Mendoza, anyone?

The gate to the park Independencia

Vineyard

Wine Cellar at Familia Zuccardi

Andes Mountains

"In This Moment You're Exactly Right Here"
quote on the wall at our hostel

Pretty

Grapes everywhere!

If you say so

Walking in the vineyard



I'll make this one short (but probably write more tomorrow). =)
This past weekend a few of us took a trip to Mendoza, Argentina. For those of you unfamiliar, it's basically the wine capital of Argentina (maybe even of S. America)! As you can probably imagine, I was in heaven.
First of all, Mendoza is beautiful! It sits about 1.5 hours away from the Andes Mountains and has several parks, plazas and, of course, bodegas (vineyards).
We left on Friday evening around 7:30pm - we were all freaking out because we thought we had missed our bus (yes, we took a bus), but it actually was just running late. So after we recovered from our almost panic attacks, we boarded the bus and settled in for a 15-hour ride. I'd be jealous too if I were you...
The bus ride wasn't too terrible, I slept the majority of the way - thank goodness for Dramamine. The only bad part was the 'dinner' they served us. No joke, I don't think there was a single edible thing they gave us: there was a piece of bread that you could probably use as a doorstop, something fried (not chicken) that I have no idea what it was, a piece of ham that had a slice of hard-boiled egg in the center as part of the ham as well as carrots interspersed in it. And then there was the main course. A heap of instant, grainy, overly salted mashed potatoes, and something fried - I think it was supposed to be meat, but I couldn't find any...this meal was unbelievable - I took pictures! Needless to say, we were all pretty hungry by the time we arrived.
So we get to Mendoza the next morning, probably around 10ish and check into our hostel. We stayed at Hostel Independencia, which was actually very nice. We showered and changed and then went on our first wine tour. But it's not what you think - we rode bikes from vineyard to vineyard. It was so fun! We got back to the hostel around 6pm, relaxed a little, then went out for a nice dinner.
The next day we went on a long walk through San Martin Park (this place is huge!), past a zoo, and up an incredibly steep hill to an observatory. The view was breathtaking. Imagine just a panoramic view of the Andes and the towns below. Gorgeous!
After we got back we rested a little more before going out for the night. The plaza we were closest to was Plaza Independencia and at night they had several people do crazy things for money - we saw a man juggle fire, a guy jumprope on a unicycle, people spraypaintng pictures on the sidewalk (and they were really cool), bands, etc etc. And then there is just the general public - I definitely enjoyed people watching there.
After another fun dinner, we finally made it back to the hostel around 1am.
Our last day was a journey for sure. We walked around the city for a while (we had to check out of the hostel by 10am) and decided to go to another bodega. We had a brochure for one that looked unbelievable. So we get a taxi and ask the guy if he knows how to get there. He says sure and that it isn't too far (40 pesos = a little more than $10). Perfect. Turns out, he knew how to get there, but he definitely lied about the distance - it turned out to be about 75 pesos each way. Fantastic.
But we made it. The bodega we went to is called Familia Zuccardi and is the largest vineyard in all of Argentina! It was incredible! They talked about the wine production, process, harvest, their different lines etc. and we got to see how it was done. And, of course, we got to sample it! (they export to the US...) Overall, it turned out to be a fun day.
**If you want to check out where I went: http://www.familiazuccardi.com
That evening, we caught our bus at 6pm and drove back to Buenos Aires. We got in around 10am this morning, took a taxi home, dropped my stuff off, and went straight to class...only 2 hours late. (class starts at 9:30am).
I guess this wasn't as short as I thought it would be, but there was alot to say :)
Happy late VDay everyone!