it is FREEZING here...
officially. as in, it snowed yesterday and today. i´m wearing a longsleeved shirt under a shortsleeved shirt with a hoodie and a fleece over it and i´m STILL cold inside this internet place. i am going to have to break down and buy a scarf and gloves even though by the weekend i should be in warmer weather. but i´ve been thinking that it´ll get warmer for the past few days and have been wrong, so it´s time to spend the pesos on the warm paraphernalia. the only problem is that today is Argentina´s independence day, so most stores are closed.
please keep in mind as you read this that i haven´t had anything besides most of a pack of Maria cookies (i don´t really know how to describe them - they are thin and a little sweet and great with hot drinks) since about 7pm last night.
you all deserve a proper update so i´ll do what i can before either 1)my fingers freeze or 2) my stomach starts growling out loud.
when i last left you (before the 21 wines in 8 or so hours email) i was about to go on a wineries tour. so that was my first day in mendoza (tuesday), and i ended up staying until Sunday, which is actually longer than i spent in BsAs! great people, great town. the first wine tour was one we signed up for through the hostel, and in retrospect (i.e. after the proper tour we took on thursday) wasn´t great, but it was only $40 pesos, so no worries. we first were taken with about 10 other tourists to a large winery that has the capacity to produce something crazy like 12,000 bottles of wine an hour, and we took some fun pictures with oversized bottles of wine (sidebar: i´m still working on getting pictures uploaded because many places do not have cd-rom drives, and i´m afraid to hook my camera directly up to a computer because one of my roommates in BsAs did that and had to pay 220 pesos in repairs for her camera - so be patient with me :)). it was cool seeing the wine making process from start to finish (apart from the fact that their vineyards were actually in another area, this was just the factory) and i took some dorky videos that i look forward to sharing with you. next we went to a family owned winery that only makes about 9,000 bottles per year and exports everything except what they actually sell on their property, and their wine was SO much better...because of all the love they put into it of course. :) bought a bottle of syrah that we enjoyed a few days later, and it was delicious. then we were taken to the church where the statue of Maria de las Cordilleras or something like that is - she is the protector of the vineyards - but the true highlight of that part was the delicious empanadas that the cute old ladies across the street made and sold for 3 pesos each. yum. that night we went to dinner with another guy named john that we had met, and shared a bottle of wine when we got back. there´s one specific table in the hostel that we ended up sitting at multiple times, so it kind of became the four of us´ spot. (the four of our´s spot? what´s the proper english there, mom?).
wednesday i just wandered the giant park for a while, had a great steak lunch at a place where the glass of wine they served me was probably the equivalent of 2 glasses and i immediately went back and took a nap for a couple hours. started reading Love in the Time of Cholera in Spanish - been a while since i read a Spanish novel, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a difficult writer, but it´s a good story. spent that evening hanging out at the hostel watching soccer games.
thursday was the marathon wine day....John (not the one married to Amber) had booked us a special day through a place called the Wines of Mendoza that is the best place ever, and our private chauffeur picked us up at 8:30am. Our first stop was Catena Zapata, whose new winery looks like an Aztec pyramid (on purpose) and has amazing views of their vineyards. They gave us a sample of their Tempranillo and then we each purchased flights of something special they have there - wines made from grapes of the same variety but from different vineyards at different altitudes, so the ones we sampled were Sauv Blanc - Sauv Blanc (they´re double named on purpose), Cab Sauv - Cab Sauv, and Malbec - Malbec. The double Malbeca was the only bottle already opened before our tasting and it tasted a few days old, but both of the others were fantastic, and by 11 am we were getting a little tipsy. luckily i had some crackers with me so we all ate some of those. Next stop was Achaval Ferrer, which is a newer winery that bought old vineyards and produces some fantastic wines...i´m pretty sure she gave us samples of at least 7 types, and we found out later that one of them sells for 130 pesos a glass. then we headed to a place that none of us can remember the name (it looked like some indigenous language) where they sat us in this all-glass room separate from the main restaurant that overlooked their vineyards (had it been green it would have felt like we were in California) and had a five course meal paired with 5 types of wines...started off with a bruschetta topped with ricotta and eggplant and lemon zest (didn´t know bruschetta didn´t have to have tomatoes and basil), then moved on to a soup made of chunks of lightly cooked pumpkin with a piece of toasted bread and sundried tomato spread on top (it was so delicious - i was surprised), then a cream cheese and something else kind of custard with lentils and a garlic ´cookie´ (didn´t love that one) and then, oh my gosh, the best softest cut-with-a-butter-night steak served with grilled vegetables (i think - i´ve had a lot of steak this past week) that amber and i complained the boys got the bigger pieces of, and then dessert was quinoa and apple and something else, but definitely yummy. all for 75 pesos. we were pleased. (p.s. the ratio is about 3 pesos to one US dollar if i haven´t mentioned that before). we skipped the tour of that place since we were running late, and headed to the Luigi Bosca winery, where the tour guide was so pleased that John´s restaurant back in Kansas City regularly serves some of their wines that she let us sample some things most tourists don´t get to sample, and she sat down with us to try the wine with us and disuss what scents and tastes we detected.....she was great. and with that it was about 6:30 and we headed back to the hostel. had some pasta that wasn´t so great, and went to bed early.
