Vino, Vino, y más Vino

This past weekend, I visited my third country in South America... Argentina! Because we had a holiday on Monday, my friends and I decided to take a long weekend in Mendoza, Argentina to visit bodegas (wineries), eat delicious meats, and just enjoy ourselves! It is about a 6 hour bus ride to and from Viña, not including the time spent with customs at the border. With customs, overall, about an 8 hour day of traveling! Oof! Thankfully the buses here are great, and "semi-cama" which means that the seats lean back so far that they are "semi-beds" and much more comfortable!

After a long day of bussing on Friday, we finally made it to Mendoza! Once we exchanged some money at the bus terminal, we caught two taxis and made our way to the hostel. Taxis in Mendoza are much easier to find and much cheaper than here in Viña! For example, a 10 minute taxi ride cost about 16 Argentinian Pesos, about the equivalent of a little more than $5.00USD! Awesome! Our hostel, Hostel Empedrado, was great... free glass of wine every night, called all of our taxis for us, 15 minute walk from the beautiful Plaza de Independencia, clean rooms/bathrooms, and crepes/pancakes with dulce de leche for breakfast. Oh yeah. The crepes/pancakes may or may not have been the #1 reason for us choosing this hostel, and it was well worth it! That night we were all pretty tired, and we split into two groups for dinner. Our group was 5 girls, and as we were about to leave, Gabi made friends with two British guys who were hanging out in the lobby! They ended up coming to dinner with us... and boy did we love listening to their wonderful accents the whole time! We all had some wine, pasta, and red meat. Yum. We really savor good, flavorful food when we can find it! After dinner we considered going out, but were pretty exhausted and opted instead to buy a bottle of wine (from the gas station no less, it was the only place we could really find open on the walk back), and relaxed on the terrace of our hostel! A great first evening in Argentina!

The next day we had made plans to go bike around some nearby wineries, which are called bodegas here.  We met up with our friend Nicole Weiss who is studying in Mendoza, caught a local bus to a town nearby called Maipú, which took us about 45 minutes to get too. Once there, we found the bike company we wanted to use, Maipú Bikes, got some bikes ($7.00USD each for the day), got some maps, marked out where we wanted to go, and were on our way! Thankfully these bikes were in much better condition that the ones we used in San Pedro de Atacama... no popped tires or pedals falling off this time! Our first bodega was also a museum, and really great! It was called "La Rural".  It was a little bit more expensive that the other bodegas in the area, but well worth it in the end of the tour (details further down). We paid 50 pesos each, about $10USD, and started the tour. It was in spanish, and thankfully I am now really comfortable with my spanish to the point that it really wouldn't have mattered if the tour were in english or spanish! At the end of the tour, we got to try a really good red wine. And then they proceeded to tell us that with our receipts for the tour, we could put the 50 pesos we paid towards any wine that we wanted! Since 50 pesos was only about $10USD, I figured that for a bottle from such a nice winery I would have to pay a little extra on top of that, but crazily enough, I got TWO bottles for under $10! And it's not cruddy wine! I got a Sauvignon Blanc and a sweet rose wine. Definitely not upset about it.  Bodega number two was on the complete opposite side of town, about a 11km bike ride. Not that far, but when you have 4 bottles of wine in a backpack on your back, that makes things a little harder (I was carrying Lindsey's too, it was her backpack we were using so I figured it was only fair)!  This winery was where we planning to eat lunch, and let me tell you, it was probably one of the best decisions our group has ever made. SO GOOD. The vineyard and area was so cute, much smaller than the first and was an old family vineyard. It was called Bodega Familia de Tomaso. The tables outside were positioned on top of old wine barrels, and we were immediately brought fresh bread with olive oil. Yes please. We ordered our food, and around the table had a mixture of fresh chicken with spices and rice, lasagna made with crepe layers instead of noodles (what I had), salads, lemonade made with mint leaves, tiramisu, warm brownies, etc. If your mouth isn't watering, you might want to go get yourself checked out, cuz mine is watering just thinking about it again! The tour after lunch was also really good, and we were able to try 4 wines at the end of the tour. At the end of the day, we made our way back to Maipú Bikes, and were greeted with homemade lemonade and grapefruit juice. I mean really!? Come on! Argentina really knows how to do it.

Old way of straining wine.

Bodega #1

Beautiful vineyards and flowers at Bodega #2

The lunch crew!

More vineyards and flowers.

We made our way back to the hostel that night, all exhausted from the biking, wine, and sun, and showered up! That night we had signed up to participate in the asado that our hostel was having. After having had two asados at hostels in my time here in South America, I feel I can now give the advice that you should always, always, always sign up for the asados they provide. It is usually all you can eat delicious meats, salads, wine, etc. etc. for a really good price. We paid about $13.00USD for more food than one person should ever consume. So amazing. Also a fun note, my friend Lisa Parker, who is studying in Mendoza, came over for the asado! Lisa and I met in our spanish class of Winter Quarter 2012, and also had spanish together during Spring Quarter, and enjoyed getting to know each other! After consuming my own body weight in wine and meat, we all decided to go out on the town for a little. After a little we ended up getting separated, and Lisa and I decided to buy some alfajores and talk a bit! For those of you who don't know what alfajores are, they are delicious. Eat some if you come here. They are this soft cookie-ish, graham cracker-ish things filled with dulce de leche/manjar (similar to caramel), and usually covered in chocolate. I prefer when they are covered with white chocolate, but they are incredible either way. In appearance, they remind me of my Dad and brother's favorite Southern snack food, moon pies... but the flavor and taste is much much better! Lisa had to meet up with her parents the next morning at the airport, and I was pretty tired anyway, so we caught taxis and went our separate ways! Another great night!

Sunday morning some of us had planned on going to some hot springs in a town called Cachueta, about an hour from Mendoza! Lindsey and I ended up going by ourselves... you know what they say about how good the wine is in Mendoza... it may have affected some of our traveling companions a little bit too much! Regardless, we had a lot of fun! The hot springs were actually really nice, a lot of locals (as in Argentinians) were there, in fact, it appeared as though there were very few tourists! We had arrived around 11:30am, and our bus wasn't schedule to leave until 6:45pm... after about 3 hours though, we were ready to go home! The springs were beautiful and we were definitely enjoying them, but there's only so long that someone can enjoy them! Thankfully, we were able to switch our bus tickets to the earlier bus. While waiting for that bus to arrive, Linds and I decided that we wanted to splurge a little bit and buy some junk food, so we got ourselves some Coca-Cola's and lollipops, found a nice bench to sit on, and enjoyed our purchases! After we got back to the hostel, we took a very windy walk around Mendoza, showered, and got ready to go to dinner with Katherine and Kassi as well! A woman from our hostel recommended a restaurant with delicious pasta, and we all decided to share four different dishes four ways, and man was it delicious! Accompanied by wine, chocolate mousse and fruit ice cream, that was definitely a dinner to write home about! After so much food, it goes without saying that we were carrying gigantic food babies, so we went back to the hostel, all laid on Katherine and Kassi's queen bed, and just vegged and talked!

Coke and Lollipops at the bus station!

Exploring Mendoza! National Bank.

Bed came pretty early that night since we were all so full and exhausted. The next day consisted of yet another glorious eight hours traveling in bus, but regardless of the amount of time spent in the buses, this trip was very relaxing and the food was amazing. Definitely a nice change of pace with the latter!!!

I know this is pretty late, and I still have some updates about this week and weekend, so hopefully I can get that next one started soon! Until next time!