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Published: April 7th 2008
Hope everyone's doing well and getting excited about the coming spring. It's technically fall here, but fortunatley it's still fairly warm and sunny. These pictures are from a recent trip to Mendoza to catch the Vendimia Festival (a renown wine festival). It's 14 hours (by bus) from Buenos Aires (to the west) and is famous for its wineries. We arrived Friday morning and spent the day roaming the city. I think it's the fifth largest city in Argentina- very clean, nice people, lots of parks and little plazas. A big part of Vendimia is crowning the "reina de vendimia". About 17 girls (between 18-23yr. old) "competed" in a pageant. I'm not exactly sure what the qualifications were. I just saw them all in a parade Friday night on floats, throwing out everything from water bottles, meat, and melons (not joking...i promise). Saturday Sf and I rented bikes along with a really great Canadian couple. All the wineries were relatively close to each other, so we rode to one- got a tour, sampled the wine, took some photos- then hopped on the bike and rode to the next one. For part of the time we had to ride along a major road;
the locals didn't seem to jazzed about it, but I still would recommend it to anyone going. That night we went to the biggest celebration of Vendimia. The closest thing I can compare it to is the opening ceremony of the Olympics. It was in an outdoor amphitheater- absolutely packed. People who didn't have tickets camped up on the mountian overlooking it. There were hundreds of dancers, performing different numbers inspired by Argentina's history. Great music, and at the end, the most impressive fireworks show I've ever seen. Also crowned the "reina de vendimia" (that is after reading out ALL 250 votes- the winner blew the other girls out of the water, so unfortunately not much suspense). The next day we took a bus up to the High Andes to Villavicencio. It was a very windy road that used to be the route taken to Chile until 1933. It was really foggy at first, but luckily it cleared and we got pretty good visibility by the end of the day. Very green- very beautiful...reminded me of and made me miss weterern NC.
The rest of the pictures are from my boss' wedding. She is originally from Virginia, but has
been in BA for about 4 years now. She married an Argentine, so the wedding had both Argentines and Americans. They got married about 9pm; I arrived at my apartment at 7:30am....a pretty good time.
I'll be back in NC in May...can't wait to see you all. Beso!!
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