Bikes and wines

The last three days have been spent in Mendoza, a city in the West of Argentina which is famed for its red wine, Malbec in particular. The city was built on a fault line and was completely razed to the ground in the early twentieth century. Because of that, the roads are wide and lined with trees to prevent debris from falling buildings from damaging other buildings. On my first night in Mendoza, I was sitting near the central square drinking coffee when my chair started to rock back and foreward, as if someone had grabbed the back legs and had started to shake them. I looked down at the ground, bemused, and then at two old men sitting beside me who explained that it had been a small terremoto, or earthquake.

I had been told that Mendoza was a beautiful city, large and chilled out. I didn´t like it nearly as much as some of the other places I have visited. The wide roads seem to serve only to carry thousands of cars, making the city noisy and polluted. Plus, on the side of every road runs a deep ditch filled with stinking, fetid water. It also has the worst supermarket in the world, but more of that later.

The climatic conditions around Mendoza are perfect for the production of red wine. Almost no rain falls, preventing the grapes from being afflicted by the diseases that are associated with humidity. The long, hot days make the grapes big and juicy, with a high sugar content. This translates into very strong, bold red wines with an alcohol content of twelve to fourteen percent. Like every other gringo, I hired a bike on my second day and toured some of the vineyards in Maipu. I soon realised why the bikes had only cost 40 pesos for the whole day. The handlebars creaked, my right brake didn´t work and my rock-hard saddle kept slipping down, making it ever hard to peddle. Combine that with lorries and copious amounts of wine, and you might have had an explosive mix. Luckily, I am still here to write this blog. Despite all the hype, the wine was underwhelming, and I have since found out from a man in the hostel that the wine is superior in the region of Lujan de Cuyo. Despite being aged for two years in oak casks, the wine was acid and astringent, leaving tannins burning in your throat for several minutes after the tasting. Far better was the lunch that I had with two Frenchman from Paris and the liquour and chocolate store. In a tiny kitchen, on a road a few miles from civilisation, two cute, bashful women make a crazy array of flavoured liquours, from chocolate and dulce to leche to grapefruit. All the fruit liquours are made using the fruit that grows in the beautiful garden adjacent to the kitchen.

I took a bus back to Mendoza and saw an amazing advert on the side of a bus, featuring David Nalbandian and pain relief tablets. He was shown in battle garb, a metal helmet, a chainmail vest and a leather skirt hiding his podge. In his left hand, he clutched a spear and he was staring out from the bus intently, taking himself far too seriously.

The most interesting experience I had in Mendoza was in a supermarket, a huge Carrefour just a few blocks from the hostel. I had finished my wine tour and was lusting after a green Thai curry, with sweet coconut milk and handfuls of coriander. I hobbled over to the vegetable section in my new flip-flops and picked out two shrivelled, dessicated green peppers (red peppers were nowhere to be seen), a courgette, two chillies, a clove of garlic and two onions. I couldn´t find any ginger, so I went over to the women at the scales. She barked back at me that they only had powdered ginger, and that I would have to place each separate item I had picked out in a separate plastic bag. My vegetables now covered in metres of plastic, and some tasteless ginger and paprika shoved into a bag, I went back to the scales. The woman took one look at my things and declared that I couldn´t have the chillies, the courgette, the ginger or the paprika because they didn´t come to fifty grams. Those are the rules, she said, despite my protestations and those of an old local man to my right. Not once did she look at me, but continued to serve other customers with flashing arms, barking out replies through her slit of a mouth. Apparently you can´t eat if you are alone in Mendoza. I looked for some chicken, but they didn´t have any. Local argentines battled for asado beef, while bored looking cleaners swung their mops from side to side. So bored were they that the mop heads never actually touched the floor. I dropped the basket off in the wine section and beat a speedy retreat. If a country can´t organise a supermarket, how can it organise an economy. That said, the company is French, so maybe blame can be apportioned elsewhere...

Tomorrow, I go to La Serena in Chile and the Elqui Valley, complete with Pisco and hippies. My trip has suddenly started to revolve around alcohol.