I biked and I wined

After a few mishap in the morning, cab driver tried to scam us by not running a meter and telling us our fare is $40 (we had a shouting match...in Spanish, which consisted of me repeating 20, 25 in Spanish. ha.) and realizing that we were at the wrong airport, we arrived in Mendoza. The city is NOT what I had imagined in my head at all. I was thinking...similar to Sonoma where there is this beautiful plaza (there is a plaza) surrounded by cute little restaurants and cafes. It is much more a city than I imagined. After orienting ourselves, eating $15 peso pastas (about usd $4), we set off to figure out how to do some wine tasting tomorrow.

The next day, armed with information in hand, Paige and I set off to find the bus that will take us to Lujan where the big wineries are. After about 30-45 min of walking back and forth between bus stops trying to find the bus and enlisting the help of various locals, we decided to change our plans and go to Maipu instead. One of the locals who was helping us works for Bikes and Wine but he didn't push the tour at all on us while he was trying to help us get to Lujan. So, as a thank you, we decided to go with Bikes and Wine to rent our bikes once we get to Maipu. These guys are great! Two guys hopped on the bus a few stops earlier to make sure we'd get off on the right stop. Nice.

After we received the map and picked out our bikes, Paige and I set off on our little adventure. First stop, the wine museum, it is ok. Next, we went to this small olive oil, chocolate, and liquor store next to the wine museum to learn about olive oils. Did you know olive trees can produce up until they are 600 years old?!? WOW. We got to taste some interesting liquors, they even made absinthe with wormwood (the kind that makes you hallucinate). Considering my low tolerance to alcohol and more bike riding in the immediate future to more wineries, I decided to not taste it.

We stopped for lunch at Di Tommaso, one of the oldest wineries in the region. It is really cute and is exactly what I'd imagined a Mendoza winery would be like. Since the original winery is a historical site, they can not make changes to the buildings. Instead they use their old ferment tanks as a place to store wines since the tanks are made of bricks and cement shipped from England and Germany (uber expensive back in the day!). Paige and I learned that for every year the wine is aged in the barrel, you can store it for 3 years in the bottle. Interesting...

After a leisurely lunch, tasting, and tour, we only had enough time to stop at one more winery before needing to head back and return our bikes. We decided to stop at Tempus Alba. Really contemporary building, totally different than Di Tommaso. We tasted all but one of their wine between the 2 of us. It was fabulous!

With lots of wine in my blood, I paddled back to the bike shop with more energy than before. Along the way, I even had energy to shout back at the whistlers and the hollers. If Paige and I had a dollar for every time we were hollered at on our bike ride, we'd be able to pay for a nice room at the Park Hyatt in town. Once we got back to the bike store, they gave us MORE wine! So we sat and chatted with other fellow wine bikers before heading back into town.

It was FUN! Seeing as how I don't exercise much normally and am usually a couch potato by choice, I had a LOT of fun riding bikes. Something about it just give you a carry free feeling. Or it might have been the fabulous wine we drank all afternoon.

A great way to end my month long trip through South America. Tomorrow I head back to Santiago via a bus through the Andes and then fly to Lima for one day before I leave for the good ole Texas.

Ciao!