Mendoza, San Carlos, Laguna Diamante

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This is my entry for my second month studying in Mendoza, including a trip to San Carlos, and a trip to the Laguna Diamante. I will be updating it sometime this week. Unfortunately my camera broke so I don´t have as many pictures as I would like. And it probably won´t contain my last event in Mendoza, namely La Festival de La Vendimia until later, which is Argentina´s biggest celebration and fills every avaliable bed in the city. It´s a solid week of concerts, wine drinking (the festival celebrates the grape harvest), and the election of a queen to represent the province. And in a province with very beautiful women, this part promises to be spectacular.

In some ways the 2nd month in Mendoza was very similar to the first. I still lived with the same family, attended the same school every morning, with some of the same students. And I still did many of the same things daily. But the second month here was also very different, both in good and "bad" ways.

The reason some of this month was "worse" is that the novelty had worn off. I saw the same shops, the same streets, the same school, a bit of the same small space at home where I lived, the same routine. On the other hand, it was the same great cafes, same great pastries (more later), same terrific family, same school, same great city ambiance, same great looking women. Same trole drivers I exchange pleasantries with every morning.

This second month though, the same changed because of how much more Spanish I was able to speak. I met a lot more Mendocinos (including 2 girls), talked a lot more with different people, and really got to know my host family a lot better. Anyway the 2 girls I met, Alicia and Mariana are very fun and helped me really get to know Mendoza, from a different viewpoint then as an extranjero. Alicia I met because she works at a shoe store where I went to buy a pair of shoes, she was really helpful and looked really cute in an oversize Argentina soccer jersey so I told her so. We talked a while and I figured that would be the end, but then later that week I met her on Aristedes with a few of her friends and sat down to have a beer or two with them.

It´s funny, even though Mendoza has a population of over a million, the city still feels really small. That´s because everyone comes to the center, which is a pretty compact area. So I run into people who I know, or at least recognize all the time. Anyway Mariana, I met because she´s the sister of one of Chacho´s friends and we met at the pool, and then again at their family´s weekly asado.

I think I´ll be taking a lot of Argentina´s traditions home with me. Obviously the way people are so nice and open, inviting people into their homes or sitting all afternoon talking over a drink, but also two very tangible traditions. The asado, and drinking mate. Before I came here I had no idea what an asado or parilla was, let alone how serious a lifestyle it is. Argentinians love meat, and when I say that I mean they really love meat, and given how good a quality it is here I´m not suprised (meat in the states isn´t meat after an Argentine steak). Anyway the Asado is a weekly tradition for pretty much every family here, its basically a huge grill with all kinds of meat shared with family and friends. Of course, it´s not just grilling a bunch of meat and eating it with wine in good company, there´s an exact way to prepare the asado, and while everyone has their own style, there are definitely certain things that must be done.

First and foremost, you must use a parilla or special grill
Second, you must use a hardwood fire to heat the parilla and build your coal base, anything else is unheard of
Third, you must serve the chorizo (a style of sausage), before the real meat

The second thing I´ll be bringing back home is mate. It´s not in restuarants, it´s not something you can order, but you see it all the time, it´s everywhere, people sitting in groups with a thermos, a mate and a bombilla (a silver straw used for drinking the mate). Nothing embodies the people here like mate. One person always prepares the drink, then drinks the first mate (mate is the bowl the mate is prepared in, and yerba mate is the herb itself, but mate is generally used for both) as the first mate is usually pretty bitter. The mate is then passed around the circle, with everyone finishing it and then passing it back to the matadero (person who prepared it) to pour more water into the mate and so and so forth. When you´ve had enougb and no longer want mate you say gracias, before that you don´t say anything. It´s always a communal drink, with everyone sharing the same mate and bombilla etc. Just like the asado there are invariable ways to prepare it, with everyone having a little bit of a different style. I won´t go into it here, but when I´m back home if your interested you can come drink mate with me.

Anyway, what other activities did I do this month. First and most generally, I´ve enjoyed the Vendimia activities going on. I´ve gone to concerts in Plaza Independencia, chosen which queen I will vote for (there are billboards and life size cardboard cutouts of them around to help you decide, and enjoyed the fact that the city is pulsing with people from all over the world. Secondly I´ve finished 2 of the Harry Potter books in Spanish, which everyday is a little easier and more enjoyable, and of course I´ve continued to go to boliches and bars on the weekends. I met a group of people at the school who have really become close friends and spent time with them. One very cool aspect here is that I´m building a group of international contacts, in Brazil, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, england, all over the states etc of people who I would love to visit and vice versa.

