Wine tasting with drag queens

I know, I know, this post is REALLY late. I don't have any excuse except that I'm at home now and I just got lazy. Eating Korean food, catching up on TV and hanging out with friends just takes up so much of my time! But I didn't want to leave my trip to Mendoza out since it was such a crazy weekend. I thought it would be a relaxing couple of days filled with uppity wine tours and lots of happy hour drinks. And it was but also so much more...

My friend Hunter and I took another super-luxurious overnight bus to Mendoza, which took about 13 hours. Seriously, why don't we have buses like that in the States? With what we pay for Greyhound, you would think we could step it up a bit. Anyway, we got in just fine and checked into the Hostel Independencia, a great homey hostel right next to the main plaza. Fortunately, we got to Mendoza in time for their big annual event, La Festival de Vendimia, their big wine festival. Mendoza is Argentina's main source of its wine, producing over 75% of the country's production. And wine is big in Argentina. What else do you drink with all that steak? The main wine produced in Argentina is the malbec, a very strong fruity wine. Its similar to cabernet sauvignon, which is the second largest type of wine produced here.

The main plaza in Mendoza. Its a bustling city with tons of restaurants and things to do and see. There are also these huge sycamore trees shading the trees, giving it this warm, small town feel.

Yes, that's a man on a bike with a duck. And yes, the duck is wearing an Argentinean flag around its neck.

There are many rules at the internet cafes though their signs are pretty imaginative.

We decided to start our trip off with some asado and since it was my last weekend in Argentina, it was my last chance to try some other parts of a traditional asado. An asado doesn't just include juicy, thick steaks. It also includes many other parts of the cow like the kidneys, intestines, liver and, my personal favorite, blood sausage, which is actually ends up looking like blood goo. Kind of gross. Btw, did anyone see the Amazing Race 7 with Boston Rob? They went to South America and one of the challenges was to eat 4 lbs of asado. And then all the contestants started to throw up?? Anyway, I was told that molleja, translated mysteriously as "sweetbread," was pretty good. So I decided to try them but even though they're called sweetbread, they're actually glands (pituitary) and they tasted just like garbage. But the waiter had made a big deal of me ordering them so I couldn't just leave the plate full! So I tried to eat them, one bite at a time, but then Hunter would say "glands" and I would start to laugh. It got to a point where I couldn't even look at them without almost keeling over. So I finally gave up and ordered an itty-bitty chorizo instead. Small yet satisfying. No more garbagy glands for me!

Anyway, the Festival celebrates wine with a very elaborate pageant, where the candidates from each provenance within Mendoza compete. There's a large parade to showcase all the candidates and a huge pageant like show where the Reina de Vendimia is announced. The president even shows up for this event. We unfortunately couldn't get tickets to the big show but at least we got to see the parade. And what a parade it was! The floats are so elaborately decorated for each candidate with mechanical moving parts, dancers and crazy costumes. Its also tradition to throw candy and little trinkets to the audience. That in itself sounds a bit dangerous but they even through things like melons! You could seriously injure someone with those!

Very fancy float designs for each candidate.

Even dancers! With a gigantic fan.

That's not actually a real man. Its a mechanical gaucho drinking wine out of a huge vat. How they even got these things on the floats is a mystery.

Hmm, I'm sure its a fire hazard to have a live fire and a huge asado on a moving vehicle. They were passing out choripans (chorizo in bread) to the people.

We also found out that there was an alternate festival going on at the same time, Vendimia Gay. In general, the people of South America are much more homophobic than the States because of its Catholic culture and machismo. (I took a samba class in Buenos Aires and the guys in the class made a big deal over having to hold hands with the other guys. In a samba class, for godssake.) But apparently wine tasting and beauty pageants are a magnet for the gay Argentinean crowd. So they throw their own parties and hold their own pageant. A drag queen one, actually. We were definitely intrigued and thought we would check it out and it was a total trip. Hunter informed me that Latin men did make the best drag queens and these ladies were in top form. If I could only have legs like they did! And walk in those ginormous heels! Anyway, we were pretty tired from our all-night bus trip the night before so we called it an early night (which is about 3:30am in Argentina).

