Mendoza (Arg) - Week 25

1st - 6th March

Left Valparaiso on the 8am bus on our way to Mendoza. The 8 hour bus journey was amazing, right through and over the top of the Andes. The roads meandered left and right to get up to 4000m and it looked like we would never get there! The Chile/Argentina border crossing was right in the mountains and just before we got there we had a view of the highest peak in all the Americas, Aconcagua at almost 7000m.

We arrived in Mendoza at around 4pm and after booking our bus tickets out to Buenos Aires, found a local bus to get to our hostel. Hostel Alamo is a great new hostel in a big converted house. Original parque (how do you spell that?) floors, big airy dorms and in the fancy double room which we splashed out on for just one night, a beautiful, old, original bathroom.

Mendoza is a lovely city with perfect climate (about 28 every day with a breeze) and wide, shady, tree-lined streets. The main square is the Plaza Independencia and there are four other beautiful little squares all in the centre.

Stayed in the hostel chatting on the first night then after a leisurely breakfast on Friday morning went out to find a winery for some good old wine tasting and a nice lunch. We took the local bus through Maipu (all these famous wine names - it's too much for us, especially when James keeps sniggering like a little boy at the name Maipu/mypoo!) and on to one of the bigger wineries, La Rural. It was great, a tour round the winery and wine museum and tasting at the end and it's all free. They only put out the crap wine at the end though for the tasting but we got a couple of big glasses...




We learnt a little about wine making. Considering how much wine we drink James was suprised to hear that you can make white wine from red grapes. The colour of the wine comes from the skins and not the juice, so you leave the skins in and ferment to make red or remove the skins and ferment to make white. Pinot Noir is made from red grapes - who'd have thought it!! Of more concern was how little the grape pickers were paid. For a large basket they would make 1 peseo or 17p, on a good day they make 4 quid...

The old way of getting the juice out by trampling. An inside out ox skin with the wine leaving by the poop hole - charming!

Then we walked to a restaurant nearby that had been recommended and had the most delicious meal! Bread, oil, vinegar and a big plate of parma ham to start then James had a delicious beef in Malbec wine and Katie had suckling pig with roasted aubergines. Creme caramel to finish and a lovely bottle of Temperanillo all for 12 quid. Argentina is bloody wicked.

Katie refusing to leave the restaurant of her dreams.

Got back to the hostel mid-afternoon and watched a film then started drinking more wine and chatting with people from the hostel in the garden. Decided we should go out about 3am so went down to the cafe on the corner to play pool with Alex, Matt and Alfie from the hostel. Then it all went horribly wrong when the triple gin and tonics came out... All I will say here is that Katie had to be carried home and was not well the next day. We got home about 5.30am and Katie woke everyone in our dorm.

So, Saturday was spent in bed until we got up to go to the big wine festival extravaganza in the park which we had jammily managed to get tickets for from a bloke in the hostel. We got on the bus to go but Katie was still so ill that she had to come home again without making it into the auditorium, gutted. But James went, accompanied by two aussies, Sam and Mel and had a great time.

Sam, Melanie and James, you'd never guess that Mel was an ozzie! ;o)

The finale with about 400 dancers and 20,000 people watching...

James getting a peeping-tom photos of the beauties.

The dancers pretending they are vines!!

Dancers abseiling from a bunch of grapes in the sky - all very surreal!

Sunday was a quiet day with strictly no alcohol and relaxing.

On Monday we did a bit of exploring around Mendoza town to the different little squares and tried to go to the museum but it was shut (they take their siesta VERY seriously in Mendoza and nothing is open between 12.30 and 5!). In the evening we went to 'The Vines' for a wine and cheese 'pairing' session which was fantastic (Vic, Dunc, Suse, Ash - you would have loved this!!). We were there for two hours, the first hour was spent tasting five different wines with different cheeses and learning about the wine and why they pair so well with different cheeses. Then for the second hour, more bottles were opened and more cheese produced and it was a free for all. Think we ate our own body weight in delicious cheese and James had far more than his share of wine (Katie still taking it easy after Friday night...)!

On Tuesday we took a bus out to another wine region and visited two more wineries. The first was a very small winery with a charming old owner that gave us a wine glass each and took us through all his barrels, every wine was delicious! At the start, Katie told him that we did not speak much Spanish so could he speak slowly but he said (in very fast spanish), 'It doesn't matter what I'm saying, it's all about the wine'! Couldn't have put it better ourselves...

The second winery was bigger, and we got a full tour of the winery and how the wine is made (including their sparkling wine which is made by a single man that works in solitude, turning and shaking bottles every two weeks...). Then we had another tasting of three excellent wines at the end.

Got the bus back to Mendoza at 5pm and after a quick watch of the Liverpool v Barcelona match, took a taxi to the bus station for the overnight bus to Buenos Aires.

Books we read: The Getaway by Jim Thompson - pretty good, better than the film!