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Mendoza
Our first impression of Mendoza wasn't great. We arrived and the taxi driver tried to charge us 50 pesos for a 5 minute drive to our hostel from the bus station. We used our bartering skills to haggle him down, skills we would need again later in our stay in the wine capital of Argentina.
Our first excursion was to go horse riding in the foothills of the Andes. I've never been that comfortable around horses (I think it all stemmed from playing buckaroo as a child) but these "caballos" looked like they had been smoking something as they were as sedate as could be. I soon became attached to my horse whom I named Renegade, he did what he wanted. We started off going up and down a few rocky outcrops and it wasn't long before the horse puns came out. "What does a horse put on his pancakes? Stirrup." "What football team do a horses hate? Spurs." "What sound does a gay horse make? Hayyyy!" After an hour of walking around we headed back to the stable going full speed or galloping as horse people call it. Standing up in the stirrups I felt like a proper jockey and found a new respect for those brave pint sized Irishman. Back at the estancia the gauchos were cooking up some massive pieces of cow accompanied by the obligatory vino. We sat in a shack next to the pig sty getting drunk and eating some awesome beef. Dessert was sparkling white wine next to a bonfire. We chatted to the Welsh, Ozzy and English people till the sun went down. After a boozy trip back to our hostel we found no one in the same inebriated state as us so we got back on the bus and went back to the groups hostel to enjoy the "free wine" hour. The whole group was chanting "free wine" it was great fun. After we had our fill we headed back to our hostel for our free wine hour and our empanada class, a food we have become very found of. Essentially a meat Cornish pasty with egg in. We played drinking games into the night specifically chicken goggles and generally made shows of ourselves.
Laura went on a wine tasting tour with a cool Ozzy couple we met whilst I stayed in bed fatigued because of a cold I was developing and in no way accredited to the copious amounts of red wine consumed. She went round a couple of vineyards local to Mendoza learning how to appreciate wine. That evening we bought 5kg of prime beef along with sausages and chicken to have our own BBQ in the back garden. We gorged on beef and wine and I even got a visit from my ex colleague Charlie who happened to be in Mendoza too.
Being in wine country we had to visit the vineyards so we got a bus for 40 minutes out of the city to Maipu pronounced "my-poo" LOL! From there we got bikes from the very helpful and well recommended Mr Hugo's. First stop was a boutique winery with all modern equipment. We had a tour followed by a wine tasting - 3 wines, some crackers and water to cleanse the pallet and a spit bowl (which wasn't used). Then we headed off to a wine shop where we got to taste 6 wines. The wines are given to you cheapest to most expensive so with every new glass you get better taste and a bit more drunk. With Laura singing Queen's "I like to ride my bicycle" we rode onto the largest winery Traviche. We pulled in to the pebble drive through some iron gates, guided by vineyards on either side we made our way to the Louvre esque glass dome in front of the old stone winery. We joined the end of a guided tour to sample the wine.
Ed. I'm not sure if wine tasting and the wine industry as a whole is a facade to make the simple man feel stupid about not knowing the difference between "fresh cut grass" or "burnt sycamore" or it truly is a delicate science that requires passion, an acute sense of smell and huge investment (both of time and labour). A part of me wants to say "Pah, its red wine and it tastes good with a steak" but another part of me wants to be able to say with confidence in a restaurant "we should get the 2012 Cabernet Franc, it was an excellent year for a very undervalued grape". Either way we did learn a bit about Traviche's wine and got a bit merry. We finished the day with a beer tasting of Pale Ale Roja. Contrary to the saying we didn't feel too queer afterwards. We did have more wine afterwards so we were fine!
On our last night we wanted a night of luxury so checked ourselves into a five star hotel. Without thinking we took all our washing out and called room service to come collect it for us. Unfortunately the jacuzzi wasn't working and the sauna and steam room weren't turned on. Unimpressed we headed to the free wine tasting for one small glass, a far cry from our "free wine hour" at the hostel. In the morning we found slipped under our door the bill for our laundry, $2,800 Pesos. Which is roughly £200, our room cost $1,075Pesos. Ok our stupid fault for not checking that a pair of underwear costs£3 to have cleaned or that 1 of the 5 pairs of trousers we put in cost £13 but we were tired. We confronted the front desk that we were unable to pay this what was effectively 3x the cost of our room. After some arguing and him disappearing to the back a couple of times he said "ok, we see the manager." We were taken to a boardroom where we waited for the Hotel Manager. (I did tell Laura that the best thing to do in the situation is cry, men can't handle a crying woman.) We argued that the hotel service and facilities wasn't 5* so we shouldn't be expected to pay five star prices. Also that laundry which cost us $90pesos in Cordoba was now costing us $2,800 for what was essentially soap and water. He argued that the price is the price and you have to pay. He deliberated a couple of times and after Laura expertly turned the water works on and some old school recruitment negotiation. We got him down to $1,075, the cost of our room. Although still extortionate I felt we won that battle and to be honest I enjoyed the haggling.
Next stop was crossing the Andes west to Santiago in Chile.
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