And the contestants for Reina de Vendimia Gay! If you can believe it, this was the 11th year of this pageant!

Crowd favorite! We didn't ge to see who won but I'm pretty sure it was her.

The next day, we got up bright and early to go tour some wineries. We had gotten a recommendation from some random people for a guy who rented bikes so we thought that would be a great way to see the wineries. A lot of the wineries are close together so we were able to see a bunch very easily. Good thing considering the wine we were drinking at each tasting! We ended spending more time at each place than we expected so we only got to see a few places but they were very good. We saw a super-modern winery with these huge metal vats and fancy machines as well as the one of the oldest artesian wineries in Mendoza. It was great to see the differences in each place. Though the ride back at the end of the day was a bit wobbly after all that wine!

Wine grapes! We even got to taste them. They tasted just like grapes to me!

Grape vines.

The machinery at one of the biggest wineries in Mendoza. Very modern.

If I knew anything about wine, I would give away the secret sauce recipe but I wouldn't be able to tell even if I learned anything.

We tasted wine. Lots and lots of wine. I wouldn't really recommend it with bike-riding, as fun as it was.

The artesian winery. So different from the big, modern, fancy one!

We took a wine tasting course at the artesian winery. She would tell us to taste the oak, plum, hint of chocolate and vanilla and lactic acid (??). All I tasted was alcohol.

How could you not bike through scenery like this?

Mendoza is famous for it wine and also as the gateway to Acongagua, the highest peak outside of the Himalayas at almost 21,000 ft! Though we were only in Acongagua for the weekend, we knew we had to at least try and see the peak. We talked to like 500 travel agents to see if there was a tour that we could take out into the mountains but our bus the next night cut our time pretty short. So we took a late bus to a little town (well, actually it was like 5 buildings crowded together) that's popular with climbers in order to get an early start the next day. Each of the sites we wanted to see were about 4-6 km (3-6 mi) apart from each other but we only had a couple of hours before we had to catch the 3 hr bus back into town. So we tried to hitchhike. I know, not the smartest move but I was with Hunter and it was a pretty remote, small town area. At first we were passed left and right, leaving us cursing at passing cars. We were finally picked up by some truckers and it was fine. We were only going a few miles and I promise never to do it again! But it’s so classic backpacker.

La Puenta de Inca. It actually used to be a spa with baths. We were on a mission to see all the sites so we spent about 15 minutes here, snapping pictures furiously.

We finally made it to the big kahuna! Acongagua. I still can't believe we actually made it on such a tight time schedule and with trying to catch a ride.

We had about 30 minutes so we walked into the park as much as we could in order to get that perfect shot of the peak. It was a been there, done that type of excursion but I would love to come back and climb it. 21,000ft!

Well, we did make our bus back into town and onto our bus back to Buenos Aires. We even got to play bingo on the bus! Our bus attendant was really nice and would try to call out the numbers in English as well as Spanish but he kept messing them up. Fiveteen! Thirty six (instead of fifty six)! It’s so mean to laugh considering my own Spanish but we couldn't help it. Is that bad? Mendoza was so fun and Hunter and I really packed a TON into just a few days. I definitely would not have had to motivation to get it all done if it weren't for him. Thanks, Hunter! You're definitely one of the best people I've met in BA and I really hope all the best for you!

Hunter was the consolation winner! The actual winner got a full bottle of wine but still, it was very exciting. Yeah for Hunter!

My last few days in Buenos Aires were pretty uneventful. I packed my bags (I even had to buy an extra bag for all my new clothes! Oops.) and had my last cafe con leche and medialunas and came home! I was very sad to leave Argentina and South America but I was happy to see my family. I can't believe my travels are already half over!