airplane,  my withdrawal cravings for dulce de leche led me straight away to HEB.  On second thought, forget the image of gentle guanaco, feature instead a komodo dragon tracking down its prey, crawling low to the ground and dragging its enormous, scaly belly.  That would be me. 

Lo and behold, like manna from heaven, I found a squatty jar next to the grape jam and plum jelly.  I struggled briefly with myself, should I, or shouldn't I?  O, I should.  I definitely, definitely should.  Sudden withdrawal could send me spiraling downward into some abyss.  I could, in a sugar low, come out of my closet wearing two mismatched shoes.  I could pluck one eyebrow and forget the other.  I might back my car out of the garage, having failed to raise the door.  It was cheaper and more pragmatic to just go ahead and feed the monster.  Afterall, I'd been setting myself up for this for the past twelve days.   Dulce de leche folded into pastries on a continuous basis had created a bad precedent for future transgressions and indulgences.  Too late, now.  Nothing to do but go forward.  Is there a rehab center for caramel lovers?

To celebrate my husband's sixty-fifth birthday, we'd embarked on a South American journey that had been two years in the making.  First a night in Buenos Aires, then on to Mendoza, the wine region.  We would finish the trip in Bariloche, but it was in Mendoza where I noticed the stark contrast between light and dark.  Between brilliant kindness of a passionate people and the bleakness of a modern-day Argentinean version of Brazilian cangeceiros (read Bandit Kings), called ladrones.  There is a dulce de leche quality to the Mendoza region, but also the reeking and distinct bitterness of vinegar upon heart. 

O, but our resort was exquisite.  The owner and staff so accommodating, polite and kind.  I can still feel the skins of young grapes in my fingers, the vines of which hung low from an arbor walkway that must have been made for brides.  Feature this: acres of purple Malbec grapes, fourteen Santa Fe-like adobe guest cottages and the snow-capped Andes in the background.  Tango music in the late afternoon, wafting through the air—weather sent from heaven.  We had found nirvana and we adored it.

Soon, however, I began to notice a few locusts in paradise.  It wasn't all sweetness and light.  Not all dulce-de-leche.  Security cameras were everywhere.  A giant horse-sized German Shepherd roamed around at night, wending his way around the al-fresco dining tables.  Black-leather clad guards with guns nestled in holsters strapped to their thighs watched me as I walked alone to the hotel lobby.  Oh me, oh my.  Toto, we were not in Kansas, anymore. 

When we'd first arrived, I'd asked Miguel, our driver, "Has there had been a problem we needed to know about?"  (Later, I would ask others.)

A uniform, unsettling and unsatisfying reply came from all sources, "This is for your protection. "

"But, why do we need it?" 

"Just in case."

"Oh."

Like rotten, whole eggs dropped in a bowl of water, truth floats to the top.  The day before we left, we had lunch in a winery nestled in the giant apron of vineyards and desert that skirts the Andes.  Four tables outside, and three of them filled with guests apparently all staying at our resort.

"I wouldn't have come, had I read the articles about the commando-style robberies at the resort in time to cancel our reservation," said a young, blond woman from California, seated at the table next to ours.  She was speaking to two women on the opposite side.

"What?" replied a woman with red henna hair and hip black clothing.  She was from New York and had probably seen everything you could imagine, good and bad.  Still, she acted surprised.

"Oh, yes, the guests have been held up at gun-point three times and forced inside their casitas during the past two years.  Even the staff and patrons in the hotel lobby were robbed."

After we'd finished lunch, my husband and I slid onto the backseat of our car.  "So, Miguel, I said, "we just heard about the robberies at our resort."

He meekly shrugged his shoulders and finally admitted, "Oh yes, there were those few times.  But, I think it is okay, now.  Some of the ladrones (thieves) have been caught.  I think they learned that it wasn't worth the effort, too, as most guests only had credit cards and passports in their safes, very little cash.  Nobody was hurt, though."

Unlike cangeceiros who'd crept up on sleepy villages by horseback, emerging from cactus and thicket -infested country, the ladrones had likely come via motorcycles along the dusty road at the back of the resort, wielding more pistols than knives.  Like their Brazilian counterparts, they'd come under the cover of darkness and a blanket of surprise.

I have since read that at least nine of the seventeen ladrones were caught.  Argentina has been fraught with economic and social turmoil for many years.  This has been the common denominator for most of the robberies in the Mendoza area, and for many of the other regions.

We found most of the Argentineans to be most gracious and gentle people.  We loved our time there.  So much of the culture is delicious to the bone, and enticing.  Some is stuck in a corrupt past, but just as in plate-tectonics, part of the old crust is shifting, and a new country emerging.  While the ghosts of Evita, and Isabel still hover around the nation, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, rules. Her speeches have been compared to the tough-talking hand-in-fist style of the former.  To whom much is given, much is expected.  Can she stabilize her country? Can she soothe its growing pains?  Is her administration really all that different, or is it just another rendition of Don't Cry for Me, Argentina?