Clue - UB40 song, not Cherry Oh Baby...

  Mendoza, Argentina
Sunday, May 4, 2008

www.volunteersecuador.com

Wine, wine, bottles of wine, casks of wine, barrels of wine, rivers of wine, rivers of babylon, babyon 5, 5ive, home and away, neighbours, harold bishop, bishop from aliens, sigourney weaver, harrison ford, ford ka, star trek two the wrath of kahn, amir kahn, boxing, boxed wine, wine.

I didnt know where i was going either.

Mendoza, we turned up, got warned to watch our bags and stuff about 5 times a day and drank lots of wine. Lots and lots of wine. Some of it quite good (apparently) some of it quite cheap. I've made a discovery, or rather reaffirmed one. I know nothing about wine, and I'm quite happy with that, and I genuinely preferred the $Ar8 bottles we were getting from the supermarket than the $Ar150 bottles we tried on the tasting tour. It seems the more expensive you go, the more mature they are the more flavoury (technical wine term) they are, which is not what I want really. We wound or wined our way around some country lanes near Mendoza on our bikes, unfortunately these little country lanes were all connected by a rather busy truck filled road which didnt make for quite the relaxing experience we were after. We went to a wine museum, a chocolate-liquor factory where we had a fascinating tour consisting of a row of their products and we were told the flavour of each. I learned a lot.

More wine than Zip can drink at a wedding

The Grapes of mild disgruntlement

techical wine making instrument.

That pales in comparison with the wealth of knowedge I gained from the olive factory tour. I already knew what I needed to know about olives - they are evil, taste rank, its impossible to get a pizza without them in Argentina and they should all be abolished. I found out that the way olives used to be made was mildly interesting, in the days of manual labour. Now the olive oil production consists of a very big shiny metal machine. The olives go in one end, stuff happens in the middle and olive oil comes out the other end. It was just like Willy Wonka had got bored with the whole chocolate business and had decided to diversify. Except not so much.

Leaf. I dunno. Tree?

Fruit. I dunno. Lime?

Mendoza

chapssnoozea

fellasnapa

We arrived in Mendoza in a group of three and left as five having picked up a couple along the way in one of those, "we're heading to valparaiso in chile tomorrow, wanna (except I have better elocution) come?" "sure". So then there were five. Heading back to Chile, one more time. Probably.