1 week in Mendoza, the heart of Argentinian wine country.

Mendoza
February 28th – March 7th ( 1 week)

Hello amigos! I should be greeting you in Portuguese given that we are now in Brazil, however seeing as we have been hit with a “delightful” bout of travellers’ diarreah, we haven’t left our room since yesterday afternoon and so haven't had a chance to learn any Portugese yet. Poor Ben has been hit harder- he had such a high fever overnight that a wet face cloth almost sizzled when I put it on. His fever broke this morning but he is still pretty sick now, and is really wishing that we had booked a room with our own private bathroom instead of the shared bathroom that we have. Ben's forever an optomist and despite being as sick as I have seen him, he says that on the plus side, he has lost a few kilos in 24 hours and is quite happy that his holiday belly is shrinking! Don't worry Bronwyn, I am looking after him and it should be out of his system in the next 24 hours, poor thing.

So, blog-wise we are up to recording our time in Mendoza, heart of the wine country in Argentina. We spent 1 week here, not because of all the great wine, but because it was Wine Festival time and the city was in a fun fiesta mood. Also, we were staying in a place (“Chimbas Suites”) that had such a chilled out, friendly atmosphere with great people, a pool and Moroccan inspired garden courtyard area to spend lazy afternoons reading, and it became just to hard to move on from here quickly! We embraced the South American siesta during our time here, and would have a 2hour nap in the afternoon- a break from all the hard relaxing by the pool!!

The main restaurant area in downtown Mendoza

Eating well in Mendoza: Our daily vegetarian feast

Relaxing at Chimbas Suites

The highlights of our time in Mendoza:

• Bike riding around Maipu vineyards: We met up wtih Ads and George again, and the 4 of us hired bikes for the day to explore the vineyards. We thought we would be riding on little country paths, through sleepy wine country, but instead found ourselves riding alongside trucks and cars on a potholed, dusty main road! It was a great day full of fun that started with a visit to an Olive Plantation, where we learnt all about how olive oil is made, and got to taste some olives and sun dried tomatoes at the end of our tour, mmmm, delicious! So delicious that we bought a massive tub of olives and jar of sundried tomatoes, and then overdosed on them over the next few days and haven’t really been able to eat olives since!!

Enjoying the olive farm tour

Inside the old olive oil factory

The modern production system for olive oil

Sampling the olives, mmmm!

One of the quieter roads on our bike riding experience

From the olive farm we went onto the boutique family run vineyard “Familia Di Thomosa”. We had a scrumptious lunch of spinach cannelloni with blue cheese sauce and a pumpkin and feta quiche in their courtyard restaurant set amongst the vines. We discovered a new variation of white wine called a “Torrontes”, a distinctive Argentinian fruity, dry white wine. Served chilled on a summer’s day, it was the perfect accompaniment to our meal, and has since become a favourite. The best part of that delicious meal was the tiramisu desert. It was by far the most amazing tiramisu that George and I have ever tasted, so moist and the perfect blend of coffee and Tia Maria, my mouth waters at the memory! We now describe tiramisu deserts as “It was yum, but it wasn’t Thomosa”!

Familia Di Thomosa winery

Our gourmet lunch

The old wine vats

More of the underground cellar

The barrels where they age the wine

A serious wine tasting moment: observe the colour, swirl the wine to determine its body, appreciate the aroma and the drink!

We spent the rest of the day visiting another vineyard, and a place that specialised in chocolate and liquor. The boys were brave (or stupid?!) enough to try their home made absinthe, and while they didn’t go blind from the experience, they won’t be repeating it in a hurry!!

Lighting the absinthe soaked cube of sugar

1,2,3 down goes the absinthe

Wine tasting

Enjoying a fine Malbec with friends!

The girls!

• Italian Night Festival: As part of the Wine Festival, the Italian community had a wine and food night market in one of the open aired plazas. Ben and I ate “vegetarian” home made ravioli, which turned out to be spinach and ricotta ravioli with a meat Bolognese sauce! We did our best to scrape some of the sauce off, although I did have quite a few mouthfuls before realising it was meat and I have to say “damn it tasted good!”. This scared me, and made me worried that I may actually like the taste of meat, however the moment has passed and there has been no more accidental sampling of meat sauces!! We bought a home made wine from one of the stalls, and one cup knocked our socks off! It was cheap, strong and nasty, and obviously a favourite with the locals!

• Beauty Queen street parade and a pick pocket: As part of the festival a Harvest Queen is elected. There were about 20 young hopefuls, and on the Friday night they had a massive street parade, where the beauty queens sat on over-the-top floats, throwing down apples and grapes to the thousands of people crowded on the street. Unfortunately the crowds were a pick pocketers dream, and sure enough as we were walking home at the end of a night, a young man started to push up against me, drumming on my back and making me feel really uncomfortable. I told Ben, who was in front of me in the chain of people weaving a way through the masses to get home, and Ben turned to look at who was harassing me. As he was distracted another man on the side of Ben reached in and took his wallet, which had his credit cards in it and a small amount of cash. A classic distract and steal moment, which all happened within 5 seconds. We felt pretty stupid for falling for it, but we knew that it would happen at some point during our time in Sth America.

Cardboard cut outs of the Beauty Queens lined the streets so that people could vote for their favourite! I had to drag Ben away!

A Harvest Queen hopeful

More beauty queens on big floats! Watch out for the flying apples!

• Fun on the hill top: For the concluding night of the festival there was an extravaganza of fireworks, singers, dancers, comedians, magicians etc, performing in a massive arena. Instead of buying tickets, we went and sat on one of the hills surrounding the stadium and enjoyed the spectacular from there. We went with friends from the hostel, Bobby and Sy, but by the end of the night our little gang had expanded and we had made great friends with a local family who were sitting next to us.

Bobby's moment of fame: Being interviewed by the local TV crew.

The boys! Ben, Bobby and Sy

My two favourite little new friends!

Our view of the extravaganza! We had more fun on the hill top than we did watching the show!

The hill top gang!

And so our time in Mendoza came to an end with another long, over night bus trip to Rosario. Ben will pick up from here and write about this lovely city and then the captivating Buenos Aires (when he is feeling better!)

Lots of love, Chelle and Ben

p.s.. Feel free to comment cause then we know people are reading!