The Adventures of Daphne and Leo in Mendoza Wine Festival, March 2005

We left by comfortable coach at midday on 2nd March, Meals were supplied on board as well as films. We even had a bingo on the outgoing trip, the winner getting a bottle of wine! All through the afternoon we traveled through flat farmland (cattle, corn or sunflowers) and the odd rural town, until it got too dark to see anyway. By the time daylight came, the farmland had given way to shrubs and low trees, kilometer after kilometer and as far as the eye could see in any direction. Gradually the shrub land gave way to vineyards and we knew we were in the province of Mendoza, west Argentina. 20 hours after starting out we reached our destiny of Mendoza city where we were delighted to find it was a “park city”, full of trees and greenery often growing over the streets……. We were later told that it was strictly against the law to prune the trees unless absolutely necessary, ( How often we had seen trees recklessly pruned in Mar del Plata in fall to leave just the trunk with ugly stumps!)

We were staying in a naval hotel, a small but comfortable branch, where we were allowed the use of the kitchen. Who should we meet there but our dentist!! But at least we were meeting under more agreeable circumstances than normal!! That very first night Leo discovered a Charity show at an open air theater “The General’s Dream” all about the life and ambition of General San Martin, a leading figure in the history of Argentina in getting Independence of the country from the Spanish. It was an excellent show, with special effects, lighting, sound and movies on giant screens cleverly mixed in with the live acting.

On the Friday we took off to explore the city and booked up a couple of excursions, the first being that very afternoon on an outing to visit the wineries, we visited a commercial winery where we saw what happens to the truck full of grapes as they arrive, and we were explained the whole process of wine making, through the storage, bottling, corking, labeling, boxing, and shipping, and finally we were all invited to a test tasting.

Then the trip took us to a family run wine business, where the process was very different. Finally the outing visited an Olive factory, where we were shown the plantations, and explained the whole process from harvesting the olives to the different grades of oil and by-products. As there was still another month or more before the harvest of the olives, we were not able to see the processing.

Coming back from the excursion loaded with the products we had bought, we decided to stop off at our hotel to leave everything there. This meant we could not get a good place along the streets of the city center for the passing of the floats that carried the 17 candidates for queen of the wine festival. The loud speakers announced there were probable 800,000 people lining the streets ten deep each side that evening. The floats went by slowly, the candidates and their courtiers on each one threw produce (grapes, photos, apples, packets of olives, newspapers, even melons into the crowds, and the people literally fought over it. I found Leo and told him I wasn’t enjoying this so suggested we move on, but by then the parade was just about over and everyone started moving away. We asked where we should get our bus (as taxis were significantly absent) and the bus we took left us miles from where we wanted to go. We had no idea where we were and only got contradictory answers when we asked. A couple of hours after being stranded we eventually got a taxi to a landmark we already knew about not far from our hotel.

Next morning the parade was being repeated but starting from that landmark, so we just went there and waited to see it, instead of going into the center where it ended and where the president of the nation was due to make his speech. This parade was more complete, with dance groups, troupes of horses and riders, mounted police, all interspersed with the floats of the queen candidates. Again things were distributed to the public, but from our chosen viewpoint, people were better behaved than the night before.

As soon as the parade was over, we went for lunch with a companion of Leo’s he hadn’t seen in years. Then in the evening we went off to an amphitheater to see the central show of the wine festival. Even a couple of hours before the show was due to start, the open air theater was packed, and they entertained the public with music and a couple of giant balloons bouncing about among the people. On entry we had all been given a square of white or pale blue cloth (the Argentine colours) which we used frequently to animate the show, which consisted of music, national and border country dances perfumed by over 800 artists, fire works and of course the line up of the candidates for the “Queen of the Wines”, who were getting voted on by the public in the rest of the province, while the people in the stadium were supposed to keep count of the votes announced. One of the candidates won well over all the rest and after her speech, the show ended with a huge fireworks display.. Leaving the theater was a slow process due to the enormous crowds, but we found no where to get a bus or other public transport though we knew it was available, so we walked keeping ours eyes open all the time. Hundreds of buses passed us, mostly of the excursion kind at full speed, but none stopped or even looked as if they were going to. We got back to our hotel at 3.30 in the morning.

During the Sunday we lunched with people connected to a family we know in our city, then just took it easy getting souvenir shopping. Due to the difficulty of getting transport, we decided to skip the repeat performance of the show, especially as we had to make an early start on the Monday for an all day excursion. But we later heard that the repeat show had suffered a lot of drawbacks, problems with the audio, the fireworks, and the late arrival of some of the artists and the “Queen”, as well as difficulties with the bus service. Oh well!

On Monday we were up at dawn and our excursion bus came for us. This was a trip into the mountains, the day was warm and sunny but our backpack was full of woolies and windcheaters. We had an excellent tour guide who told us all about the history, the geography, the geology, the botanies, the human aspect and just about anything else remotely of general interest. On the way up we visited a very strange museum, set up by one man and called “Lost Paradise”. It started off traveling as if in a time machine with simulated sounds and movements, and took us back through the ages and showed us how the lands had separated and how the mountains had formed. He even had a pet “dinosaur” come out and growl at us. We were taken into the very center of the earth, and shown how different rocks were formed, what properties they had etc. The museum ended in a shop where we could buy different rocks and souvenirs. As we went further up into the mountains, the weather deteriorated, freezing winds, then sleet and finally even snow. We reached the village of “Las Cuevas” at 3100 meters above sea level, a frontier village with Chile. We were due to go further up to see the giant statue of Christ that looks out over both countries, but due to the bad weather, that part was postponed. We returned by the same route without having been able to see the Aconcagua, which at 6959 meters, is the highest in the Americas, and was covered in thick cloud cover the whole time. We visited “The Inca bridge” a natural rock formation forming a perfect bridge over the River Inca. The excursion took us back into the town of Mendoza well into the evening, and we had become friends with another couple, Zulema and Jorge who were visiting Mendoza from Bahia Blanca in the Province of Buenos Aires.

Our holiday was over, our return trip to Mar del Plata, was comfortable and a couple of hours shorter since the bus had taken a different route. We came home to find our little dog Kim and got into a fight with a truck, he was pretty well beaten up and had had to have an eye removed, he’s unstable and has no sense of direction anymore. I didn’t get to hear in what kind of state he left the truck!!
Like this maybe??