Thine Argentine wine

28/10/12

The time has come to talk about MENDOZA. Mendoza is a province in the west of Argentina, and also a city in the province of Mendoza, a few hours drive from the border with Chile. If you are at all familiar with the geography of Latin America, you might recall that there's a little mountain range called the Andes in between the two countries, just the highest mountains outside of the Himalayas, no big deal. Anyway, Mendoza is also the wine capital of Argentina, and considering that Argentina and Chile are the big names in Latin American wine and becoming more important all the time on a global level, this is kind of a big deal. Wine is one of the major exports of Argentina, but they drink an awful lot of it before it has a chance to leave. Anyway, for whatever reason, Mendoza seemed like a good place to visit during my time in Argentina.

One of the problems with going to Mendoza is that Argentina is REALLY BIG. One of the options was to fly, which is short but super expensive. The other option was to take a bus. Oh, the bus! We got discounts but it was still fairly pricey, I justified the trip as my birthday present to myself (we went from October 5th to 8th), so I will not complain any further here about the costs of anything. My classmate Lauren arranged everything, and in the end 11 out of the 14 of us ended up going on the Mendoza trip over a holiday weekend. We left on Friday afternoon and arrived back in Buenos Aires on Tuesday morning at about 7am, just a few hours before our 10am classes.

Friday after our morning class, Kaitlyn, Lauren and I went to the grocery store for supplies, which consisted of a variety of snacks (mostly cheese, bread, olives, cookies, and some meat for the carnivores) and an undisclosed quantity of beer and wine. This was an important decision, because although our bus tickets advertised “Servicio” we were never actually served any food aside from some alfajores at the beginning of the ride. Our bus ride was scheduled to be 16 hours, but we ran into a tremendous thunderstorm and ended up arriving in Mendoza about 19 hours after we left Buenos Aires, slightly the worse for wear. I don't really want to spoil the surprise for you if you ever end up taking a long bus ride in Argentina, but the movies they play on these things are INSANE, completely uncensored, and occasionally sort of traumatizing.  

Nigel and Izzy snugging on the bus. 

We got into Mendoza at about 9:30am and went out to Mr. Dog for tea and medialunas after dropping off our things at the hostel. 

Señor Dog

The hostel itself had a huge variety of tours available, so we decided we would take advantage of the group pricing and we signed up for the winery bicycle tour and the full-day Andes tour. The winery bicycle tour was that afternoon, so after all 11 of us had eaten and showered it was time to head out. We went to three different wineries, the first was a small organic vineyard, the second a very fancy gigantic vineyard, and the third was a small artisanal family vineyard. In Argentina, the wineries are called 'bodegas', which is kind of weird if you think of a bodega as a corner store, as I do. 

In the bus to the first bodega, where we got our bikes

At bodega #1

Bodega #2

My new friend Kristina from the hostel (she's German but speaks Spanish with a French accent. So confusing!) and I bought a bottle of rosé to share and it was the correct choice, because it was delicious.

Bodega 3

Nigel and Izzy at bodega #1

A terrible photo, but the first glimpse of the Andes foothills through the bus window.

The next morning we had to be out the door on our Andes tour at 8am, which normally I would thoroughly protest but I couldn't this time, because getting the group to go on this tour was my idea. I warned my friends that it would be really cold up in the mountains even though it was springtime, but Alex wore shorts anyway, and most people had very few layers. I foolishly left most of my clothing in Buenos Aires, so I was woefully under-prepared.

Storm rolling in

OMINOUS

Our first stop was at a man-made lake, and the second stop was at a natural spring with a monument bridge where we drank water straight from the river and ran around in the rain. 

There are supposed to be giant mountains behind this instead of clouds

This stop, while super pretty and really invigorating, was our first sign that we might possibly actually die from the cold that day. Two stops later we ended up at a rest stop, where about half the group (not including yours truly, I am stubborn!) rented coats for the rest of the trip. Right after this stop, it started snowing. SNOWING. It's spring, damnit! At the next stop, el Puente de la Inca (bridge of the Inca), I thought I might actually genuinely die, as did the other half of the people who hadn't rented coats. The obvious choice? Buy alpaca sweaters!

ALPACA

Me looking really cool in my Alpaca sweater back at the hostel that night. 

El Puente de la Inca is a natural rock bridge and it's really beautiful, even when it's snowing. Lots of indigenous people sell crafts there to the tourists.

El Puete de la Inca with some old ruined buildings built along the side.

Although the snow was kind of a bummer in that it limited our visibility, it was actually kind of exciting. We got to run around in it like weirdos, but it also lent a really particular cast to the day. At el Puente de la Inca we were able to see the railroad tracks of the defunct Trans-Andean Railroad, which used to zigzag across these enormous mountains to connect the two sides of the continent, and seeing it in the grey light with the snow swirling around the empty tracks with the mountains in the distance made it really clear what a feat it had been to build, with the limited infrastructure of both countries and the forbidding weather conditions and altitude.

So cool

We went to Mt. Aconcagua, the tallest peak in the Americas and the highest peak in the world outside of the Himalayas. Unfortunately we couldn't really see anything due to the snowstorm, but it was still beautiful.

Almost 3,000 meters up!

I wasn't that high, I believe the height listed is the height of Aconcagua itself

The next day was Monday, our last day in Mendoza. We had to be on our bus by 2pm, so we all got up relatively early so we could see the city a little before we headed out. We ended up renting bikes from the hostel and rode around the city and the parks like maniacs, taking pictures all the way.

Fountains of Mendoza

Dog friends who followed us the entire bike ride

I have even more pictures of this lake that I didn't upload, you got off easy

 After our frantic last minute rush to get supplies from the grocery store, we were off, and we made it back to Buenos Aires with time to get home and shower before class in the morning, a mere 15.5 hours later, with only a small case of PTSD from the movies on the bus. Success!