July 29, 2008: El Bodegazo
Sunday night proved to be a little rough thanks to my top-bunk dorm-mate, a guy from Buenos Aires who gave the guy from Babylon a snoring run for his money. Once I finally got to sleep I awoke when each of my other dorm-mates made it in throughout the night. First it was Alice who, after a fair amount of wine, a couple of daiquiris, and two tequila shots decided it was a good idea to fold all her clothes. I actually had completely forgotten about this until we were talking about this night a few days later but as I recall I didn’t realize who it was until I glanced up and saw her folding all her clothes. I crashed again and looked up what felt like an hour later only to find her once again folding her clothes. An hour or so later I heard Fiona come in and then her girlfriend (never got her name) another hour or so after that. At 7 or 7:30, the snorer woke up and by 9 my alarm went off.
Most of Marina’s group plus Gonzalo were also signed up for the Bodegazo which roughly translates to the Mother of all Bodega Tours. Our bus arrived and, as before, we had a good assortment of travelers from other hostels: two girls and a couple from Brazil, two girls from Australia, another two from the UK, two Spanish guys from Pamplona and a new girl at our hostel, Carolina, from Buenos Aires. For the first stop of the morning we hit a mom & pop chocolate and liquor maker where we were treated to a small tour and 4 samples of our choice. We sat in groups of four with Gonzalo, Marina, Pierre and I together and we decided to share the samples so we could all try them. Pierre was feeling quite valiant this morning choosing absynthe as his selection. We completed the round with a local vodka, a tobacco infused liquor and a creamy hazelnut. I’d tried absynthe once back in Germany and didn’t particularly care for it so I skipped it but the vodka was amazingly smooth, the tobacco was quite syrupy with rte pipe flavor in the aftertaste and the hazelnut was easy like bailey’s.
The rest of our day consisted of visiting two local wineries for tours and tastings with a light lunch consisting of hors d’oeuvres and beef empanadas which the Spanish guys, Carolina and the Brazilian girls shared with our guide. There was a lot of joking around between us making it for a really fun lunch. We finished with a dessert wine and moved on to our next stop: the olive oil factory which was absolutely interesting hearing about the process. It was also a nice break between the four winery stops since, even though each winery was unique in its own way (artisan, organic, etc.), by the end of the third I was a little tired of walking by the various parts of the plant and hearing about the proper way to drink the wine.
We made it back to the hostel were I found out Marie, Audrey and Rafael would arrive in Mendoza tonight so I rested, cleaned up and then decided to opt for a walk in the center to try and find a light bite and wifi. Mendoza’s center is quite busy in the evening, with people walking around and lots of restaurants and bars open. I stopped for a snack at a place with wifi, ordered and then checked email when in comes a message from Marie saying they’ve arrived and want to meet for dinner. We meet up at plaza San Martin and walk up to avenida Colón looking for a place to satisfy Rafael’s craving of large amounts of beef. Nobody had any idea of what to do the next day but we needed to come up with something since they had already booked a bus to Tucuman for the next evening and I was planning on heading to Santiago Wednesday morning. Because they weren’t staying at a hostel with organized activities we walked up to mine where we agreed to do the paragliding in the afternoon.
The three took a cab, and the regular ritual resumed: couple of drinks with everyone at the hostel, bedtime, snoring top-bunk, early morning crashing dorm-mates, and so on.