Two Beers and a Pretzel

Jeez, my knees hurt.  That fall on the mountain bike the other day was pretty hard…  I’m really lucky to not have anything broken.  Other than that, I somehow managed to catch a cold the other day, which is now in it’s final stages.

It was raining in Bariloche and I was in pain, so I left.  I said goodbye to Erin & Katie at the bus terminal (they’re going to Buenos Aires) and caught a pretty nice recliner-seat bus to Mendoza.  I arrived at 8 AM this morning in Mendoza after a decent 18 hour bus ride on the Andesmar bus line.  Better food than QueBus, and they played decent movies (Transformers, The Untouchables – both en ingles, and a pretty good Argentine Indie flick with english subtitles).  I saw a guy from the bus trip from Ushuia to Calafate and we talked for a bit.  It’s still funny running into people you know from somewhere 1000 miles ago…

At the bus station I had no idea where I was going to stay.  A guy names Marcos gave me a brochure for his hostel.  It looked pretty nice, and it’s $10 USD per night.  He drove me to the place and it was nice with immediate room available (where the more popular hostels have 2PM check-in times).  So I paid for a night, booked a wine tour in the afternoon and set out for a much needed nap.

The tour bus came to pick me up around 2:45 PM.  It took a group of about 12 to the nearby city of Maupi where we toured a number of places…

First stop was a family owned distillery.  The owner descended from swiss parents, so he had a number of European recipe liquors.  Vodka, Whiskey, Schnapps (including Kirshvasser), Absynthe, and a number of chocolate liquers.  He also made home made salsas, jams, and chocolates.  During the tasting I tried his “Russian Death” shot – a spicy peppered vodka that tasted kind of like cinnamon schnapps, but hotter. It seemed to me that this guy turned his hobby into a viable job.  He was excited and immensely proud of everything in the place – as he should be, it was all pretty good.

Then we stopped at a small family vineyard that did specialty small batch vintages and had very good Malbec.  I bought some Vino for dinner tomorrow.  Not much worth photographing though…

From there we went to another small, family owned business that made olive oil…  pretty neat, as I had never seen olive oil production before, and we got some artesan bread to try the oil with.

Finally, we went to the largest winery in the valley.  I got a private tour as the only English speaker.  Nice facility, but the wine is targeted at mass markets, so it’s not very complex, and tastes “thin” to me.  They did have a pretty cool room that you could rent for events…  Lined with French Oak barrels from 1910.

Back at the hostel, Marcos drove me to a neat area in the center of town so I could find a place to eat.  He told me it was safe to walk back to the hostel (about 3km).  I chose a place with Bife de Chorizo.  It was one monster piece of meat plus beer for $10.  Easily the size of your average meat-loaf.

So tomorrow is a business day.  I have to square away my ticket to the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu (probably the 13th-16th), when I’m going to Bolivia and lake Titikaka (and the beautiful salt flats that are about to be destroyed to make lithium batteries for electric cars), if I stay in Mendoza for the Vendimia wine festival that starts on Thursday, and where I go after South America…