Riding Bikes in Maipu

The vineyard at Bodega La Rural, our first stop on the bike tour

After my week of abstinence in Jujuy, I headed to Mendoza, in the center of Argentina's wine country. The bus ride there took 21 hours, and there was one 15-minute stop for food. It was considerably less horrible than it sounds.

My first morning in the city of Mendoza I went to six different banks trying to find one that would give me a cash advance in the absence of a debit card. None of them would. That was exactly as horrible as it sounds. I finally ended up calling Nicky and getting him to wire me money through Western Union, which is supposed to come through tomorrow and had better fucking work,* because if if doesn't I have a bag of Frutigran cookies and some alfajores to live on for the next week.

Having spent the morning grappling with my money crisis, I needed wine. That afternoon, I went to Maipu, about two towns over from Mendoza. Maipu is the home of many of the region's wineries and most of its wine tourism, and is pronounced in such a way that I had several sort of embarrassing private giggle-fits regarding my mental list of the things I was doing in Maipu. We went to Bodegas Lopez, one of Argentina's biggest producers of wine, and Las Cavas de Don Arturo, a much smaller vineyard that sells its product only to the tourists who visit. That night, at the hostel, I had a parrillada with an English couple and a Dutch guy. We ate sausage and the famous Argentine beef, and drank more Malbec than I care to remember.

At Mr. Hugo's, drinking wine as he showed us the route

The next day, I went back to Maipu with another group of people I'd met at the hostel, to bike from vineyard to vineyard. We rented our bikes from Mr. Hugo, a backpacker legend who I started hearing about back in Bolivia. When we walked into the rental shop's little canopied courtyard it became clear pretty quickly why. It was 11:30 in the morning. Within minutes, he had sat all of us down with a brimming cupful of wine while he prepared our bikes. I left my empty cup at the table to go to the bathroom; when I got back, it had been refilled.

Absinthe, whiskey, liquers and fruit infusions

So we were already well-oiled when we hit the road. (The bikes, whose brakes squeaked like crazy and only sort of worked, not so much. But the latter doesn't seem like it matters as much when the former is true.) Next door to the first vineyard we visited was a store that sold chocolate, olive oils, jams and liquers. For fifteen pesos apiece, we were given samples of olive oil, olive spreads in four different flavors, six kinds of dulce de leche, zucchini, apple, and berry jam, dark and white chocolate, and liquers - I tried dulce de leche with banana and chocolate, and absinthe. The absinthe was prepared in the traditional way, which means a spoon of sugar was dipped into the alcohol, set on fire and then dropped back into the glass. Even with the sugar, it was still terrible.

After that I had to head back to catch my bus, which was sad but not tragic, for two reasons. The first reason was that the bus was heading to Buenos Aires, which hasn't changed much in the last three years and which still feels like home.

The second reason is that there was more wine on the bus.

*It didn't.  I lost several more hours of my life and 80 pesos making various phone calls to 800 numbers in the US, which aren't free from abroad.  I now have money.  Like, twelve times as much as I need to survive for the next four days.  Not taking any chances re: going through that again.