Women and Wines

My arrival in Mendoza was maybe a day earlier than predicted but this became a fortuitous event, walking through the streets toward an area of hostels we stumbled across an enormous parade circling the centre of the city. It turned out that the harvest season, which is almost a month long festival, includes a beauty competition for women from the Mendoza region. Each town in the region has a representative and the parade presents them all on floats before the judging and eventual crowning of the winner that night. The local people feel very strongly that there women are the most beautiful in the Americas and as such the newly crowned Harvest Queen becomes somewhat of a celebrity overnight.

So as well as beautiful women Mendoza is best known for its wines (now this i did know before arriving, the beautiful women were more of a nice surprise). The best way to enjoy seeing the vine yards and wineries [bodegas] was going to be on a bike so we spent a day riding from bodega to bodega tasting wine as we went. Joined by a lovely Brazilian woman called Margarita, over the space of ten hours we tried local chocolates & liquors, a local companies fresh deli foods not to mention tasting a bit of wine and possibly learning a bit about it too. The last bodega we visited was smaller and much nicer than the rest, owned by a French couple, we were provided with a much more intimate tour.
In the tasting room, prominently hung, there was a large framed picture of a past Harvest Queen from 2006, she was from Maipu the region that the bodega was in.

Ok, why am i yet to mention the National Park, camping and the increased level of adventure I was looking forward to so eagerly? Well because it didn't come to fruition. Upon arrival in Santa Rosa I found the only bus on to the park was at an un-godly hour, making our arrival and then walk to the camp site a difficult and possibly unsafe one. This meant being temporarily marooned in Santa Rosa. Nice hospitable people are to be found in the centre, however venture to the edge of the small town and a whisper of warning will be offered nervously "look after your persons", followed by the laughter of locals in the distance who have spotted your camping intentions.