Saturday – July 28, 2007

Saturday – July 28, 2007

Part of the Jesuit church in Mendoza

We arrived in Mendoza around 8:00 am this morning. We went straight to the youth hostel and ate breakfast there while we waited to check in. Later that morning, we all walked over to one of the many Excursions offices in Mendoza – this one was recommended by the hostel. We chose to do a tour of the bodegas (wineries) today and parapente (hang-gliding) tomorrow! I changed my mind and decided to try it - I’m really excited. The bodega tour didn’t leave until 2:30 pm, so we had some time to kill. Allyson, Jessica and I walked around downtown Mendoza. We found a gorgeous Jesuit church and did a quick tour of that... It’s almost 100 years old, not nearly as old as the one in Córdoba, but still gorgeous. Then we went to the artisan fair in Plaza España – that was the best shopping experience ever! Everything was hand-made. My favorite item that I DIDN’T buy was an amazing driftwood floor lamp that also held wine glasses and a wine bottle. It was so cool! I did end up buying a few gifts there. I just couldn’t resist!

After we left the artisan fair, we went back to the hostel to check in and catch the bus for the wine tour. We went to two different bodegas. The first one, Baudron, is a larger winery that makes many different varieties of wine. They use tonelas, huge wooden barrels, to cure most of their wine. We got to try two of them, a white and a red. They were both a little dry for me. After we finished there, we went to another winery called Familia Cecchin. It is owned and run by a rural family. They are certified organic and only use machines to process the grapes initially – they bottle, label, and cork by hand. They use smaller barrels called robles, from France, to cure some of their wine. Other varieties, called young wines, cure in the concrete storage vats and are bottled straight from there. We got to try two different kinds. I liked the white one, something de Alejandria, but it was very rich and fruity. A little was enough.

After the bodegas, we continued the tour with a liquor plant. Our guide was extremely funny. We got to try Honey Liqueur and White Grappa. Grappa is AWFUL! Ugh. But the honey liqueur was delicious. After that, we still weren’t done! We continued on to La Cabaña chocolate factory! They make, among many other things, HUGE (16 pound) Easter eggs filled with candy and decorated with sugar frosting. They are amazing!

Once the tour was finally over and we all had our bottles of wine and bags of chocolate (what a perfect tour!) we went back to the hostel. We hung out for a few hours and then went out to dinner at La Chancha. We were planning to go dancing, but everyone was pretty burned out, so we went ahead and went back to the hostel around 1:30 am.

Allyson, Jordan, Maru (Jessica’s tutora) and I decided that we wanted to watch a movie. One of the guys from the hostel took us around back to their bar, but instead of watching a movie we just ended up talking to the people who were there. There were a few kids from Spain that were really interesting. They were here on a month-long tour of Argentina. They had great stories about white-water rafting and all kinds of crazy things.