Dan's Never-ending Adventures: Mendoza!!! Part 1

Mendozaaaaaa, the land of cool outdoorsy stuff and second home of reggae music. My friends and I headed to Mendoza, a city near the west coast of Argentina, for the end of March/first weekend in April. We had heard a lot of cool stuff about it beforehand, and it certainly matched up to the stories. My friends headed there on Tuesday night (its also a 15 hour bus ride) and arrived around noon on Wednesday, when they rented bikes and road them around the city. Allie and I had class on Wednesday that we couldn't miss, so we took a bus late on Wednesday and arrived Thursday at noon. We headed to the hostel and settled ourselves in, then headed right back out for the famous bicycle-wine tours. Mendoza is Argentina's equivalent of the Napa Valley, except it looks way more like a desert with way less pretty countryside, and so offers plenty of wine tours and tasting. Unanimously voted the most fun way to take the tours is on a bicycle.

We headed to the famous Mr. Hugo's, where you rent bicycles for the day for 15 pesos and then Mr. Hugo gives you plenty of free wine before you head out. Mr. Hugo sent us off with a big smile and nod of encouragement, and we headed a few miles down the road to our first winery. We heard a 3 minute description of the winery, explored it a bit, then tasted some wine. At this point everybody was feeling pretty happy and excited to ride their bikes some more, so we rode for a while around the wineries and down the long desert roads. We took some pictures and stole some grapes off of these huge dump-trucks that were overflowing with them, then headed to the next winery stop.

At our second stop there was a deal where you pay 20 pesos and taste 4 full glasses of whatever types of wines and/or champagnes you want. Needless to say we all took advantage of that. Everything we tasted at this place was excellent, and the weather was beautiful, so we bought a bunch of bottles of different wines and sat out in the grass next to the vineyard for a bit. As we talked and drank and had an awesome time, the winery was closing and the owners decided we were not exactly in "bicycle riding condition" for the "busy" roads around us. So they called Mr. Hugo. And the police. This was all unbeknownst to us, so when Mr. Hugo came with his pickup and began throwing our bikes in the back, and when the police came in two paddywagons and threw us in the back, we were a little surprised. Apparently this is a normal occurrence, so the police were very cool and took pictures of us cuffed together while drinking wine in the van. Everybody was shuttled back to Mr. Hugo's, where there was a ton of more free wine waiting for us, and the police reluctantly declined the offer to join us. We danced and drank and laughed a ton with Mr. Hugo before he walked us to the bus, which he paid for all of us to take back to the hostel.

We were pretty exhausted when we got back to the hostel, so we showered and napped. We then took a taxi to an asado/party that the hostel was having for guests at a nearby park. We never RSVP'd about the asado so we had to sneak in and steal some food. After some food and drinks, we hung out on the playground, riding swings and some ride that spun really fast for a bit, then went home and passed out. It was a super fun day.

Early the next day we embarked on a 2-day whitewater rafting/camping adventure. More on that tomorrow. Click here to see my Mendoza album. Sidenote: I forgot to mention that the guys and I decided that the theme of this trip was "Mustache Mendoza", so you may notice that I have some ridiculous looking facial hair in these pictures. For those of you that like history, this style of facial hair, was invented by (and named after) the 21st president of the United States of America, Chester A. Arthur. I have no pictures of the police and Mr. Hugo in that album, so I'll post them here.