We arrived in Mendoza after another 14 hour journey across Argentina. We still haven't mastered the art of sleeping on these buses, so we bought sleeping pills in the hope that we'd pass for out the entire journey. Cautiously, we opted for 'natural' pills... and naturally they didn't work! We spent the whole of our first day in our hostel catching up on sleep (and watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy!). We slept so well in fact, that we managed to sleep through a magnitude 5.4 eathquake! Everyone was amazed that we hadn't noticed the hostel violently shaking for about 10 seconds!
Feeling refreshed, we decided to go horseriding at the foot of the Andes mountains. It was very chilly first thing, so we warmed up by sharing some mate (South American tea) with our guide. Everywhere we've been, locals have been sipping this traditional brew through a bombilla (straw) out of a hollowed fruit shell. Jo had been pretty eager to try it and jumped at the offer, but it tasted very bitter, and then even worse when our guide added a generous helping of sugar - we reckon it must be an acquired taste!
Sam had never ridden a horse before so didn't have much control over what was going on! His horse, Alessandro, took full advantage of this and kept stopping every couple of minutes for a graze!
The views of the snowcapped mountains were amazing, especially when the sun came out! After all the cities we've visited, it was so nice to be miles from anywhere in the countryside...
The next day we thought we'd cash in on the free bike hire that we got with our hostel. We had heard of Mr Hugo's infamous bike service as far back as Brazil, so we had high hopes... and we weren't disappointed when we were greeted the eccentric, but very friendly, Mr Hugo. He sorted us out with two bikes, handed us a map... and off we went!
We got off to a wobbly start - Jo was swerving erractically as if she'd already finished two bottles of wine! Our first stop was Familia Di Tomaso, the oldest of all the wineries. After a whirlwind tour we stuck into what we were really there for - the tasting.
100 metres down the road and Jo was on the floor! She's still claiming it was the road surface, but the the 5 tasters of wine may have had something to do with it... After a quick brush down, we cycled round to a wine museum, a beer garden and three more wineries - at one we even skipped the tour and got straight down to business with the sampling. We learnt a lot about wine and came away thinking we were connoisseurs, although it's unlikely either of us could spot a good bottle from the cheap stuff!
We also visited two olive oil manufacturers and tried different types of oils, olives, olive pastes, jams, chocolate and liquors. You're probably only supposed to try each one once, but we had at least 10 tasters of the ones we liked and finished two baskets of bread! Some of the liquors were very strong and the pepper flavour looked as if it was going to make Sam ill! He definitely can't handle his drink...
It was starting to go dark when we left the last winerie, so a policeman followed us back to Mr Hugo's house. He was probably regretting following us as Jo was riding soo slowly (concentrating on not falling off again!)
We're planning to go to Chile next, but we've been told that snow in the Andes may be blocking our path! Hopefully we'll be able to make it there...
No comments:
Post a Comment