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Q: What is the best thing about Mendoza? A: It isn't in Chile!
Having been handed our Argentine visas at their Embassy in Santiago we got on a bus armed with our emergency 'passports' on a trip over the high Andes and into Argentina. I have always wanted to be the first person ever to do something, to go down in history - unfortunately I achieved this by being officially the first person ever to have a British Emergency passport that allowed me to travel into a country that was not Britain. This has the unfortunate consequence of no border officials actually recognising or knowing what it is they are looking at. Given the 'passport' is yellow, roughly stiched in the centre and that the picture page is nothing more than a colour photocopy we looked a like the most inept counterfeiters ever as we held up the grumbling queue at the border right in the middle of the Andes…nothing 15 minutes of broken Spanish explaining the situation wouldn't fix though so finally we walked out of Chile with a confused looking border official left behind. Not a minute too soon, goodbye and good riddance.
Getting through we spent about 20 minutes making bad jokes and asking people what they could see at the end of my arm-ies…(answer…Andes) before being waved onto the bus which took us to Mendoza, famous for its nightlife and excellent wine!That night we celebrated with a Parilla (an open fire grill, like a huge bbq) of beef ribs (costillas de bife) and a 500g sirloin steak (bife de chorizo) along with a bottle of Traipiche Malbec to celebrate our escape from the land of the dull.
Mendoza is a big city, not huge amounts to do so we spent a few days just chilling out in the hostel, cooking ridiculously cheap but good steaks and, more importantly, not having to look at the internet or fill out forms for the first time in over 3 weeks. When the boredom began to bite we rented some bikes to go on a wine tour. I say tour but essentially you pick the bikes up, get given a map and visit 5 vineyards with a tasting in each - no guide. The area itself is less rural than somewhere similar in France but within each vineyard it is very pretty with the vines, old buildings and oak barrels everywhere. The main grapes are Malbec but there is plenty of Cabernet Sauvingon and Merlot in the red corner and sauvingon blanc and Viogner on the white.
The cycle was great, the wines were varied. For anyone fancying a try of something different the highlights included the Bodega (vineyard) LaGarde which had a great Malbec and Viogner. Altavista, owned by the same family that makes Tattinger champagne, that had great Malbecs and Cabernet Sauvingon and Carmelo Patti whose wines were ok but whose Cabernet Sauvingon was fantastic. Each had its own talks, varied processes and individual methods that made their wines unique.
I am really struggling not to start going off on a Jilly Goolden here, you are very lucky readers indeed...
All in all, lots of fun and lots of wine left us ready for an early night (obviously preceeded by some steak) before we continued with our trip down south on a 12 hour bus to Bariloche, a ski town further south. Unfortunately it was mid-summer and so we had to make do with a couple of days wondering the town, going up a nearby mountain on a cable car to see the multitude of lakes surrounding the area (hence giving the region the title of the lake district) and trying to work off some of the meat with a couple of lakeside runs.
In turn, to work off the effects of the exercise we treated ourselves to a meal at a highly recommended restaurant in town - in a little round wooden building that looks like something from the Lord of the Rings village of Hobbiton. The place has a huge burning Parilla in the back where they grilled us some of the best lamb and steak we have ever tasted. The grill caremalised the meat in sweet, crisp brown lines and the centre was melting and pink. Of course, we further treated ourselves with a bottle of good wine - A Don David Malbec which goes better with a steak than any other wine we've ever had. If you can, grab a bottle and head towards your nearest BBQ! Now.
With Bariloche over, we jumped on our longest bus journey yet, 32 hours south to El Calafate in Argentinian Patagonia.
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