Red red wiiiiiine....goes to my heeeaad

The wine festival that everyone had been so excited about turned out to be a let down before it had even begun as we arrived in Mendoza and were informed it was more of a beauty pageant/ informative wine lecture hybrid; not quite the wine version of Oktoberfest that we had imagined. So we went elsewhere for our vino fix the next day and hit the vineyards by bicycle. At first we thought we had made a huge mistake, as the first 12 kilometers were extremely hard in the midday heat and we all got a little cranky. Well, we say a little, but Jodie had had more than enough and at one point screamed, "this isn`t a f**king holiday!". But as the wine flowed the cycling got much easier, if not a little unbalanced.

Us with some grapes

One hell of a lot of wine

Wine conoisseur

Our first vineyard was a liquer, chocolate and olive oil tasting session, which we really milked much to the distate of the lady leading the tasting. The stingy witch even tried to make us share one olive between the three of us, surely an olive each is a basic human right? Things reached a low when we had to share one crouton between us to sample the olive and garlic paste with. Robbi lost out after we took generous bites and he was left with soggy naked crouton. You snoooooze, you loooose my friend.

Jodie, happy she managed to free herself from the toilet

The smiles of two girls trying really hard not to look drunk

Hammer-time

We stopped for what turned out to be a rather disappointing lunch where Jodes caused a hoo-ha by getting locked in the toilet. A German girl came to her rescue by shouting across the otherwise quiet restaurant, " Excuze me, someone is locked in ze toilet!" What an embarrassment. The next tasting session was a bit lethal and we were soon very tipsy and grinning like idiots. After a bit too much red wine suddenly everything was absolutely hilaaaarious and we amused ourselves by pretending to be wine conoissuers, sniffing the glasses and then using sleazy voices to describe its ´leathery but yet, smokey` flavours. This was followed up with Beavis and Butthead style snickering, soooo immature.

Classy, really classy

We got back on the bikes a little worse for wear and passed the time between vineyards by singing at the top of our voices. The theme was ´songs from your heritage` so Jodie treated us to some lovely Welsh folk songs, Robbi went hell for leather with some Lenozze Di Figarro opera and Tay, confused by the concept bust out a souful yet passionate version of Chris De Burgh´s Lady in Red.

Don`t drink and cycle....

Really tame pool volleyball

That evening we attempted to head to a club with the crew from the hostel but unfortunately drinking vodka on top of the red wine and cycling exertions proved too much and we flaked out instead. Slightly fragile, we took it easy the next day by playing pool volleyball with the hostel crew, Australian Sheilas Cilla and Annie, and Dallas & Sylvia. We followed this up with a group meal out which absolutely bombed as the food was truly hideous. We hadn`t imagined that Argentina would allow itself to serve up a bad steak, but the establishment in question proved us wrong and we were presented with lumps of leathery gristle covered in a sinister cheese sauce. Dallas probably got the worst deal when he found a stone and two sticks in his burger. When he showed the stone to the waiter he laughed and told him it was a souvenir and that it must have just dropped out of the sky...yes, because teeny tiny meteors are constantly falling from the sky and wedging themselves into peoples hamburgers. Only Robbi and his iron gut managed to clean his plate and enjoy it, in fact he washed it down with everyone elses left overs.

On the whole Mendoza was a lot of fun, but not a particularly nice city so we weren`t too sad to leave.

written by

JodesAndTay on March 12, 2010 from Mendoza, Argentina

from the travel blog: Jodes and Tay escape to SA

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Wow, you have made it onto the front page of Blogabond today, with the "Red red wiiiine..." entry. That'll boost your blog's overall ratings, I'm sure, as people will notice and want to see more pictures of those headlamps!

written by Father O'Doode on March 12, 2010

My sort of day ...tasting red wine! I should have taught you some Welsh folk songs so you could have accompanied Jodie! Sounds as if you are looking forward to a change from the usual Argentinian steak! You are all looking very well on it anyway!
Mummy Taylor xxxxx

written by Pat Taylor on March 15, 2010

Red wine,vodka,steaks,and a sing song,sounds right up my street.
Just a shame it involved a bicycle.
Looks very quiet on the roads, they must have new you were coming.

written by Tony luv on March 15, 2010

Nothing to wine about looks a barrel of laughs!!

Perhaps next time Jodes you should ask for some stabilisers and a basket on your bike.

Once again another fab blog entry, Nan and Gramp coming over tomorrow night to have a read, we'll wait to hear the laughter!

xxxxxxxx

written by Mummy Cooper on March 15, 2010

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