I also took a weekend to visit San Carlos and the Laguna Diamante. I went with a group of 7 other students. On friday after class we took the bus to San Carlos which is about 140 kilometers south of Mendoza. Here we did the Camino de Alta Mira, which is a tour of 2 Fincas and 2 Artesinal Bodegas (think making wine in your garage). They´re pretty widely scattered so we went to each by horseback (some students preferred biking). I got a really spirited horse and we had a great time. I am definitely falling in love with riding horses. The first Finca was truly one of those great experiences that happen off the beaten path. We met the whole family, all of whom were very nice (and the daughters very cute), tasted the fruit they grew there (I had the best plum of my life), and afterwards helped make the area´s special type of bread which we would all later eat with the best series of jams i´ve ever tried. The hot chocolate there was also to die for, rich chocolate with fresh milk from a cow, and lots of cream. mmm. I also got to play with their pet armadilo. At the second finca I got to steal honey from bees! and the wine was better then i thought for a garage based bodega too. That night we celebrated our guides birthday with a huge dinner of empanadas, wine, and a local dish which I can´t remember what its called. But it was a tough animal that thrived in the area that they have to stew for hours before you can eat it. But the result is delicious.

On Saturday we got up really early to go to the Laguna Diamante. Which is a huge lake nestled in the Andes mountains at 3200 meters directly in front of the Volcan Maipo which is above 5000 meters and forms a perfect triangle. When the lake is calm you can see the volcano reflected in the water forming a perfect diamond. Sadly, I can´t speak from personal experience. The landscape up there was the harshest I have ever seen. The sun is intense and nothing grows above like 1 cm high, the grass is sparse and looks like it lives in hell. The wind never dipped below 40 kilometers per hour when we were up there and was usually much higher, and the gravel roads were literally torn apart creating dust swirls that often enfulged the car making us stop. But interspered in all of this were occasional vegas, or oasis, with arroyos bursting through them. These areas of really lush green were filled with Guanacoes, an animal kind of like llamas, a few of which were really friendly and looked around for food. We camped up at the Laguna in the wind and cold, and woke up to Ice everywhere around us, but the stew for breakfast and the asado for lunch definitely made up for it all. And the harsh beauty of the area were unforgettable. This is the first period my camera was broken for so I have to wait for pictures from the other students to put up the information.

The other significant thing I did here was help with the Cosecha (Harvest) of grapes at Santa Rosa Bodega. This was a really cool trip as I got to feel like I was a part of the Vendimia spirit and I also tasted about 15 different types of wine in 1 day. The day started by eating homemade alfajores (whoever imports these delicious pastries to the US first will be a millionaire) and learning all about how to run a huge finca, how to grow the grapes, learning the different varities, and a little bit of information about how they know when they´re ready to harvest etc. We then harvested grapes and the 4 of us and our guide (a Vinticultural students who knew a lot about everything wine related, and consequently made the trip much better than going alone or with someone unknowledgable) harvested 350 kilos (over 700 lbs) of grapes before taking a break to taste 3 wines. We learned how to examine white wines, how to tell approximately how old they were, how to distinguish between varities a little etc, before moving on to red wines where we learned what oak does to a wine and how to tell which wines have been aged in oak etc, as well as everything else we learned for white wines. We then went and visited the Bodega and saw them actually beginning the production of the wine. We watched the machine seperate the grapes from the stems, crush them for juice, seperate the skins out, saw how the wine is aged first with the skin to give it the color and flavor before being moved to huge vats etc. It was pretty cool to get a more in depth hands on approach to a bodega as opposed to quick tour around and then tasting a few wines. We then got to do something that I really enjoyed. We got to taste various experimental wines, all of them in various stages of completion, from basically just juice, to first fermentation, to complete fermentation, aged in oak wines. We got to taste about 10 different varities like this. After all that wine, we finally got to eat a little bit. We had a huge meal at the bodega restuarant, which of course was empanadas, salad, and asado. All in all it was a spectacular day and I learned more about wine in that day then I had in the rest of my life total.

Anyway that´s pretty much it for Mendoza, there is of course, always so much more to tell then I can possibly fit in here, and this entry is long enough as is. After Saturday night I´ll post the Vendimia information which should be short, and a few pictures of that if my camera can produce any decent shots without a monitor. And Sunday I´ll be traveling solo again, heading first to Cordoba, then to Iguazu Falls, then to Buenos Aires. So I´ll hopefully have lots more new stuff to write about.

So Vendimia, Vendimia was a party. On Friday night I went to the Fila Blanca, which is a huge parade with floats, dancers, and the queens and the runners up from each department on their respective floats. The streets were packed, probably several thousand people per block. Then Saturday during the day the parade repeated itself (I didn´t go) and at night was the Acto Central- a huge festival of 85,000 in the amphitheatre, and 20,000 more on the mountains surrounding the people with like 2000 dancers involved, and the people all cheering for their respective queens. After that we joined a ¨street¨ party for a bit. It was really nice, because spectacles like that in the US wouldn´t have nearly the same energy coming from the crowd, everyone dancing and singing the whole 3 hours of the spectacle. And my favorite queen ended up winning too, so that never hurts.

Unfortunately the pictures I took of the Fila, Vendimia, and Cordoba are on the digital camera that decided to completely die-much much worse than before (for example the lense doesnt retract) in Alta Gracia. Sigh. The pictures of Iguazu are on a disposable camera, will be getting digital back again after Barcelona.