Another DU reunion in Mendoza

    After my friend Emily was such a great tour guide for us in Valparaiso a couple weekends ago, I got to return the favor this weekend by showing her around Mendoza when her and a friend visited from Chile. They left from Viña Del Mar Thursday morning, and instead of taking the normal 8 hours to get here, it took them 14 hours by bus because it was a holiday in Chile and thousands of cars were making their way over to Mendoza for the weekend. We also had some heavy wind for a while, so they had to wait two hours just to start up the pass, then waited five hours in immigration. I thought a three hour wait was bad during our trip to Chile! They even closed the pass at 11 that night, so it was good they made it over in time. My host mom says you can spend up to nine hours at customs during the day in the summer, which I'm not looking forward to for my next trip to Chile in later November.
    I took Emily to some of the bars on Aristedes, our street with all bars, and specifically to my favorite beer tasting bar, where Emily was so impressed because apparently they don't drink much beer in Chile, only wine and a lot of Pisco.
    Then on Friday I took Emily and her friend, Kari, biking and wine-ing in Maipu, where I'd been before but we went to some different wineries this time. We rented the same junky bikes as last time for 3 dollars; the ones that are so old you get a work out just from the resistance of the metal, which also made weird noises and the chains kept falling off.
    The first place we went was a cervezaria, where we tried a blonde beer and a red beer, and the red beer had a smokey aroma to it, which I really liked. We went to the same winery I went to last time that gives the very in depth tour of the old winery that is no longer in use, and the tour guide teaches you to find the aromas and colors and flavors in the wine. We ate lunch there next to the rows and rows of grapes. Last time I went to Maipu for the wineries, none of the crops had been in bloom, so this looked very different this time with all the green rows of vines with the Andes in the backdrop. Last time I went here I had the tour in Spanish, but this time it was in Spanish and English because there were some Australians in the group who didn't speak Spanish.  I learned a lot more this time because my Spanish has improved, but the women also had a really funny way of translating the tour into English. Her English was really good, and after a while she started favoring English, forgetting to say one part of the tour in Spanish, or the two languages blended together and she would switch every other sentence or sometimes in the middle of the sentence. It really kind of messed with my mind since I could understand all of it, no matter what language, but the switches between English and Spanish made me all confused for what language was being spoken.
     Another winery we visited was artisan wine and a champagne that were quite good. I've really started to like wine here, but I'm not quite the wine snob that our tour guide was; she was teaching us how to select the third or fourth wine on the shelf to prevent choosing one exposed to a lot of light, and how to do a proper wine tasting by not brushing your teeth right before, wearing strong perfumes or smoking before. She was also critical of Chilean wines, obviously favoring the Argentine Malbec over anything made in Chile.
    The last place was a chocolateria, where we sampled two dulce marmalades, two olive tapenades, an assortment of chocolate and dulce de leche with banana liqueur. I couldn't not buy some chocolate for the bus ride home.
    I wish I could have been a tour guide all weekend, but I left Saturday morning for a program excursion to San Rafael. Seeing other DU students is reminding me of how soon it is until our program ends.

Maipu in August

Maipu in November