friday was another hang out and wander day - went to a museum on the history of San Martin (the most important war hero of their fight for independence) where the descriptions of things were literally printed out on printers that we used in elementary school, but there were tons of artifacts and i learned a little bit, which was the point. went to the bus station to get tickets for our saturday adventure, and then went to a sandwich shop listed in Lonely planet as having the best steak sandwich in Mendoza and boy was it yummy. Had some cafe and started walking toward a street museum that was supposed to be cool, but again got tired and went back and took a nap. we got 18 empanadas to share between the 4 of us for dinner - beef, ham & cheese, and vegetable - that were DELICIOUS and shared another bottle of wine, then went to bed on the early side because Amber & John and i had reserved a 4x4 tour of the nearby Andes that we had to leave for around 8am! It was great -- the owner of the company who does the tour is a photographer, so he has the driver take everyone to the most picturesque spots, and we were able to stop anytime we saw something we wanted to snap a photo of...and we saw some ski resorts, a natural Incan bridge, and hundreds of beautiful mountains. i´m especially excited to share those pictures with you. it was breathtaking. really cold as we ascended, though! blowing wind stinging the ears, etc. that night we went to a restaurant called Mi Tierra (not Las Tijeras, Lee :)) and i had yet another fabulous steak dinner and good wine. You see why i like mendoza?
Not-married-to-Amber John left that night, and i decided to leave the next morning for San Juan, which is a starting point for exploring some national parks that have dinosaur fossils and other cool stuff. when i woke up that morning it was SNOWING which it only does less than once a year in Mendoza, and thus started probably the most unfortunately adventurous day of my trip yet....the taxi never came since it was snowy so one of the guys at the hostel drove me to the bus station, and i got on literally 30 seconds before the bus pulled away, and then when i got to San Juan it was even COLDER than it had been in Mendoza, so i decided to buy a ticket to leave for Cordoba that night rather than find a hostel and explore in the cold...so braced myself for 8 hours waiting in a small bus station whose doors didn´t close fully, had random homeless dogs wandering around, and ate both lunch and dinner in a cafeteria where i wasn´t truly warm until i had 2 glasses of wine. i read, made some plans for Cordoba, made a timeline of the rest of my trip and where i hope to go, read some more, drank some more hot drinks, read some more...and then it was finally time to go at 10pm. i was definitely the only tourist on the bus, and was not aware that it was not a non-stop bus to Cordoba, but instead stopped at least 5 times in the first 2-3 hours picking other passengers up, and then, at 6am, we were stuck on the highway for a couple hours because of an accident, and then when the accident was cleared, they decided the roads were too icy, so after wasting about 4 hours sitting, the bus turned around, we stopped briefly at a gas station a little before noon so we could get some food, and the finally arrived in Cordoba at about 2:30pm. The bus was supposed to arrive about 7:30am. could have been worse, but i am glad to have a real bed to sleep on tonight, at a smaller hostel that the same roommate with the broken camera in BsAs recommended to me, and there is a tv with lots of dvds so i may just plop myself in front of that for a while since not much is open on this holiday.
so those are las aventuras de emily for the past week. Cordoba will likely be cold but beautiful. i had wanted to go paragliding but i think it might be too dang cold...oh well, there´s a cinema that shows lots of Latin American films, and a good theatre, and plenty of places to eat, so i´ll occupy myself till i leave for my 20hour bus ride to Iguazu Falls on Thursday at noon.
