More Wine, Zoo, Dinner Flood, Another Pickpocket
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2007
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90
221
Trip End
Ongoing
Mendoza,
Argentina
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Now Mendoza, this is wine country.......do we really need to drink more red wine, maybe just a taste. Mendoza province is surrounded by hundreds of vineyards (called bodegas) and farms producing everything from olives to peaches, itīs also one of the driest places on earth. The mammoth Andes mountain range catches any cloud blowing in from the pacific, meaning there is very little rain, yet Mendoza produces 70% of all Argentine wine and Argentina is the fifth biggest producer in the world. Argentine wine exports are increasing exponentially and it is fast becoming the new sensation. Yet that doesnīt mean to say it has just arrived, Argentines have been drinking their own wine for years, and plenty of it, itīs just that now they have a zealous drive to improve and perfect the wines.
Nadia on the grass
Their secret is out. Two of the wines made here are the fiery Malbec and the fresh, golden Torrentes. The Mendoza signature Malbec grape is the star overall and our favourite drop (or few drops) of choice, itīs deep red in colour with plums, cherries and red fruits. I donīt really know all that much about evaluating the tasting except that you smell, look, swirl, down it, donīt spit and drink some more, itīs all good wine to me, except from a can, i canīt get my head around that. Now, how do we get it back to Australia so everyone can taste it, itīs from heaven.The wine harvest has just finished for the year. To celebrate every year each of the eighty communities that make up the Province of Mendoza and who all have vineyards, wineries, or both, elects their own Harvest Queen (not the transvestite kind). All of these goddesses of wine descend on the Provincial Capital (Mendoza city) for the annual wine harvest festival that we unfortunately missed by only one day. It seemed to be a big deal though with floats, a concert and the crowning of the young queen. We wondered if there are girls raised from birth to be in The Little Miss Harvest Queen pageant for their province, the title carries a huge prestige in these parts and billboards of past queens abound. Are they all alcoholics later in life?
We were to do a very unsophisticated wineries tour by bicycle (imagine pedaling from winery to winery) but decided instead that we had done enough wine tasting throughout Argentina so instead we chilled out with the mendocinos (Mendoza residents) around the Mendoza Capital for three days, it was larger and more interesting than we thought.
mobile ATM
The hostel Quinta is a dumpety dump but okay for crashing out and there is no-one else there because itīs that old and unclean. Weīre liking the smaller accommodations that donīt scream international backpacker. It occurred to us that we could go cheap city shopping again and Mendoza had some good deals going especially on jeans and accessories plus hundreds of shoe stores. We searched for the perfect pair of cowboy boots for me (leather is good value here) but havenīt found them yet. We shopped all day and Nadine bought a few eclectic items including a beautiful red suede jacket as a gift for my 30th birthday. I even tried on some Olivia Newton Johnīs Better Shape Up black latex leggings, no sale. We saw the adventure movie 10 000 A.C. The film had some epic battle scenes and lots of computer-generated scenes so perfect for big screen, we really enjoyed it but i donīt think itīs everyones cup of chai because we likened it to an out of control doof.
Now, back to the food of course. We think that the only reason we are able to eat so much meat is because we havenīt seen the cows anywhere. I think we have been ignoring the fact that the beef is from an animal that had to die a terrible death in order for us to eat it. We have been eating beef as though chefīs are out the back making it from scratch. However, variety is the spice of life so we went to an all-you-can-eat gaucho (cowboy) style (al asador) barbeque restaurant at the Argentine lifestyle time of midnight.
Mendoza park
We tried all kinds of beef and innards cooked in the front window by an authentic gaucho knife welding chef guy who seemed to have a hearty sense of humour. The style of cooking is fairly barbaric and is something i thought would only be seen on the ranches. The animal carcass is attached to a metal cross over hot coals and flame. The heat is adjusted by raking the coals as the meat cooks and the fat runs down as a natural marinade. Everything is cooked in large chunks then cut up when itīs finished cooking. I wonīt think too much about it or i am back to vegetarian.Yesterday we went to General San Martin park which is an ingeniously designed public space in the city. The park was designed by a chap named Carlos Thays in 1896, it covers nearly 900 acres and is an artificially irrigated (from a lake), man made forest populated by around 50000 trees from all over the world. Mendoza is a city in the middle of an arid desert so the way the park had been established was fascinating. There is an elaborate fountain that is called ĻThe Fountain Of The ContinentsĻ that was brought from France in 1910. According to a persistent urban legend, the fountain was once filled with wine instead of water. There are other interesting areas like a giant childrenīs playground, cactus garden, rose garden, a natural amphitheater, a soccer stadium where the 1978 World Cup Soccer competition was played, a science museum and the Zoo.
The park is lovingly and meticulously cared for, sadly, the animals who live in the zoo there are not.
