Friday 13th doesn't have to be bad!
In contravention of all superstitions, this was one of the best days of my trip so far. Once Pete and I had dragged ourselves back into the land of the living, we headed off for the bus-stop to get down to the little town of Maipu, about 40km from Mendoza which is where a lot of the wineries in the area are based, and, more importantly, where the companies renting bikes to go around and visit said wineries are based. Now, I know what you're thinking. Wine-tasting and cycling. Two activities which do not necessarily seem like obvious partners. Particularly when coupled with a region where pretty much all roads are flanked by irrigation ditches and a country where the drivers are certifiably crazy. Surprisingly, though, it does work rather well. There's a few companies that offer bike hire in the area (it's a self-guided type of trip, rather than an organised "follow-the-bloke/girl-with-the-flag/umbrella" kind of affair) - Bikes & Wines appear to have most of the hostels signed into promoting them, but the more popular, largely on the basis of word of mouth, appears now to be Mr Hugo's.
Now, Mr Hugo's bikes maybe aren't quite so fancy. You don't get brain-buckets (yes, sorry Mum, I went for the company without safety helmets...). The flyers and maps and the like look less swish. However, it is a small, family business (the first person you meet on arriving is Mr Hugo himself), and at the end of the day, everyone who's been out cycling sits down and has another glass or two of complimentary wine back at his place, and there's no stress about having to be back on time or you get fined, etc etc. Just nice and casual. So, with this being the reputation, it isn't too surprising that Pete and I met three other backpackers headed down that way whilst we were at the bus stop - Ben and Dee, a couple from Herefordshire, and a Kiwi lass called Marissa. They became our companions for the rest of the day, and what a fun day it was.
Acting on advice from Ross, my companion earlier on on my travels, we cycled down to the farthest winery on the route to begin with, getting half the cycling out of the way whilst we were still energetic and fully sober, then made our way back from place to place. Hence, our first stop was the delightful little CarinaE winery, where we got given the tour (and met the one-woman bottle-labelling operation! - it's a small operation), tasted 3 of the wines, and liked them so much that we bought a bottle of a fourth (a Torrontes that they bring in from Cafayate - it was mid-30s, so refreshing white wine is a good thing!) to share (and at this point Pete and I demolished the sandwiches we'd made). After that we went to the Familia di Tomaso place, which is also described as a small place, and in terms of output it is, but it's become such a fixture on the tourist circuit that it's very busy, and we felt somewhat like we were being put through on a conveyor belt for the tastings there. So we moved along to the La Serna vineyard, where we had gourmet sausage sandwiches or steak sandwiches, and a nice bottle of Malbec. And then we moved on to Tempus Alba.
Now, we hadn't planned for this to be our last stop. But we hadn't planned on Maverick. That obviously wasn't his real name, the bartender at Tempus Alba was actually called Cristian, but the nickname stuck. Our first experience of him was his determination to kiss everybody when we arrived. Though he told me I was too hot and pushed me under the air-conditioning. Then he advised us, if we had any idea which wines we liked, not to bother with the tasting and just get a bottle or two. We did the maths on some of the bottles and decided this made sense, selecting a bottle of Malbec Rosado, similar to what we had tried first, and a bottle of Tempranillo, on the basis that we hadn't tried that yet, and adjourned to the sun-deck where most of the tables were set. And there we met two English lads whom Marissa had met before. And found out that they'd been there for about 45 minutes, supposedly doing a wine-tasting, but largely being ignored. Cristian had apparently been very friendly, got them set up, then spent much of his time polishing the bar or sitting talking with some friends of his and smoking. So they nicknamed him Maverick, and we adopted it.
To give you a flavour of Maverick, here's a few examples. The lads who'd given him the name decided to move on.
"How much do we owe you?" they ask.
"I don't know, what did you have?" comes the response.
"Well, we were sort of doing the wine-tasting..." is the slightly sheepish answer.
"Oh. well, what do you think it cost?" he came back.
"About 8 pesos...?" one of the lads suggests hopefully.
"Sounds about right" comes the response.
The tastings are supposed to cost 20 pesos. In another exchange, he invited us all to a party at "a friend's house" that night. We discussed it a little, and Pete quite liked the idea. At this point Maverick asked Marissa:
"So, do you party all night, then?"