i am now officially really cold and bordering on ravenously hungry, so that´s all for now. hope you all are appreciating your hot weather!
please keep in mind as you read this that i haven´t had anything besides most of a pack of Maria cookies (i don´t really know how to describe them - they are thin and a little sweet and great with hot drinks) since about 7pm last night.
you all deserve a proper update so i´ll do what i can before either 1)my fingers freeze or 2) my stomach starts growling out loud.
when i last left you (before the 21 wines in 8 or so hours email) i was about to go on a wineries tour. so that was my first day in mendoza (tuesday), and i ended up staying until Sunday, which is actually longer than i spent in BsAs! great people, great town. the first wine tour was one we signed up for through the hostel, and in retrospect (i.e. after the proper tour we took on thursday) wasn´t great, but it was only $40 pesos, so no worries. we first were taken with about 10 other tourists to a large winery that has the capacity to produce something crazy like 12,000 bottles of wine an hour, and we took some fun pictures with oversized bottles of wine (sidebar: i´m still working on getting pictures uploaded because many places do not have cd-rom drives, and i´m afraid to hook my camera directly up to a computer because one of my roommates in BsAs did that and had to pay 220 pesos in repairs for her camera - so be patient with me :)). it was cool seeing the wine making process from start to finish (apart from the fact that their vineyards were actually in another area, this was just the factory) and i took some dorky videos that i look forward to sharing with you. next we went to a family owned winery that only makes about 9,000 bottles per year and exports everything except what they actually sell on their property, and their wine was SO much better...because of all the love they put into it of course. :) bought a bottle of syrah that we enjoyed a few days later, and it was delicious. then we were taken to the church where the statue of Maria de las Cordilleras or something like that is - she is the protector of the vineyards - but the true highlight of that part was the delicious empanadas that the cute old ladies across the street made and sold for 3 pesos each. yum. that night we went to dinner with another guy named john that we had met, and shared a bottle of wine when we got back. there´s one specific table in the hostel that we ended up sitting at multiple times, so it kind of became the four of us´ spot. (the four of our´s spot? what´s the proper english there, mom?).
wednesday i just wandered the giant park for a while, had a great steak lunch at a place where the glass of wine they served me was probably the equivalent of 2 glasses and i immediately went back and took a nap for a couple hours. started reading Love in the Time of Cholera in Spanish - been a while since i read a Spanish novel, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a difficult writer, but it´s a good story. spent that evening hanging out at the hostel watching soccer games.
thursday was the marathon wine day....John (not the one married to Amber) had booked us a special day through a place called the Wines of Mendoza that is the best place ever, and our private chauffeur picked us up at 8:30am. Our first stop was Catena Zapata, whose new winery looks like an Aztec pyramid (on purpose) and has amazing views of their vineyards. They gave us a sample of their Tempranillo and then we each purchased flights of something special they have there - wines made from grapes of the same variety but from different vineyards at different altitudes, so the ones we sampled were Sauv Blanc - Sauv Blanc (they´re double named on purpose), Cab Sauv - Cab Sauv, and Malbec - Malbec. The double Malbeca was the only bottle already opened before our tasting and it tasted a few days old, but both of the others were fantastic, and by 11 am we were getting a little tipsy. luckily i had some crackers with me so we all ate some of those. Next stop was Achaval Ferrer, which is a newer winery that bought old vineyards and produces some fantastic wines...i´m pretty sure she gave us samples of at least 7 types, and we found out later that one of them sells for 130 pesos a glass. then we headed to a place that none of us can remember the name (it looked like some indigenous language) where they sat us in this all-glass room separate from the main restaurant that overlooked their vineyards (had it been green it would have felt like we were in California) and had a five course meal paired with 5 types of wines...started off with a bruschetta topped with ricotta and eggplant and lemon zest (didn´t know bruschetta didn´t have to have tomatoes and basil), then moved on to a soup made of chunks of lightly cooked pumpkin with a piece of toasted bread and sundried tomato spread on top (it was so delicious - i was surprised), then a cream cheese and something else kind of custard with lentils and a garlic ´cookie´ (didn´t love that one) and then, oh my gosh, the best softest cut-with-a-butter-night steak served with grilled vegetables (i think - i´ve had a lot of steak this past week) that amber and i complained the boys got the bigger pieces of, and then dessert was quinoa and apple and something else, but definitely yummy. all for 75 pesos. we were pleased. (p.s. the ratio is about 3 pesos to one US dollar if i haven´t mentioned that before). we skipped the tour of that place since we were running late, and headed to the Luigi Bosca winery, where the tour guide was so pleased that John´s restaurant back in Kansas City regularly serves some of their wines that she let us sample some things most tourists don´t get to sample, and she sat down with us to try the wine with us and disuss what scents and tastes we detected.....she was great. and with that it was about 6:30 and we headed back to the hostel. had some pasta that wasn´t so great, and went to bed early.