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This was the most interesting bunch of animals but the worst display of cruelty to animals we have ever seen. Steve Irwan would be turning in his grave. The pathways for people are large and leafy but the cages for the animals are small and there has not been attempts to re-create natural environments for the animals. The inhabitants of the zoo were very impressive but the conditions they have to endure are horrendous and there were many sad eyes and signs of boredom displayed amongst the animals. The enclosures are small and mostly concrete and the animals seemed to be eating terrible food. The zoo seemed to be kept by a bunch of security guards. There is a poor creature of a scarlet macaw bird with itīs wings clipped at the entrance to the zoo. There are no signs about human behaviour in the park except signs saying not to go beyond the barriers into the cages. I guess the visit was like going to a zoo in the seventies when people were not educated about the animals and were unaware of their rights. We were amazed to see people feeding the animals. The zoo only cost $1.70 to get in, we would have paid a lot more to see these animals and they could charge so much more, hire more staff, improve the enclosures and present the animals in a better environment. In saying that, we did appreciate viewing the animals and spent hours there, despite the pangs of sadness we kept feeling as we wandered passed yet another miserable animal. There were ostriches, elephants, zebras, pink hippos, jaguars, pumas, panthers, macaws, toucans, polar bears, falcons, eagles, owls, parrots, coatis, vultures, lions (male and female), bears, mantril apes (one of these had a good old go at giving me a scare when i got too close with the camera), gorillas, baboons, tigers and deers.
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The polar bears were housed in a very small, stinky, hot concrete enclosure with a small amount of polluted water, nowhere near enough for them to swim in. We couldīt believe our eyes that they were really there in those conditions. We saw a family feed a McDonald's cheeseburger to a bear and people feeding candy and popcorn through the cage bars into the outstretched hands of the gorillas. There were nine pumas in one cage and the male lion was in a 4x2metre cage separated from itīs pride. We made a contraption for plucking fallen feathers in all colours of the rainbow out from the bottom of the birdīs cages. There is classic video footage of me trying to climb onto a retro roundabout in the playground. I really hope the conditions at the zoo improve in the future and some of the animals find some relief.We walked down into central Mendoza to people watch in the Plaza Indepencia which is a large park filled with Sycamore trees and fountains in the centre of the business district. The fountains are fueled with water that runs throughout the city in underground canals then pops up in the fountains that occupy the 74 parks and squares in the city. The canals ware based on the original irrigation channels built by the Huarpi Indians then improved upon by the Incas. None of the original buildings stand because in 1861 an earthquake killed 11000 people here and destroyed the city. The new buildings are now all quake resistant. We watched a good street performance by two puppeteers who made their puppets sing, dance and play instruments.
sand in a bottle
Nadine was nearly pick-pocketed again. A split second more and she would have lost all her pesos if it was not for the stranger who witnessed the thief. Hereīs how this one went. We sat down to have a coffee break at a sidewalk cafe at peak hour in the middle of the city, a police officer with a German shepherd dog was across the street. A woman pulled up at the traffic lights near us and while she was waiting in her car for the green, she noticed that the thief, a woman with her chair back to back with Nadine's and sitting behind her had opened Nadine's bag. The bag was over Nadine's shoulder and across her chest but hanging on her side. The driver held up her own handbag, pointed to it and silently indicated to us that we were being robbed. The brazen thief had unzipped our bag wide open and was ready to make her move until we swung around and saw the bag open. Casually the woman thief and her daughter who was in on it left the table and walked down the street without a backward glance. The thief was good because Nadine felt no movement and i was sitting facing Nadine and the thief and my usually sharp eyes saw nothing. We took it as a final warning and have strengthened our security again to the level of just below paranoid, you have to operate this way.
Dinner was another hilarious event. We ate at a popular venue on Aristedes Villavaneuva. We were in the middle of a conversation about uncertainty when the lights went out in the busy restaurant and very quickly a flash flood of water started flooding the beautiful floor of the place. Apparently rain had fallen rapidly outside and had started coming up through the floor. There was a frenzy and some guests did a runner and evacuated whilst the rest of us stayed, put our feet up so they kept dry and continued to drink wine, eat and be merry. Some people were high and dry but had to cross the water to get out so they ordered beers from the drenched waiters and stayed until the water receded. Hilarious. We ordered provoleta cheese and sirloin steaks with a local Malbec wine. Simply delicious.
Although Santiago in Chile has attractions for us, we are dreading a long visit there while we wait to visit the village where the child who Nadine has been sponsoring through the World Vision projects resides. We are a little apprehensive about the visit and what to take but we are thinking school supplies, sporting equipment and games for all the children.
An extended wait in a polluted city...........mmmmmmmmmm........ we could always drink more red wine.
