Viajar el mundo: Wining, dining and bicycling

24 de Octubre

It took a while for the winemaker to work out why all the floor was red

We like Red wine. I guess we like the colour red. It’s the colour of blood, the life giving fluid of the body, which runs to the heart, also a red colour. Coincidentally the same colour as red wine.

Mendoza is to wine lovers like the Bikini Car Wash movie franchise is to C grade actors. The drawing power is significant and the realisation is a parabolic monument of the reason to get your arse of the couch and travel in the first place.

We love a glass of red. By tasting the vines of regions of the globe, we wish that we could be part of the process, dreaming of one day surrounding ourselves with the culture, learning first hand the processes.

So what better way to learn from the best, than in Argentina. (Now we might just piss a few Australians off here. Yes, we make awesome wine, but we compare it to other Australian wines right? And maybe we will upset the French as well? Although history suggests they wont actually fight back, so I’ll take a chance here).

Occasionally wine tasting turns up a dud or two. The rarely used spit bucket is lined, (why waste that wine?), and you wait while others in the group feign their interest in vine age and secateurs brands, hoping on the rare chance that a nerd with an erotic interest in spacial vine plantations will divert the guides attentions away from your attempts to pocket a waiters friend from the gift shop.

The drunk wine taster eyed up the pickles next

Like the famous artist, the girl would also lose an ear to absinthe

This is impossible in Mendoza. I kid you not. The wine is heavenly. The producers there there know damn well you are not here to fuck about. You want a red wine. And you want it awesome. Preferably Malbec, a grape producing the finest, subtlest red wine grown only in Argentina, and predominantly, Mendoza.

The vineyards and cellars are located on farms and estates of the grandest kind, all stonewalled and historic, with centuries of tradition. So proud and confident are they of their grape that they do not share. They do not export in large quantities overseas, as they like to tease, to give a taste to the world as to what they are all about in the world of wine, so that you might just have to get yourself a plane ticket and a desire to seek to search what other places are doing so much better than what you think your own country is doing.

It helps that tastings are sampled straight from the barrel. They know what is good. They don’t waste time bottling it. For now, that is. So if you are lucky enough to see a bottle from this region in your local store, grab hold of it, or better still, come on over.

The tastings are in cellars, hundreds of years of age, still in the same waxy walled condition as the forefathers of each winery we visited. The guides that take you down, usually Grandsons are as passionate as their founders.

The bully tree always stunted the grade 5 grapes

Wine tasting for backpacker snobs

The difference in our experience here is that we had time to savour what we were doing. There was no shuttle motoring along and no clock watching tour guide to drop you off at his commission based vineyards. Just five backpackers on bikes, and a pencilled map. We donned scarves and seated ourselves on bicycles and pedalled out into the central Argentinian countryside.

First stop was a small produce farm run by a charming Grandmother, which also doubled as a distillery for excellent chocolate, mint and banana flavoured liqueurs, with slight potency, but a long way off the Absinthe she was dishing out, 75% and a knockout. It was still a few ticks until noon when we dropped a shot of Van Gogh’s devil, and watched the walls spin for a few seconds. Our ears were still attached, but the reckless idea of mixing alcohol and bicycles was now at the forefront of our minds. But like true drinkers, we soldiered towards the villages, glass in hand, tasting as we went.

Although full of booze, the cyclist needed loads more substance to catch Lance Armstrong

As a warning to the other barrels, the rebels were hung up by the testicles and electrocuted

The tourist's plans of urintaing behind a barrel were foiled by the downhill slope

We even had a go at pretending to be pretentious wankers too, with posh wine voices and pursed lips. “Oh I think this Malbec would go spiffingly with a 1948 smoked Gouda”, or “ I’m sure when Old Bill was the viticulturist here the acidic levels were slightly less than the pH standard” or “ Bloody hell, I’m drunk.” but we did learn a lot more about wine, almost perfect drops, than we did before we got on our treadlies.

We had not had red wine for months, holding on, desperate, even though we could have tried shitty and inferior comparisons of red further north. I guess this is testament to the strength and fame of the grapes of this region.

A few hours later we stopped for lunch, of course a medium cooked steak (Just the way Argentinians like it; apparently it’s a major crime to order anything with the word well in it), washed down of course with a matching Malbec. We also tended to the wounds of one of the girls in our troupe, who became the first, and luckily only, casualty of the day. She realised, that apart from the obvious mixing of booze and bikes, that also attempting to ride with one hand on the handlebar, the other on her camera, and no eyes on the road to watch for impending potholes, consequences could, and will be rough. Fortunately all that was lost was a few patches of skin and we were all able to continue as normal.

