Merry Christmas from Mendoza

What you get when you mix wine and tourists.

Through bleary eyes we watch thousands of rows of vines blur past and realise we have awoken on the outskirts of Mendoza, the Bordeaux of Argentina.

Its Sunday again and so it takes a while to find tea and toast … its been a long bus journey and we are weak kittens.
Hopped on a local bus and headed through the large main park and out of the centre towards the mountains..Mendoza city spreads out below us, a vast plain stretching to the horizon.. vineyards filling all available space.

the campsite decoration

We find a great campsite and seasoned pro’s that we are we’ve set up our tent and are in the pool in a flash.

Spot some locals having a picnic at a nearby beauty spot.

And come across a rock venue next door to the campsite, perhaps that’s where we’ll go for Christmas eve we joke.

That evening its really difficult to get to sleep as the noises of the road are superceded by apocalyptic screams of a death metal gig just strating up in said club. Its like we are there. A few hours later peace reigns for 5 mins before the Mendozan dog population decides to have a heated debate accompanied by extensive firework testing.

That evening (after provisioning treats for Christmas day) we have a beer and watch music videos on the giant screen the friendly campsite owner has set up. He’s playing a DVD of a Brazilian band called Tribalistas, which sound fairly pleasant until he changes the subtitles from Spanish to English and we realize its cheese mongering sloppy nonsense. The owner loves them though and we are treated to a few run throughs of the DVD whilst he entertains family and friends who’ve come for dinner.

At midnight (have to be in bed before santa turns up) we are awoken by the whole town, possibly all of Argentina letting off fireworks. It’s a brilliant noise and goes on for at least an hour before very slowly dying down. The owner plays the Tribalistas Christmas song AGAIN and we drift off with bangers in our ears.

Merry Christmas / Feliz Navidad

Christmas day in camp

Get some fizzy stuff from the ice container and join our new friends Russ and Stacey for breakfast drinks.
They are very funny and we have a similar sense of humour if a different taste in headgear
Staceys from Blackburn and we reminisce about Tokyo Joes student night 10p pints.
Russ who is from down sauuuff is a welder & Dj, they both live together in Australia and on a recent trip to England Russ was invited on to Chorley FM, ‘where the listener comes first’. We are all big fans of Steve Coogan, and the whole days a right good laugh! And try and work out which of the amazing life saving devices or wilderness weight gain diets we should try from the Ray Mears book Russ gets for Christmas.

Stacey and Russ at 10am

Brian and Corrinne (south Africans) join us swiftly followed by a German couple (Eva and Tim) and before we know it its quite a gathering.
After polishing off the strawberry fizz we get stuck into Pisco sours, some cake, some chocolate, and then some more wine… we’ve not had breakfast yet and we’re pissed, excellent!

Pretty soon we are all in the pool enjoying a sunny and warm Christmas day.

We are joined by the camp cat who gets a lot of fuss

Including having his matted dreads cut out for which he is named Shawn

The clement weather doesn’t last and we have to wrap up and take shelter under a wooden Gazebo and set about the rest of the booze.

Before we no longer can Jackie and I cook Dinner on our Parilla

Russ helps us get the fire right

plating up!

We make spicy chicken breast with Carrots Peas Potatoes Gravy and a special homemade stuffing of almonds apricots breadcrumbs and herbs

Mmmmmmmmmm!

And share it with everyone ferrying it back to the Gazebo on plastice plates slopping gravy as we go. After lots of Ray Mears related jokes we all improvise Christmas decorations from local flora….. I’m sure he’d be proud of us

Follow that star tonight..

More wine, Chocolate liquer, beer a wafer thin mint and a game of ‘Cheat’ (very funny card game) before crashing out feeling like you should on Christmas day

Whoever can see their cards wins

On boxing day we have leftover mush fried up, poor Russ had a terrible nights sleep and was rolling around with belly ache for most of it, no doubt due to that sweaty salami they found at the bottom of their tent. Fortunately Shaun was up and about to give him some comfort ,they curled up togther at the door to the tent for the rest of the night.

‘Ah Shaun mate, help me Shaun’- Russ

Shaun checks out the available talent

The next day we are rudely awoken by the hydraulics of a log delivery truck and then the soothing sounds of a chainsaw cutting down the logs to make a barrier around the pool,, surely not!

We gather troops and head into the countryside for wine tasting on bikes

Oh my starry eyed suprise

The landscape isn’t quite what we’d imagined, its pretty dry and dusty. But we find out this makes for some good wine

The red hand gang

The first Bodega we hit has an interesting historical tour, and houses a lot of early wine making stuff.

Obviously a good year

Each vine produces 2 bottles a year and are only watered twice a month, they enjoy the arid soil

South American cousins of Thomas

olive press tripod

gruesome 17th century wine press

Old barrels of wine from the scatalogically named region.

After a quick tour of old wine manufacturing methods we are shown around the modern plant. Its like being on the set of a bond movie and is full of these temperature controlled steel tanks.

