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Published: March 25th 2011
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Well, drink cycling actually! We left Arequipa, Peru, on Monday on the 6am bus, 63 hours and 4 buses later we arrived in Mendoza, Argentina, after travelling the length of the Chilean desert. Although this sounds horrendous, it was not too bad and was made funnier by the attendant on one of our buses repeatedly saying "more tea" in a cockney accent for 24 hours everytime he came past us after we failed to understand his "mas té" the first time round.
As we had only a week before we were due to fly out to New Zealand, we had come to Mendoza for one reason only - Wine! Mendoza is on every backpackers 'must see' list as it's famous for it's wine tours, which involve renting a bike (from Mr Hugo's of course - who else!) and then cycling around to a variety of vineyards and sampling their produce. Brilliant!
Upon arrival to Mendoza, we had failed to realise that we had actually turned up during the biggest annual festival, the wine harvest festival. Naturally we had not booked a hostel yet so spent a while searching for places that had availability, before finding one which was OK.
Due to 3 days busing we had a shower, ordered some lovely empanadas (Argentinean pasties) and hit the hay!
The next day was lovely and sunny so we decided to go on our wine tour. After getting ready and ordering more empanadas (cant drink on an empty stomach) we set off for the bus stop, only to find that frustratingly in Argentina you have to pay in exact change for the bus, yet nobody is prepared to give you any coins. After walking around various shops for an hour trying (and failing) to get some change, we decided that it was too late to go on the wine tours now as we had been told they shut at 5pm and the bus to Mr Hugo's bike rental takes about an hour. Instead we went to the bus station, bought our tickets back to Santiago for the following evening and then headed off to the centre of town for a bit of a wander were we discovered that there was an Italian festival on that night in Plaza Italia. Later that evening after getting showered and changed at the hostel, we headed over to Plaza Italia where we had to
buy a load of coupons, then the coupons bought you food and drink. The rest of the evening was spent eating a load of Italian food and drinking red wine, some of which only cost 1 coupon which was 2 pesos!! The equivalent of 30p! Although we discovered that 2 ticket wine was a lot better than 1 ticket wine, so we went for the posh stuff from then (which was still only 60p a glass)!
Early rise the next morning (slightly groggy) and we managed to get the bus this time to Mr Hugo's to collect our bikes. Once there we were given our maps and told where the best wineries were and given a free glass of wine before setting off. First stop was the wine museum (where you got a free glass of wine) where everyone spent a lot of time pretending to be interested in all the antiques, when really they were just there for the free glass! Dad, you would have loved it as everything was made out of cow hide!
The next stop on the agenda was the chocolate factory! Here we sampled some savoury spreads (such as olive, sundried tomato etc)
along with olive oils, balsamic vinegar, a variety of jams, dulce de leche (caramel spread), different chocolates and a variety of liquers, including absinthe!! All for 15 pesos which was pretty reasonable and meant that we had a bit of lunch.
We then cycled for about an hour (the places looked much closer on the map) to a couple of vineyards where we had a tour of the winery and sampled 4 wines, complete with an explanation about how each wine was made and how long it was matured in oak "giving you toasty flavours like coffee, tobacco, toast" - not sure we are experts quite yet as most tasted the same but was funny to pretend we were quite the connoisseurs!! After this we were feeling quite merry and decided to start heading back as it was 6pm already - time flies! Making one last stop at the beer garden where we had a 'red beer' and our complimentary snack (empanada) before heading back to Mr Hugo's for some more free wine! As we had our bus booked for that night, we drank up by about 7.30pm and headed back to Mendoza town centre where we had our
last Bife de Chorizo (Argentinean steak), grabbed our backpacks and dashed for the bus! Off to Santiago, Chile, we went in our wine induced coma - which would be our final stop in South America!
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