Sunset over the valley led us home, and bikes were parked, and we made our way back to the hostel, which like most places in town, offered nightly free wine, which we duly accepted.

The UFO needed a shady spot to rest

Steak. Drool

Ivan Milat Winery Co. had a traditional goodby for guests

Keeping up appearances, Mendoza was known the clog its fountains with red wine .

Mendoza is quite a laid back sort of city, with a town vibe. They are fiercely proud of the red that flows through its veins, even so the water fountain in the town’s main square park spurts red water. Or it could actually be wine. Or it may be an act of vandalism from the local students, who knows. It looks good though.

It was pumping the weekend we arrived, due to a World Cup Qualifier between Argentina and Uruguay being played at the local stadium. Of course, like the many cities we have arrived in conveniently closed down due to national holidays, we rocked up to Mendoza without a hostel reservation. We trawled the streets for over an hour looking for a room, but finally fell into the brilliant Lao Hostel and all its free wine.

We were offered match tickets for our weekly budget, but declined and headed to a bar to have a few drinks with locals and support Messi and the boys in blue and white, who ended up wiping the grass with Uruguay in their march towards Brazil 2014.

The bus ride from Santiago was interesting, as on board was a travelling rugby team from New Zealand, most of them just out of school on their first overseas trip. They had been on it since take off from Auckland, and some of found it necessary to dress in match day gear, which was a bit stupid considering we were heading through mountains and the weather was very brisk, but they are Kiwis I suppose.

Another night, another long distance bus, this time 20 hours to Bariloche. We were unable to purchase any flat bed seats, so we had to make do with a normal seat, but the difference in Argentinian services compared to those of other parts of South America, is that you actually get a meal that doesn’t resemble last nights leftover KFC mixed with biscuits. And there is on board bingo, which Kylie narrowly missed out on winning first prize, which was unsurprisingly a bottle of win. We think it was because by the time we translated Spanish numbers into English, we either did it wrong or missed out completely. In fact I’m not sure we even crossed off the correct numbers. The compere could have been calling out diseases he has for all we knew.

The Argentinian accent of Spanish has thrown all our learnings into disarray. It’s a harsher, quicker dialect that we are used to, so quite often we are just a pair of nodding donkeys.

Bariloche is an alpine town nestled in the heart of the Lakes Region of Argentina, not far from the border of Chile. You could be forgiven for thinking you were in Switzerland, and the hordes of entrepreneurs with St. Bernard gods available for a photo with a fee further emphasized this. The shop fronts are all cabin style, lodges overlook the stunningly crystal clear lake, and freshly dusted snowcaps litter the landscape. In winter, it’s a snow sporting mecca, but in the off season Bariloche still attracts visitors in their thousands, who come to breathe the fresh air and partake in the lazy lifestyle. It’s also massively popular for Argentinian students’ end of year celebrations and hotel rooms are commonly trashed as a result.

The homeless horse failed to heed winter chill warnings

We took a day hike to a place called Llao Llao, pronounced Xiao Xiao, which is difficult to pronounce if you don’t know how to pronounce Chinese.

Its situated by the lake, nearly an hour from the centre of town. It houses Argentina’s most expensive hotel, a mere $3000 plus a night for your own slice of luxury. But how much are these views worth?

Free, for us, as we hiked through the forest, teeming with silence, to stumble upon some of the most magnificent vistas we had ever seen. The skies were clear and the spring sun was warming us as it reflected off the glassy surface of water. It was difficult to move on, but no sooner had we left one adorable view when another took its place by extreme force, demanding a higher ranking on your Gosh table.

Normally you wouldn’t want this sort of day to end, but the attraction of another steak, red wine, and tasty chocolate cushioned the sadness.

We stayed in a hostel overlooking the lake, one of our best locations so far, run by a hippy who gave her old withered dog dreadlocks as it wallowed in the inevitable defeat of its demise at the foot of the stairs. Some days we didn’t do too much, except walk around town, eat some chocolate, and again admire the view that seems too picture postcard perfect to even be real.

After a few days of this, it was time to depart and head back into Chile. Such is the geography of these two neighbouring countries, that getting from A to B quite often involves going back into A or B at some stage. Our destination this time is Patagonia.

We crossed the border, which was slightly less time consuming this time around. When coming from Chile to Argentina first time, formalities took approximately three hours while officials searched bags to ensure no one was smuggling in any I phones. Since the devaluation of the currency here many years ago, locals have taken it upon themselves to import as many items as possible, as things like phones are quite expensive in Argentina. But the border crossings do have some very cuddly Labradors manning (Dogging?) them, who don’t seem too concerned about what’s in your bags, and greet you by rolling over and requesting a belly scratch.