"Sure, I'm a Kiwi, we all do. Do you?" came the game reply
"Oh no, not me. Well, not without help anyway..." was the slightly worrying response.
Other memorable moments included walking up and caressing the shoulders of both Pete and Ben (at this point, I thanked my lucky stars that I had been sent to the air-con on arrival!), and when he decided that he wanted to go home and informed us that the police were here to escort us home for our safety...!
Still, we'd spent over an hour up on Maverick's terrace, so we had to abort the possible visit to a chocolate and licquers place (given that the latter has absinthe as a speciality, probably a good thing!) and just power on back to Mr Hugo's, much of the time on the dirt hard shoulder as it appeared to be rush hour for all the buses and lorries in the area. Although slightly later than the 7pm suggested, we were still in time for some of the post-wine-tour-wine, as well as conversing with our fellow intrepid explorers from the day and ooh-ing and aaah-ing at the most gorgeous little kitten. It was around 8pm and getting dark by the time we headed out onto the road to flag down a bus back to Mendoza (for which Mr Hugo basically paid for the tickets, earning him a standing ovation from us all for not forcing us to try and dig out change for the damned ticket machine). Heaven knows what the regular users of the bus thought of about 20 crazy, half-cut gringos and gringas sitting on their bus giggling their way back to the city.
Still, this was only the daytime portion of the celebration, as we'd decided to meet up for drinks later, once we were all cleaned up, at Break Point, the place where Ben, Dee and Marissa were staying, handily situated right on the bar strip on Villanueva. Back at our hostel, Pete and I discovered we had two new room-mates, a pair of Swedish girls called Linda and Sofia (no, I'm not making this up), who decided to tag along with us. So we all headed over to Break Point, where we managed to nab an outside table to have a few al fresco beers. Unfortunately, we left it a bit late to move on, and everywhere was rammed (certainly not with outside table space for a party of 7!) when we tried to find a new perch, so we ended up indoors. At this point, people slowly started to drop away from the group, first Marissa, then Ben (who was nearly falling asleep in his chair) and Dee. Our Swedish room-mates wanted to find somewhere to go salsa dancing, a prospect which I, with my utter lack of any latin dancing experience, viewed with mild horror, but we got suggested places from the bar staff and headed off across town.
Disappointment was to greet us, though, when we found they'd actually pointed us to a regular dance club, playing loud doof-doof music. After much discussion outside the entrance to a couple of places, I indicated that this was not my preferred way to spend the night, and that I would head home, leaving them to enjoy the dancing. And then they decided they didn't really feel like it anyway. So we ended up back in the Irish pub, Believe. Aaah well. A slight anticlimax to a great day, but probably for the best.
Now, Mr Hugo's bikes maybe aren't quite so fancy. You don't get brain-buckets (yes, sorry Mum, I went for the company without safety helmets...). The flyers and maps and the like look less swish. However, it is a small, family business (the first person you meet on arriving is Mr Hugo himself), and at the end of the day, everyone who's been out cycling sits down and has another glass or two of complimentary wine back at his place, and there's no stress about having to be back on time or you get fined, etc etc. Just nice and casual. So, with this being the reputation, it isn't too surprising that Pete and I met three other backpackers headed down that way whilst we were at the bus stop - Ben and Dee, a couple from Herefordshire, and a Kiwi lass called Marissa. They became our companions for the rest of the day, and what a fun day it was.
Acting on advice from Ross, my companion earlier on on my travels, we cycled down to the farthest winery on the route to begin with, getting half the cycling out of the way whilst we were still energetic and fully sober, then made our way back from place to place. Hence, our first stop was the delightful little CarinaE winery, where we got given the tour (and met the one-woman bottle-labelling operation! - it's a small operation), tasted 3 of the wines, and liked them so much that we bought a bottle of a fourth (a Torrontes that they bring in from Cafayate - it was mid-30s, so refreshing white wine is a good thing!) to share (and at this point Pete and I demolished the sandwiches we'd made). After that we went to the Familia di Tomaso place, which is also described as a small place, and in terms of output it is, but it's become such a fixture on the tourist circuit that it's very busy, and we felt somewhat like we were being put through on a conveyor belt for the tastings there. So we moved along to the La Serna vineyard, where we had gourmet sausage sandwiches or steak sandwiches, and a nice bottle of Malbec. And then we moved on to Tempus Alba.
