Argentinianin' it

Cordoba- Argentina

Our Aussie friends convinced David and I to follow them to the city of Cordova which was more east than we had intended to travel… we wanted to header to Chile but we found out that one of the largest South American festivals was taking place that weekend..

 How could we pass this up? The festival was called Cosquin Rock and even though all of the bands were Spanish and we had absolutely no idea who any of them were (no, Enrique or Shakira were not playing) we decided that there was no way we could pass up the opportunity to partake in it!

We arrived in Cordoba Friday morning and we took it fairly easy, walking around the city to find Dave a deep V Argentinian T-Shirt to match his mullet and some new kicks to complete his rockin’ outfit. Soooo much fun for me… haha no, I much prefer shopping with Nikkers! Anyways, we got back to our hostel later that night and made ourself a nice little dinner and sipped some Mendozian wine until the hostel owner came around and insisted that he taught us a new card game called Mushroom… except it was a drinking game… and all I had was wine… It was awful!!! Not quite the way I had intended to finish off my lovely white! The next morning I woke up 5 times in a mad sprint to the washroom. At first I thought it may have had something to do with the wine chugging but after the fifth time and a feeling of death came over me I decided it was something more… I crawled back to our 5 person dorm and woke David up telling him I was dying and then fell onto the balcony floor. Pretty sure Dave has never gotten out of bed that quickly in his life! David helped me back to the washroom and we decided that we had to go to the hospital.. He left me in the hallway while he got his stuff together when one of the hostel workers came up the stairs to find me laying across the hall, pale, sweaty and unable to move ! Haha probably a pretty funny sight! He ran downstairs and called a doctor to make his way to the hostel. Pretty good service if you ask me! Except that when the doctor arrived he just kinda looked at me, felt my forehead and told me I had a virus and then wrote me a long list of medication I needed… Good doctor skills! But somehow he didn’t charge us a thing and later that day after popping 12 pills I magically felt better! Good thing because the concert was that night and there was no way I could miss the list of artists I had never heard of!

Cosquin Rock was actually located about 40km out of town in a huge valley surrounded by mountains, it was beautiful! The drive out took us a tad bit longer than expected though, about 3hrs… Apparently a lot of other people were headed out there too! We got to the valley around 9pm and watched a few reggae bands, a rock band and Charlie Garcia, an Argentinian legend!

 He played the piano like it was nobody’s business and although he was probably 70yrs old he knew how to rock a show! It was a really neat cultural experience and I’m pumped we got to take part in it! We danced up a storm and screamed and cheered with all the other Argentians around us! It was a blast and once again, we were blown away with how friendly Argentinians were, they would strike conversations with us right, left and center . It was great! The whole experience was really cool, being out in that setting with a clear night’s sky, thousands of stars above us, nicest people in the world and great music. Will have to do it again sometime!

Mendoza- Argentina

Another night bus… Another city !!  We arrived in Mendoza early in the morning with only a couple of things on our minds;  a pool, some loungers and some local wine from the region which has made Argentina famous as a producers of Malbecs!  Turns out, these were 3 very simple demands in this place and within just over an hour of arriving, we were at a hostel, lazin’ in the 30 degrees sun by the pool with the wine waiting for us!! What a tough life!!

The front of the hostel had a great pen air restaurant we wined and dined when we needed a small break from the sun.  The resto / hostel was located along the major strips of restaurants, pubs,  discotecs and trendy shops located along a wide 2 lane street with perfectly placed trees, shrubs and plants.  It reminded us a lot of Whyte Avenue in Edmonton ( expect it was way nicer not having to explain to all the people who lived there how winning a series of championships 20 years ago doesn’t make their hockey team any better today!)

Being Valentine’s Day, we had planned on heading out for a nice dinner in the evening, but our plan was foiled when we were talked into signing up for the all you can eat BBQ at the hostel instead.   We met plenty of fun people, had a great meal, and headed out on the town with the other 14 people staying in our dorm. That’s right, a 14 person dorm room…  Definitely our biggest yet, but it wasn’t all that bad!

After calling in sick on Monday morning (ooops, forgot, we don’t need to do that on holidays!!) and sleeping in we had a quick snack before embarking on an incredible adventure to the massive park on the west part of the city.  Before leaving we noticed Corne, a dutch boy who had joined us to Cosquin Rock near Cordoba, sleeping in one of the beds in the dorm and convinced him to join us.  We had heard from some other travellers that there was a pretty good zoo located in the park so we figured we should check it out.  We had a map and knew roughly where to go but a few wrong turns and a series of hopeful shortcuts turned our 30 minute stroll into a 3 hour march in the blazing heat with only enough water for the first 45 minutes.  Corne was really impressed with our navigational skills and wasn’t shy about letting us know, lucky for me being from Southern Alberta I had plenty of Dutch jokes to send back his direction!  We never did make it to the zoo as it was getting pretty late and we needed to meet a few local boys (who we climbed Machu Picchu with) for dinner.  Oh well, it was still a nice walk!

The next day we decided to explore the local wineries only a few minutes outside of Mendoza.  Corne forgave us for the zoo / park debacle and joined us.  A short cab ride took us to a place called Mr. Hugo’s bikes, where there give you a map of area with the wineries highlighted and a bike to get from winery to winery.   What a brilliant business idea!  Dawne spotted a sweet tandem bike hiding in the back and made sure that no one else stole it!! It was a bit tough to ride but man did we look cool!! 

 Our first stop on the tour was at a wine museum which exhibited the old fashion ways to make wine, it was ok, but the descriptions solely in Spanish which made it a bit tough to figure out.  Of course there were some samples on the way out the door which made it all worthwhile!!  Next on the list was a chocolate, olive and liqueur shop, where for a small price we were able to sample all of the above plus bread dips and marmalades.  They weren’t shy on the liqueur samples either and allowed us to try many different kinds ranging from chocolate to dulce de leche (like caramel) with banana and chocolate chips.  Yum!! 

 They also had 76% absent which after checking our watches to see if it was noon yet, we couldn’t pass up.  There was also a quick tour that explained the growth and production of olives and olive oil, as well as balsamic vinegars.   Very educational I must admit!!  We considered paying again and going on the 1pm tour as well, but we decided we should carry on instead.  We hopped back on the bikes and very carefully made our way to the next winery, “Trapiche”.  This was one of the nicest wineries in that particular area, so we made this the location of our guided tour and sampling. The estate was beautiful and they were just getting ready for the 2011 harvest. 

 We were able to walk into the vineyard and eat the ready grapes right off the plants!  The grapes were great and the wines that we sampled at the end of the tour were even better!  At this point in the day it was getting fairly apparent that food might be a good idea.  We heard through the ‘grapevine’ (Zing!!!  That was a good one huh?) that the Tempus Alba winery had great steaks and good views so we let our friend Corne lead the way.  Apparently the Dutch are bad with directions as well, as Corne took us in the completely wrong direction and it took an extra half hour getting there.  It was worth it though and we had dinner on their terrace overlooking the vineyard with the surrounding mountains as the backdrop.  

 We made that the last stop on the tour, returned the bikes and took the bus back into town to get ready for our 10:30pm bus departure.  We nearly missed the bus socializing with one of our friends from Mendoza.  Lucky for us we had a cab driver who drove like a rally car racer and got us to the terminal with 2 minutes to spare!!  That was close…. Off to Santiago!!