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in the last blog i said we were loving argentina. and we still are. even if it is systematically draining our bank accounts. there are three main things to blame for this -
1. argentina is HUGE (i read something that claimed that ruta 40, the road from the southernmost tip of the country to the northernmost, is longer than the distance between amsterdam and afghanistan. my geography isn´t great, but that seems long.) all this means that buses (which we need to take all the time) are very long, and very expensive.
2. argentina is wonderful. there are incredible things to see, places to eat, and shopping that seems to be pushing even the indefatigable Miss Stewart to her limits.
3. argentina has really, really, really good wine. it´s so drinkable that each time we taste some we are forced to buy a bottle, which is no bad thing really.
in this blog, i will mostly be talking about the third of these points. do forgive me for skimping in other areas, but i feel that i need to give the wine the time it deserves!
so...our crossing from peru (via-chile!) brought us into salta, in the north of the country. for a city that has the nick-name "la linda" (the fair), there is actually quite a lot of salta that´s not that pretty, but the main square was lovely, and came complete with a barbie-pink cathedral and a ´museum of high altitude archaeology´, where we were able to re-live our brief relationship with ´juanita´ (for those of you who don´t remember, that´s the frozen "ice-princess" from arequipa.) like all things in argentina, this museum was substantially more impressive than its peruvian counterpart, and the natural mummy we got to see there was much more eery, both for its larger size and its near perfect preservation. she really just looked like a girl in a cold, perspex case, and i kept expecting her to move, like i always do with the waxworks in madamme tussauds. as well as icy mummies, salta provided us with sunshine, and barbequeues, and horrendous hangovers, and a trip to the nearby gorge, which was part spectacularly colourful rocks, part sad-looking cacti.
leaving salta we rushed on to cafayate, and to our first experience of argentinian wineries. and what an experience! because of the huge amount of sunshine in the area, cafayate mainly produces white and rosé wines. of course, as ardent red-fans, harry and i were slightly apprehensive at first, but we came to love these new friends, particularly the speciality of the region - ´torrontes´ - a white that smells sweet and syrupy, but tastes deliciously dry and disappears worryingly quickly! the vineyards themselves in cafayate are absolutely gorgeous, but are situated fairly far out of the town, making it necessary to cycle to them or take individual taxis. of course, anyone that knows me and my "disability" would assume that we went for the latter option, but romantic dreams made us hire bikes, and (though admittedly not very elegantly) i actually managed to ride a bike! we rode to one vineyard (where we had a spanish-testing tour and tasters big enough to make my cycling even more wobbly), and commenced the ride to the next, only for each of us to get a puncture. this mishap necessitated walking the rest of the 2km (uphill!), in the baking heat, and wheeling our injured bikes (which harriet claimed felt "like dragging dead bodies"). by the time we arrived, we were exhausted and grumpy, and only the most incredible vineyard could have cheered us up. luck would have it, then, that we had found the most incredible vineyard, with absolutely delicious wine, beautiful sunny grounds, and tasty cheese platter. we took a cab back (with the bikes in the boot!) feeling like we´d ended the day with a little piece of heaven.
from cafayate we went to cordoba, which was fairly unremarkable save our visit to ´casa che´- the house where ernesto ´che´ guevara grew up. now a museum, it was filled with fascinating bits and bobs from his life, including ´la poderosa´- the motorcycle of "motorcycle diaries" fame, which was more than a little bit exciting for two superfans! after cordoba, came mendoza - the area of argentina that apparently produces 80% of argentinian wine. and here it´s reds, so harry and i were back in our comfort zone! in fact, the first thing we did in mendoza was not wine-related at all - we decided to go paragliding over the valley, which provided us with incredible views, and very nearly gave us frostbite. turns out mendoza is colder than cafayate!
i think that ticking off one thing that could be considered an "activity" meant that harry and i felt that we could warrant spending the rest of our time in mendoza doing ridiculously lavish wine-related things, because that´s exactly what we did. that afternoon we got the bus to one of the winey-towns nearby, and visited two very different wineries. the first was relatively small, and all the production is still done by hand. here we tried four wines, and came away with light-heads and a very nice bottle of malbec. the second was a much larger affair, where the residual tipsiness from the previous winery persuaded us to try seven more wines, including one of their more complex (aka expensive) wines that was unbelievably delicious. unfortunately it would seem that "time flies when you´re drinking wine", and by the time we made it out of the second vineyard it was pretty dark and we had little idea how to get to the bus. thankfully, a friendly old truck-driver took pity on the two girls shivering at the gas station, and gave us a ride back to the city, allowing our dreams of hitch-hiking across south america to be sated in a very miniature way!
the following day dawned, and it was time for, in lonely-planet-language, a "splurge." and harriet and suzie´s splurge of choice? a tour of a winery, followed by a five course taster menu paired with five of their wines. when talking about/writing about things that we do out here, i sometimes feel that i am too easily led into superlatives, but "heaven" is certainly not too strong a word for this meal. firstly, the setting was beautiful - the tables were in a little decked area with floor-to-ceiling windows that allowed you to look all the way out over the vineyards. secondly, the food was unbelievable. perfect miniature portions of really exciting things - crisp apple chips with a creamy citrus mousse; sweet and spicy pork pastries with onions and raisins; carrots caramelised to the point of melting, served with dry-cured ham and a smoked goats cheese sauce; a perfectly-cooked piece of beef accompanied, most unusually, with an almond pesto; and a chardonnay, lemon and rosemary granitee to cleanse our palates before the dulce de leche (essentially argentine caramel) panna cotta pudding! thirdly, having done a fair bit of tasting by this point, harry and i really felt able to identify the complimetary flavours in the accompanying wines, (as well as enjoy them!) and at the end of the meal we were offered another (large) glass of our favourite wines - the reserva cabernet sauvignon for harriet, and the honey-like syrah for me - which really was, for want of a better metaphor, the icing on the cake. and tipsy icing at that.
harriet goes home in a couple of weeks (sob!) and has demanded one last foray into blogging before then, so i will leave her to cover the small matter of buenos aires, and brazil, where we´re heading next.
until then, all our love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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