The future of wine production every home should have one

Onwards into a room full of oak barrels that coast 1000 dollars each. This seems to affect our guide and she drapes herself suggestively over a sultry red. Eventually we get to try a glass of crisp refreshing white before moving on as the free stuff runs out.

Head into a chocolatier and after a rubbish tour which involved being shown their finished products on a long table we are given a free shot of any drink they make

Have a go on this, you’ll be painting writhing sunflowers in no time.

As with all South American chocolate we’ve tasted so far theirs is a bitter disappointment tasting something like the Gold coins off a Christmas tree

Hello

Gate for watering the vineyard

We skiddadle and get down to the business of the day

Corrines vintage…

Before tucking into the bodegas portfolio of wines, Corrine gives us all a sample of her own vintage, a fruity number with strong vegetable undertones.

We order 6 different reds and try and figure out which is our favourite. Once each glass has done the rounds a few times we cant tell the difference between the Malbec & Merlot or the Shiraz and sauvignon. We leave rosey.
Brian and Corrinne opt out of the next tasting and its up to the 4 musketeers to set about 6 different reds.

Stay focused Russel

Ereggahgh… tiny little agghgdddd fffffff..ehhhhhhhhh mm.. completely covered in hair… hfhghjdfjshdyeyyhh….of course we were VERY, VERY, dunk.

Buy a couple of bottles from this family owned bodega and cycle merrily back to the bike hire company.

Jackie makes a friend

And Russ gets two pussys

Back at camp Shaun seems to have missed us. Our purchases slip down easily with cheese, crackers and a game of rummy.

Chainsaws for breakfast again, they are still working on a fence round the pool intended to stop people taking shawns shortcut through the plants. Why they don’t just make the shortcut the new entrance I’ll never know. Anyway after the noise abates, we spend the whole day lounging swimming and doing comedy bombs in the pool.

Bombing footage…..

We get up before our chainsaw alarm and set off early for our rafting experiance. A few hours drive through scenic mountains quoting Alan Partridge and Pheonix nights.. ‘you make pigs smoke & feed beef burgers to swans’ and we arrive at basecamp and hang out by the Olympic sized bath. We are kitted out in oversized sprayproof trousers and tops, helmets and Lifejackets and end up looking like special needs cases.

We’ve got a lanky pair of Cheqs on the front row, Russ and I midships with our ladys bringing up the rear. After running through some techniques and commands our Canadian instructor whose been here for a few weeks only and knows the rapids from a video only!!!!! takes us to the water. It seems to be brown water rafing we cant help but note.

In the rapids safety kayakers perfom cool tricks. It suprises us how little paddling we have to do, everyones very coordinated, we rock! Lots of praise from our instructor makes for a happy team. Its actually very relaxing drifting along gently spinning around, occasionally dipping our oars. We go through a set of rapids called the Labyrinth and another called the Terminator which flipped a boat the other day.

We don’t actually get very wet, however our instructor did fall out of the boat when we set off, mmmmmm!. Its all over far too quickly and we are left wanting harder and faster rapids.

Back at base Russ does a huge bomb which soaks the bathing beauties posing poolside. An amorous couple need a room and we kick back with burgers and beers thankful we didn’t pay for the ziplining which only goes from one side of the river to the other and is over in 10 seconds.

Have a sleepy bus journey back into town and head into the Plaza Hotel for a drink to see off Russ & Stace who are heading to Bueonos Aires for New Year. The reception area is full of delicate little cakes and we take it in turns to liberate some, Russ is the master!

kids artwork in a gallery

Back at camp poor Shaun has a gammy eye and we put some drops of water in to try and clear it up.

Other adventures of Shawn:

A pigeon shat on Jackie and he immediately caught it and ran round backwards with it attached to his face until it expired. He then proceeded to eat the whole thing apart from the feet. He still looked cute even with blood on his nose.
Later he ate a bee and ran round drooling and scraping at the side of his mouth trying to work out what was going on. We gave him milk, its going to be another hard goodbye.

Decide to spend the Afternoon in the large central park and wonder at all the people picnicking next to their cars at the side of the road rather than further in with all the space and trees and water(weirdos). People are fishing the lake and we see these Nuns playing a board game whilst listening to Ragga.

Nuns having fun

There is a great kids playground with traffic lanes around the outside and kids on scooters bikes and electric cars.

That evening watch ‘Ratatouille’ on the camp screen, and sink cold beers. All reataurants are closed tomorrow night, it seems most Argentinians spend New Year at home. So we reckon a BBQ is in order.

New years eve we have a great BBQ. We are not sure if the celibration will be at 11 or 12 as the clocks go back tonight. We opt for both to be on the safe side, 11 turns out to be 12 the fireworks tell us. At 12 we jump in the pool for a second celibration anyway.

New years day (as traditional) we don’t do an awful lot, Toast Orange Juice and Coffee, lots of swimming and hanging with the cat. Realise it’s the last day swimming without fish and start to get very excited about the next stage of our trip getting up to dive master level scuba diving in Honduras.

Time to leave and the cab is so very late we are close to missing the bus and as such the flight, get there just as the bus has started its engine, panic over, phewww!!!!

Central America here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!