When I think of quality cousin bonding time, wine country sure seems like a perfect setting for it. Jen and I decided to spend the end of our time in Argentina in Mendoza to see if all those malbecs lived up to their reputation.
I'd also insisted that we take one of the luxury long-distance buses on the trip there. This meant a 14 hour overnight ride, but I talked it up-- free wine, fully reclining seats and hilariously dubbed movies-- Jen had to experience it at least once. The Retiro bus station itself is an utter madhouse- hundreds of buses leaving each hour, announcements crackling over the loudspeakers, sidewalks packed with people and packages. Luckily for Jen, her little cuz had been on lots of bus trips around the country and knew what to do. Our bus left at 8pm and we got there in plenty of time to wait. And wait. We checked the monitors. We asked the people next to us who were waiting for the same bus, who told us, 'tranquila, tranquila.' We waited a little longer. We asked some different passengers and they told us the bus was probably late and to, 'tranquila chicas!' We checked our tickets, and the monitors and our tickets again. When, at 8:10, a taxi driver asked us if we needed a ride, I scoffed and told him our bus was late. He told us our bus had left.
Up at the ticket window, we encountered four young employees lounging about and listening to a futbol match. When they confirmed that the bus had indeed left and that all they could do was put us on a bus the same time tomorrow, I'll readily admit to 'Kerking out.' Now, for those of you who have never experienced it-- a bit of Kerking out can be fun to watch. I've been told a good old-fashioned Kerk-out can even be charming. This, I assure you, was not. I invented words that have never existed in either Spanish or English. I actually shook my fist, which I didn't know happened in real life. I know at one point I screamed, "I will NOT combinationofexpletives TRANQUILA!"
A number of other passengers had missed the bus as well-- and why you ask? Why was I frightening people in the middle of a crowded bus station? Because the company we purchased our tickets from had outsourced the trip to another company! Because the name of the bus we were looking for had changed. And because there had been one, one garbled announcement over a loudspeaker that sounds the teacher in Charlie Brown, except also in Spanish. In order to get me to stop acting like a telenovela character, the company eventually said they would call the bus and they might be able to hold it for us at the next station, 70 kilometers down the road. Another stranded passenger was leaving with the taxi driver and we jumped in the car to take our chances (meanwhile, my poor cousin had not been able to understand any of the exchanges and was all, "Now we are getting in a car with strange men, this seems safe! Good plan, cuz...")
Our taxi drove like a-- well anyway, we got to the station much faster than we should have and dove out of the car...to find the bus patiently waiting. I'm pretty sure they had called and said, "For the love of God, wait and take the crazy gringa far, far away." The minute we sank into our plush seats we caught a dual case of the relieved, hysterical giggles. We giggled when the steward brought us our wine. We giggled through a horrifically dubbed Nicolas Cage movie. We giggled as we took lots of pictures and shushed each other for giggling so loudly.
All the excitement lead to a good night's rest and we woke up the next morning as the bus was pulling into Mendoza.
We checked into our hostel and had the whole day ahead of us. We decided to spend it walking around Parque General San Martin-- a 760 acre park on the edge of the city. It turned out that it was Children's Day and everywhere we looked there were families spending time in the sunshine, sipping mate, playing futbol, and chasing after kiddos.
We climbed to the highest point in the park, Cerro de la Gloria (Mt. Glory) to view the city and surrounding countryside.
After walking all day, we crashed early and were up before sunrise to catch a local bus out to the small town of Lujan de Cuyo to visit a few of the bodegas (wineries) that make the area so famous. We planned to rent bikes and spend the morning riding between wineries. The trip out was uneventful, except that at one point there was a tree down in the road, and the driver had to make a wide detour. Now, in case you had forgotten, we'd had awesome luck with buses thus far. That's why many, many minutes later, we hopped off the bus in the middle of nowhere and started hoofing it back to our stop-- which we'd never actually gone past! The only place open on our walk back was the police station, where we found a young police officer who was very concerned about the two lost gringas and gave us explicit directions. When we finally made it to the bike rental shop, he was there in a squad car waiting for us, just to make sure we'd found it okay. (And then invited us to a party that night. It was weird.)
The gregarious bike shop owner welcomed us and asked which bodegas we wanted to visit, to which we articulately replied, "Um...we want to drink wine." He soon realized what he was dealing with and offered some advice with a big grin, "Look, there are several wineries you can walk to on the edges of the town. Here is a map. I'll call them and tell them you are coming." We didn't even rent bikes from the guy after all, but I think we paid him back in genuine amusement. I say this because when we got to the first winery, he was there in his car waiting for us, just to make sure we'd found it okay. We were starting to get a reputation...
Feeling pretty smiley, we trekked to the next winery, Chos de Chacras
Jen: 'It's PINK!'
After a long afternoon walking around and learning about (but mostly drinking) wine, we decided embrace the fact that we fail at buses and split a cab back to the city center with a couple from NYC. We arrived back at our hostel with enough time to change before a late-afternoon horseback ride in the mountains. Federica, my friend I met traveling in Iguazu, had recommended the riding company to me-- she said it was less of a tourist racket and just two local guys running a farm in the foothills. Diego, our guide, picked us up and drove us to the outskirts of the city.
My caballito, Indio, and I preferred to go behind the other riders to make sure everyone was keeping up and to stop and sample the mountain grasses every now and then, but we got along fine. After a couple hours of riding we arrived at a rancho for dinner.
This would be Diego laughing at me, as my foot had gotten completely wedged in the stirrup and he eventually had to take my shoe off and lift me down.
The horses led themselves back to the farm for dinner, while Diego grilled the rest of us supper over a fire-asado and sausage, potatoes, sweet onion and bread along with salad and, of course, malbec.
After stuffing ourselves, we sipped our wine while Diego pulled out a guitar and started a sing-along as the rest of the light faded. The four other riders spoke French and English, so we had a bit of language exchange through song, as well as a rousing rendition of 'Hotel California.' Sleepy, stuffed and sore we took a van back down the mountain and fell immediately into bed.
Love from,
Kerk