A blog to catch up!

Hola,
Just sitting here eating cheese and onion empanadas and watching Portlandia in our apartment in Bariloche, Argentina! A typical slow down Sunday.

Lets see where did we leave off from... oh yes the Football game. The next day we slept in as we knew we had a long day before our bus to Mendoza that left at 9:30pm that night. I woke up still with a headcold so I wanted a pretty easy day. We went for breakfast at our favorite place and again ejoyed the delicious coffee. We walked around our neighbourhood checking out a couple parks and just chilling out. We were getting little hungry and knew we should eat some lunch as before the bus as the bus food is not that great (although you do get wine!!!). We stopped for a late lunch at this Italian restaurant hoping for some good pizza as it looked legit Italain. Ian had a good idea to get two large pizzas to share with the group. Tyson knowing that we stay clear of meat on pizzas while travelling ordered a simple Nepolitana (basil, mozza, tomatos and olives), while Ian is a meat-a-tarian wanted the proschittuo pizza. The pizzas came.. and they were very large. One would have fed us all, and the "proschitto" pizza looked super sketchy! It looked disgusting, it had egg, ham, artichoke (we think), and some weird sauce on top! Tyson took a peice but took one bite and put it down.. refusing to eat it. Peter and Ian managed to eat one piece but that was it. Poor Ian took a lot of flack for ordering that pizza and has lost all privelages in what to order when sharing with the group! After our not so great lunch, we went back to the hotel and waited till we had to depart to the bus depot. It was a pretty long wait.

The bus we took to Mendoza was the highest luxoury bus you could take in Argentina. It was "preimum cama" which meant the bus seats folded all the way down into a bed so you could lay down fully! The food was still gross, but 12 hours is way better then 22 hours. We woke up and we were basically in Mendoza! Perfecto!

Mendoza is the epi-center of the wine industry in Argentina.  They produce all the grape varieties, however Malbec is their speciality. We got off the bus and made our way by taxi to our "Bodega" (vineyard) where we were staying for two nights. It was pretty hot in Mendoza (plus 30) and very dry! Our bed and breakfast was pretty basic almost rustic but it was still situated right in the middle of wine country which was prefect for us as we went all this way to do some wine touring and tasting. That day, I (Sara) recupperated from my headcold by sleeping it off and just taking it really easy. That evening we went into Mendoza the city (as our hotel and all the other majority of vineyards are in a little town call Maipu). We took the local bus in, and managed to find our way to check out two plazas (Esponola Plaza, and Plaza de Indepencia (Independence)). After people watching we were all pretty starving from not eating very much on the bus, or during the day as Mapiu is a very small place with limited eating options. We ate at the fantastic Italian restauarnt that was recommended in our guidebook (it got a running man!.. which means that it is supposede to be very , very good! so far the running mans have not steered us wrong!). The place was delicious! I had pesto sphagetti and it was the best darn pesto i have ever had! I ate it all (which is rare for me!) and we even shared Taramisu for dessert which was also very good and a bottle of wine!

The next day we had arranged Julienne the man who owned the vineyard that we were staying at to find us a place where we could rent bikes to do our own vineyard tours around Maipu. We were told that the bikes were going to be arriving at our place at 1030 am , however what arrived was a man with a great mustache and asked us to pile into his car to go and get the bikes. That was fine, as we all piled into the car a great song was playing with the chorus of the song being "Last night.. I lost my underwear, I lost my underwear, last night" and thump thump thump for the base sound! It was pretty halarious.

We arrived at the bike store with no problems and got our sweet mountain bikes, helmets and water and a map of all the vineyards that we could go and visit. Tyson of course wanted to bike to the furthest vineyard as he heard it was supposed to be good. It was about 10km away from the bike store. So we all managed to saddle up and peddle our way sober to the first winery. We got a tour of the place, with an English tour guide (bonus) and we learned more about how the wine is produced, how much Oak barrels cost (Approx. 1000 Euros.. and you can only use the barrel 3 times.. and that my friends is why wine can be very pricey!) We discovered the difference between young wines, and aged wines, and all in all the first place was a good base to star our tour. We tasted 3 wines, and then paid for an extra tasting of a more expensive wine to try so we knew the difference.. we ended up buying that bottle!

From there on in we hit one more Bodega before we needed to eat some lunch. Peter was biking DD as he gets really bad headahces from too much alcohol. It was so hot out that we were sweating buckets, a little tipsy, and getty hungry. The next wine spot had a restaurant that I had read about as being good. It was on a balcony over looking a vineyard. The food was pretty good , we all had steak, and a nice big glass of wine. We enjoyed our lunch and took our time to soak up the views and the sun. After lunch, Peter was ready for a siesta time, but Tyson and Marilyn wanted to do one more wine tasting. So we made our way to Mevi. Before I forget, Tyson fell off his bike in front of a bunch of French tourists.. he was not hurt, just scraped his knee haha.  I probably didn't need to go to the last Bodega as I was pretty much done with the heat and the alcohol, but I managed to drink the four tastings anyways. It was long bike ride home, total for 22 kms for the day. When we got home we all went straight to the outdoor pool for a swim. That night, we got the pleasure of trying the vineyards wines from the place we were staying at. As in the lonely planet guide said that these were the best wines for a good price, and they were right the wine was very tasty. We all bought bottles!

So now we are all lugging muliple bottles of wine for the rest of the trip , hoping not in temptation to drink them all before we get home. The next day we had another long day before getting on another bus (a 17 hour bus) to Bariloche. This is the bus that we were not looking forward to as it was long, and we only had semi cama seats and after those luxury class seats to Mendoza it was hard to go back. So we took our time packing up, did some reading, and then managed to go visit a wine museum and one more wine taste testing. The wine was nice, and with our museum entrance fee of 50 pesos we were allowed to use that as a reimbursement for a bottle of wine. So we pooled all our tickets together and managed to get a very great expensive bottle of wine for Marilyn's birthday which was the next day. We managed to lounge the day away, reading, playing yahtzee and eventually making our way into Mendoza to go for dinner before the long bus ride.

The bus ride was long, boring, and a lot of stops. Poor Marilyn has to spend the majority of her birthday on the bus and Peter had to sit in a seat that had no recline (but he said it was not too bad). It was raining pretty hard when we woke up and for the majority of the way until we were about an hour from Bariloche. The scenary was boring until we started seeing the lakes and mountains. We got into Bariloche around 5:30pm and managed to get two taxis and found our apartment. We all showered, and had a lovely dinner out for Marilyns birthday and enjoyed two bottles of wine and a game of Yahatzee not to mention some chocolates. Bariloche has like 20 chocolate shops as the town thinks they are the Switzerland of Argentina.