friday was another hang out and wander day - went to a museum on the history of San Martin (the most important war hero of their fight for independence) where the descriptions of things were literally printed out on printers that we used in elementary school, but there were tons of artifacts and i learned a little bit, which was the point. went to the bus station to get tickets for our saturday adventure, and then went to a sandwich shop listed in Lonely planet as having the best steak sandwich in Mendoza and boy was it yummy. Had some cafe and started walking toward a street museum that was supposed to be cool, but again got tired and went back and took a nap. we got 18 empanadas to share between the 4 of us for dinner - beef, ham & cheese, and vegetable - that were DELICIOUS and shared another bottle of wine, then went to bed on the early side because Amber & John and i had reserved a 4x4 tour of the nearby Andes that we had to leave for around 8am! It was great -- the owner of the company who does the tour is a photographer, so he has the driver take everyone to the most picturesque spots, and we were able to stop anytime we saw something we wanted to snap a photo of...and we saw some ski resorts, a natural Incan bridge, and hundreds of beautiful mountains. i´m especially excited to share those pictures with you. it was breathtaking. really cold as we ascended, though! blowing wind stinging the ears, etc. that night we went to a restaurant called Mi Tierra (not Las Tijeras, Lee :)) and i had yet another fabulous steak dinner and good wine. You see why i like mendoza?
Not-married-to-Amber John left that night, and i decided to leave the next morning for San Juan, which is a starting point for exploring some national parks that have dinosaur fossils and other cool stuff. when i woke up that morning it was SNOWING which it only does less than once a year in Mendoza, and thus started probably the most unfortunately adventurous day of my trip yet....the taxi never came since it was snowy so one of the guys at the hostel drove me to the bus station, and i got on literally 30 seconds before the bus pulled away, and then when i got to San Juan it was even COLDER than it had been in Mendoza, so i decided to buy a ticket to leave for Cordoba that night rather than find a hostel and explore in the cold...so braced myself for 8 hours waiting in a small bus station whose doors didn´t close fully, had random homeless dogs wandering around, and ate both lunch and dinner in a cafeteria where i wasn´t truly warm until i had 2 glasses of wine. i read, made some plans for Cordoba, made a timeline of the rest of my trip and where i hope to go, read some more, drank some more hot drinks, read some more...and then it was finally time to go at 10pm. i was definitely the only tourist on the bus, and was not aware that it was not a non-stop bus to Cordoba, but instead stopped at least 5 times in the first 2-3 hours picking other passengers up, and then, at 6am, we were stuck on the highway for a couple hours because of an accident, and then when the accident was cleared, they decided the roads were too icy, so after wasting about 4 hours sitting, the bus turned around, we stopped briefly at a gas station a little before noon so we could get some food, and the finally arrived in Cordoba at about 2:30pm. The bus was supposed to arrive about 7:30am. could have been worse, but i am glad to have a real bed to sleep on tonight, at a smaller hostel that the same roommate with the broken camera in BsAs recommended to me, and there is a tv with lots of dvds so i may just plop myself in front of that for a while since not much is open on this holiday.
so those are las aventuras de emily for the past week. Cordoba will likely be cold but beautiful. i had wanted to go paragliding but i think it might be too dang cold...oh well, there´s a cinema that shows lots of Latin American films, and a good theatre, and plenty of places to eat, so i´ll occupy myself till i leave for my 20hour bus ride to Iguazu Falls on Thursday at noon.
i am now officially really cold and bordering on ravenously hungry, so that´s all for now. hope you all are appreciating your hot weather!
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