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It's Wine Fortnight in the Mendoza Region, known as Vendimia here which is a festival of the annual grape harvest. The culmination of all the celebrations is a beauty pageant that sees a beauty queen from each of the 12 areas surrounding Mendoza city competing to be crowned Queen of Vendimia.
Walking down the street one sunny day we were a little surprised to find the Queen of Santa Rosa standing on the pavement, with some of her, frankly, less attractive helpers handing out postcard sized flyers drumming up votes for the forthcoming election. She was all decked out in her queenly regalia and eager to engage in a little chat with us mere mortals.Luckily for us as well as being expert in the art of applying vast quantities of foundation she has also found the time for a little learning. In fact, embarrassingly, like most people who engage us in conversation here, her English was considerably better than our halting Spanish (although it is getting better, honest).She was a charming and lovely girl, and if we had had the power to vote, she would definitely be our choice. Says Brian.
Brian then insisted on taking a photo of her and me together. If you want to feel a little old and decrepit having your photo taken with any young teenage girl is sufficient.If you want to feel really ancient, teetering on geriatric, have it taken with a heavily made-up beauty queen. It's enough to drive you to drink. Ooh, another small glass of malbec? Well, as we keep saying, it is the wine festival, hic, why not? Don't mind if I do….
Despite the joys, delights and beautiful young girls of Mendoza, we decided to hire a car and travel south to San Rafael, another wine growing region, albeit less touristy, about 3 hours away. With the casual insouciance of the well-travelled we didn't rush to hire a car when we arrived in Mendoza, cannily saving ourselves a couple of day's rental. Ker-ching as I like to say to Bri. Annoyingly, apparently. I bet Miss Santa Rosa is unfailingly polite and sweet too.
Planning to leave on Sunday morning we sauntered around to car hire avenue opposite the Sheraton Hotel on Saturday evening prepared to drive a hard bargain with the car rental firms. Our plan was to play one off against the other, forcing them to offer us cheaper and better deals in bigger and faster cars until we ended up with a Ferrari for sixpence. That was until we got there to find all the car rental firms shut up shop on Saturday lunchtime and don't reopen till Monday. Ah, the fly in the ointment.
We hailed a taxi and legged it out to the airport where we knew there were 4 little car hire booths. Surely they would still be open. Wouldn't they? It was getting a bit nerve-wracking as we drew up to the airport terminal and bounded expectantly into the building. Hurrah, there they were and, double hurrah, they were open. Plan B would be executed, all we had to do now was get a Ferrari out of one of them. Our sixpence was burning a hole in our pockets…..
Well, you can probably guess the rest. The first two turned us down flat. Not a car to be had. Nada. By the time we got to the final two, who luckily did both have a spare car, we were in no position, or mood, to haggle. We signed up there and then for some phenomenal hire charge, and drove off in our jalopy congratulating ourselves on the fact it had four wheels. As we kept telling ourselves, 'who cares about central locking or electric windows anyway?'
San Rafael as a town is not very interesting but we stayed in this lovely hotel, the Algodon Wine Lodge just on the edge of town. http://www.algodonwineestates.com/index It's a bit posher than our normal hangouts but firstly I got a great last minute deal and secondly I didn't get round to telling Bri how much it cost, probably because he was far too busy extolling the virtues of the delectable Miss Santa Rosa.
The food was delicious; we were in the heart of the countryside and we were encircled by vineyards. And just around the corner from our enormous room and private terrace was a cerulean blue swimming pool surrounded by big soft sunbeds with a little rolled up lime-green towel on each one. You may well think, as I did for a while, that life doesn't get better than that. But then I discovered that we had a sweet little golf cart for roaming around the vineyar ds in and getting to the restaurant, which was all of, oooh, 500 yards away.So then I was off, taking the corners at 5 kph and barely slowing down at junctions with Bri as my white-knuckled companion. Luckily all the tractors were off the road that day, and I don't think I infringed any vineyard driving regulations.
All too soon we had to leave and go back to the dreary day to day boringness of living in more ordinary hotels. It rained, other things happened, but for me the joy had gone out of life. I dreamt of the Algodon, I left a little bit of my heart on the sun-warmed vines of the Algodon and I want their logo tattooed on my arm. I'd also quite like a golf cart now, but I don't suppose that's going to happen either.
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