Wine and whining

Currently, I am sitting in Buenos Aires trying to come up with a cunning plan for New Year´s eve. Oh the pressure of it all, she says slapping her hand against her forehead, in dramatic fashion.

Anyway, we left Chile last week, and got the overnight bus to Mendoza. I was quite excited about being in Argentina. I thought I would be drinking Malbec until it came out of my nose. However, our first attempt at doing some wine tasting was an unequivocal disaster and nearly got us killed.

We hired some contraptions that could only loosely be described as bicycles, in Mendoza, with the grand plan of riding out to the wine farms and tasting some wine. The fact that the bikes were coming apart didn´t bother me so much (this is South America, after all) as they bothered TC who kept muttering about ball bearings or head bearings or both, probably. Anyway, we decided to proceed with the bikes, such as they were, onto a 3 lane highway with exit and entrance ramps every 200 metres (or so it seemed).

After nearly being struck down and ground into the tarmac by a petrol tanker, your correspondent had had enough... I think I probably had a hissy fit at this stage too. Well, so would you if your life had nearly been extinguished by a crazed Argentinian truck driver.
So we took some back roads out to Maipu, where the wine is made, avoiding high speed traffic, tankers and other agents of death.

At our first stop, we were told that the tour began at 3pm and could we please return at that time. It dawned on us then that we would not be able to taste any wine without first being tortured with a wine tour. That, it appears is the modus operandi and there is no deviation. Whatsoever.

Given that we had to return the bikes that evening, we would have to leave for Mendoza at 3pm and since every single bodega was closed for siesta... we tasted no wine.

Our second attempt was marginally more rewarding. This time we booked a package tour. 2 wineries and an olive farm. The experience was as tragic as it sounds, and we were subjected to tedious explanations of how to get wine from grapes.

But we did stand a better chance against the highway traffic in a tour bus than we did on those bikes and a tour bus seat is easier on the bottom too.