Two Beers and a Pretzel

I’m in Cusco, Peru now, but figured everyone might like to hear about the festivals in Mendoza.

What a wonderful festival.  Oddly, there wasn’t much wine available, but Between the Italian festival on Thursday and the parade on Friday, I had a good time…

Plaza de Indepencia has a massive illuminated sign for the city – it was also the center of all the festivals.

At the Italian festival, these girls in the ticket line with me insisted that the only gringo in sight take their picture.  I had one of me with them, but it didn’t turn out…

The Italian festival was annoyingly disorganized – odd for Italians…

The next day was the opening parade for the Vendimia festival.  I went with a few Irish from my hostel, then promptly lost them when I stopped to video people in grape costumes dancing.

However, I wasn’t lonely for long…  this parade introduces all the candidates for Miss Vendimia 2009 to the public – so I met a number of them right up untill they had to get on the floats…

The girl to my right in this next pic wanted to meet afterward (5 hours later), but I couldn’t find her again…

And on e more that turned out decent… (it’s amazing how when you give someone a camera and tell them to “just hit that button” that they mess with everything and can’t take a decent picture).

I really liked this city, and loved Argentina.

I’ll try to go back over my receipts and see if I saved money versus a tour thru HI-Travel.  They wanted $1900 USD for 21 days in Argentina and Chile (appx $90/day) – not including meals.  I ended up staying about 33 days and think I ended up closer to $2300 total, but  including all meals ($70/day).