Wine Monkey's

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Day 46

‘I’m gonna party like it’s my birthday!’

Arrive in Mendoza, check in to the hostel (Mendoza Monkey), do some laundry (it is slightly like groundhog day sometimes) and then it is time to celebrate! Happy hour at the hostel so I order a G and T... unfortunately no tonic, so end up having a gin and sprite (on the plus side it is heavy on the G). Then out for a Spanish-style tapas meal, in a lovely romantic restaurant. Food is great, even though the chef has a thing for bacon and literally everything we order has bacon either wrapped round it, or in it, and the local white wine Torrontes is also delicious. Feeling happy and slightly tipsy we have a stroll back to the hostel through the muggy streets...

Day 47

We decide to take a DIY style wine tour of the Maipu region of the city (insert your own poo joke), which involves hiring a bike from the famous Mr Hugo. Being the sensible kids we are we decide to cycle to the furthest bodega we want to visit (about 8km), which turns out to be a wise decision as we have to cycle on quite a large busy road with no cycle path and every time a large truck speeds past it makes you wobble (and that’s before the wine)! Bodega Familia Di Tomaso is lovely, great tour (they have the original c. 1870 brick/concrete wine tanks) and we also try 2 malbecs, cabernet sauvignon and a desert wine. Feeling slightly more wobbly we arrive at Tempus Alba where we make the mistake of ordering what turns out to be 3 glasses of wine each... we sup them as slowly as we can (we have a schedule to make the free museum before it shuts) before setting out to the beer garden. Beer garden is lovely, with sofas outside and great beer (and we have a voucher for free salty snacks). Reluctantly we leave and set off to the wine museum – which just has a lot of wine related stuff in it... we manage to wander into an area we aren’t meant to be in and get told off. On the plus side we manage to snaffle 2 free glasses of wine. Final destination is an olive oil and chocolate place where we try olive oil, jam, chocolate and liquors (we pass on the absinthe) – yum! Then a final uphill wobbly ride back to Mr Hugo’s place, where we get... more free wine! Have a DIY tea of chickpea curry and an early night to prepare for the next wine tour.

Day 48

So today is the posh wine tour, the only difference being that we have to pretend to be interested in the tour (the process etc.) before consuming the wine... First stop is Bodega Belasco de Baquedano which has an aroma room – where we spend a good 15 minutes smelling the different aromas (from bad wine smells like mushroom and vinegar to yummy wine smells such as rose, chocolate and hazelnut). Then the tasting where we have to guess the aromas. Next stop is Finca Decero where we have a quick tour before tucking into a gourmet meal. We are presented with 4 different glasses of red wine... what we don’t realise is that these are filled up every time we finish them. Cut to 90minutes later and some of the group (me and Si take the photos only) decide to roll down a grassy hill next to the bodega much to the amusement of the guide. Final stop is Carmelo bodega where Si gets to climb into an empty wine tank (no way are you getting me in there) and we taste what we think is the best wine of the day. Back at the hostel we join in what turns out to be a very boozy asado (BBQ) with you guess it more free wine. At 2am we stumble to bed...

Day 49

Swearing never to touch any red wine ever again we wake up and set ourselves up on the balcony of our hostel where we have a bird’s eye view of the wine festival parade. It is a lot of fun to watch but honestly after about 90mins it gets a bit samey samey so we go for lunch and a wander round the huge park. Later we have sushi with Colin, the Canadian, and an amazing bottle of Torontes (local white wine – we only said we wouldn’t drink red wine didn’t we?) and an Italian ice cream (one of which is bright blue and called ‘sky cream’)

Day 50

Feeling slightly more energetic we hire bikes and hit the large park in Mendoza with Boyd and Katy (a New Zealand couple) and Colin the Canadian. We tear around the park before having a picnic (impressing everyone with our sophisticated picnic which includes blue cheese, olives and oregano crisps), then tear around some more. We have a lot of fun even though we are all a bit saddle sore by the end due to very bad seats on the bikes. Dinner is at a middle eastern restaurant because despite having left-over chick pea curry (one of Si's money saving ideas) the cooker at the hostel is broke! Have our first hummous in 7 weeks (we know its Chorltony, but we do miss hummous)...

Day 51

Bit of a lazy day before we catch our 18 hour bus to Salta – we try for the second time to go to the contemporary art museum but it is closed (again)...
Unfortunately 18 hours turns into 27 hours as local floods damage a bridge on the way to Salta... luckily the guy on the Andesmar bus who is looking after us is great and he feeds us an extra meal, puts on loads of films and plays Andesmar bingo (we don’t win but good practice at numbers in Spanish). Feeling grubby and tired we arrive in Salta at 10pm.

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Comments

[lyndy]

Hi Em, glad to see you're having the best time, still missing you loads here - feel like I've lost a limb!