Next Stop: Unknown

Mendoza…  Argentina’s wine country, home of the Malbec!  We were excited to take a few wine tours and taste the best the country has to offer!  But first, we had to get there.  We opted for an overnight bus ride since we’d had plenty of luck with that.  Well, it turns out our luck had run out.  Our bus made a loud beeping noise the entire ride… which made it difficult to sleep, even with earplugs.  About 3 in the morning, I noticed that we were on the side of the road stopped.  I didn’t think much of it and tried to go back to sleep… sometime later, a man came and told us to get off the bus… evidently, our bus had broken down and we’d been waiting on the side of the road for 3 hours while the next bus came along to take us the rest of the way.  So, our luggage was transferred over, and we hopped aboard a new bus, which was NOT the nice comfortable sleeping bus we started on.  It didn’t have fully reclining seats, and it wasn’t a direct bus. In fact, it stopped at each little city along the way… So, instead of pulling into Mendoza at 9am the next morning, we arrived sometime between 1 and 2 in the afternoon. 

Jenn had made a reservation for a place online that had good reviews, but it turned out to be a long haul away from both the bus station and the downtown area.  But, we hoofed it and eventually go there, completely wiped out from the trek carrying our luggage… We were so tired we didn’t even care how bad the room was.. .which was pretty dismal.  As soon as Jenn stretched out on the bed, the entire frame broke and crashed to the floor.  We thought we’d just find a new place, but the front desk person said he’d take care of it, and worked to pull the old frame out and bring in a new one.  Oh well, we needed to stay somewhere, and we were grumpy, so we just decided to deal with it and find a new place the next day.  This hostel wasn’t quite the worst place we’ve stayed, (Iquitos airport, New Dehli transit area, and Banda Aceh all come to mind), but it was by far the worst in South America so far.

The next morning we woke up, stored our luggage, and went to find another place closer to the action.  By the time we’d found one and moved our luggage, we had killed the morning.  We picked up a flyer for a wine bike tour and took off on the local bus to the Maipu area.  There we rented a tandem bicycle from Mr. Huge’s bike shop, grabbed a bike, and off we went.  This was the first time either Jenn or I had been on a tandem bike… I didn’t think we’d make it at first… maybe it should be called the divorce bike… but after about 2 minutes we had it figured out and pedaled like champs. 

The first place we stopped was supposed to have a fabulous BBQ lunch, and we were starving.  We pulled in and found a chair, only to discover they were out of food.  AAAH!  Oh well, we decided we’d just have the wine tasting on an empty belly… that would surely go straight to our head!  The wine wasn’t very impressive here, so good thing we didn’t spend the money on a full bottle with lunch. Viña el Cerno

The next place was called Familia di Tomaso, and our hostel worker told us it was his favorite.  Fortunately, they had food, and we were ravished.  We ordered a bottle of Malbec and some food to go with it.  The scenery was great, overlooking the winery, with old mechanical wine tools and machines placed about. 

The food was fantastic.  Jenn had a prosciutto sandwich, and I had some kind of stew that melted in my mouth.   We finished our meal and were going to take the wine tour here until we realized it was getting late and we wanted to be sure to check out a couple more wineries.  So, off we went for the next stop, although a bit buzzed! 

Lucas getting the bike ready to go for the next stop after having quite a bit of wine… drinking and biking is the way to go… no drunk driving tickets for us!

Our next stop was the Laur olive oil factory.  Neither Jenn nor I had EVER seen an olive tree.  So it was quite cool to see them growing on a tree!  Did you know that green olives and black olives come from the same tree?  The only difference is how long they stay on the branch.  I picked one off the tree to pop in my mouth and almost vomited.  Either these weren’t ready yet, or they do some serious work on them before making them edible.  Yikes!  From one olive, 14% of the “meat” processes into olive oil, and only 4% of the pit turns into oil.  The rest is waste.  But, one olive tree can produce over 25 liters of oil.  Amazing!  Also, olive oil is graded on it’s acidity.  Extra virgin olive oil has the lowest acidity… which is why it usually tastes the best. 

Our next stop was Bodega Carinae.  It was a small boutique winery across the street from the olive oil plantation.  We got a nice tour of the production line, which was very tiny, everything is hand labeled and boxed.  When we got to the sampling, they had quite a few options… from 30 pesos up to 130 pesos per person.  We wanted to try some of the nicer wines, so we opted for a couple of the middle tier tastings.  The wine here was really fantastic, and we ended up buying a bottle to take back with us. 

We were the last people to leave the winery, and wince we were at the last stop on the wine bike route, we had a police escort back towards town.  It was a little nerve racking being followed by a police car while you are pretty buzzed on wine, pedaling a bike down a the road.  Not to mention our bags and cameras were half-hazardously attached to our bodies and we were all over the road trying to avoid potholes and not kill ourselves.  Fortunately, when we passed another winery on the way back, the police pulled in there to round up that crew, and we proceeded back to the bike rental place without a glitch.