Now, we hadn't planned for this to be our last stop. But we hadn't planned on Maverick. That obviously wasn't his real name, the bartender at Tempus Alba was actually called Cristian, but the nickname stuck. Our first experience of him was his determination to kiss everybody when we arrived. Though he told me I was too hot and pushed me under the air-conditioning. Then he advised us, if we had any idea which wines we liked, not to bother with the tasting and just get a bottle or two. We did the maths on some of the bottles and decided this made sense, selecting a bottle of Malbec Rosado, similar to what we had tried first, and a bottle of Tempranillo, on the basis that we hadn't tried that yet, and adjourned to the sun-deck where most of the tables were set. And there we met two English lads whom Marissa had met before. And found out that they'd been there for about 45 minutes, supposedly doing a wine-tasting, but largely being ignored. Cristian had apparently been very friendly, got them set up, then spent much of his time polishing the bar or sitting talking with some friends of his and smoking. So they nicknamed him Maverick, and we adopted it.
To give you a flavour of Maverick, here's a few examples. The lads who'd given him the name decided to move on.
"How much do we owe you?" they ask.
"I don't know, what did you have?" comes the response.
"Well, we were sort of doing the wine-tasting..." is the slightly sheepish answer.
"Oh. well, what do you think it cost?" he came back.
"About 8 pesos...?" one of the lads suggests hopefully.
"Sounds about right" comes the response.
The tastings are supposed to cost 20 pesos. In another exchange, he invited us all to a party at "a friend's house" that night. We discussed it a little, and Pete quite liked the idea. At this point Maverick asked Marissa:
"So, do you party all night, then?"
"Sure, I'm a Kiwi, we all do. Do you?" came the game reply
"Oh no, not me. Well, not without help anyway..." was the slightly worrying response.
Other memorable moments included walking up and caressing the shoulders of both Pete and Ben (at this point, I thanked my lucky stars that I had been sent to the air-con on arrival!), and when he decided that he wanted to go home and informed us that the police were here to escort us home for our safety...!
Still, we'd spent over an hour up on Maverick's terrace, so we had to abort the possible visit to a chocolate and licquers place (given that the latter has absinthe as a speciality, probably a good thing!) and just power on back to Mr Hugo's, much of the time on the dirt hard shoulder as it appeared to be rush hour for all the buses and lorries in the area. Although slightly later than the 7pm suggested, we were still in time for some of the post-wine-tour-wine, as well as conversing with our fellow intrepid explorers from the day and ooh-ing and aaah-ing at the most gorgeous little kitten. It was around 8pm and getting dark by the time we headed out onto the road to flag down a bus back to Mendoza (for which Mr Hugo basically paid for the tickets, earning him a standing ovation from us all for not forcing us to try and dig out change for the damned ticket machine). Heaven knows what the regular users of the bus thought of about 20 crazy, half-cut gringos and gringas sitting on their bus giggling their way back to the city.
Still, this was only the daytime portion of the celebration, as we'd decided to meet up for drinks later, once we were all cleaned up, at Break Point, the place where Ben, Dee and Marissa were staying, handily situated right on the bar strip on Villanueva. Back at our hostel, Pete and I discovered we had two new room-mates, a pair of Swedish girls called Linda and Sofia (no, I'm not making this up), who decided to tag along with us. So we all headed over to Break Point, where we managed to nab an outside table to have a few al fresco beers. Unfortunately, we left it a bit late to move on, and everywhere was rammed (certainly not with outside table space for a party of 7!) when we tried to find a new perch, so we ended up indoors. At this point, people slowly started to drop away from the group, first Marissa, then Ben (who was nearly falling asleep in his chair) and Dee. Our Swedish room-mates wanted to find somewhere to go salsa dancing, a prospect which I, with my utter lack of any latin dancing experience, viewed with mild horror, but we got suggested places from the bar staff and headed off across town.
Disappointment was to greet us, though, when we found they'd actually pointed us to a regular dance club, playing loud doof-doof music. After much discussion outside the entrance to a couple of places, I indicated that this was not my preferred way to spend the night, and that I would head home, leaving them to enjoy the dancing. And then they decided they didn't really feel like it anyway. So we ended up back in the Irish pub, Believe. Aaah well. A slight anticlimax to a great day, but probably for the best.
posted by Pat at 12:00 pm
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