Emotional goodbyes and drinking wine.

 Tuesday, Liv and Michael left for Mar del Plata on the East coast and I was on my way to Mendoza further North. We said our emotional goodbyes at the bus terminal and Michael's mooned me and everyone else at the bus terminal, probably to brighten my mood! I caught my bus for Mendoza and for the whole 14h bus ride, the guy in front turned around to look at me, every 15 minutes without fail! I wanted to scream at him after the first hour.. but kept my cool! We played bingo and the winner got a bottle of wine! Not like the bingo with Cruz del Sur in Peru, where you win a return bus ticket! We watched Seven Pounds, The Hangover and Old Dogs.
Arrived in Mendoza, I took a taxi to my hostel and ran into Sofia, a girl I had spoken to in Wild Rover, in La Paz. We went out for dinner with her boyfriend Ross. The next day, Tursday, Sofia and I took a bus to Maipu (or maybe it was yours!), after buying a kilo's worth of buffet lunch (yay, another traveller who eats like me! Fiouf!). In Maipu, we rented bikes from Mr.Hugo and met Catarina, from Costa Rica, Martina, from Canada, Adrienne, from the States, and Nicki and Georgie from England. We biked around the very cute little town of Maipu.
The first place we went, A La Antigua (20 pesos), offered us a wide range of different tapenades, aubergine paste, sweet chili paste, olives, bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, followed by a delicious rasberry jam, courgette jam, chocolate Dulce de Leche, coconut Dulce de Leche, and more. We then tasted one of the 10 bottles of alcohol they had. I tasted the Passion de Femme, made from rose petals, and also the awfully strong Absinthe (it was 75%, I'm not sure how strong it usually is, but bloody hell!! And I thought that Cristal from Arutam was bad!). Finally, we tasted their milk and white chocolate, which was amazing and took the burning sensation of the absinthe away!
We then went to Museo del Vino (the only free tasting available). There's a little museum with old wine making machine and huge wooden barrells. As we were walking around we saw a worker, Sebastian, and took a picture with him. Then he whispered to us to come around the back and poored a carafe of wine from one of the wine tanks and gave it to us! He then also asked who was single! We went back out into the main area and tasted the wine they make, Malbec.
Next, we went to Tempus Alba, where we had our packed lunch and shared a bottle of Malbec in the beautiful sunshine!
Finally, we went to the Beer Garden and tasted their beers. For 10 pesos, we got 3 small glasses of Mamba Negra, Hormiga Roja and Melena de Leon. My favorite was the dark one.
We then biked back to Mr.Hugo's where we were offered another glass of wine to finish off the allready wine fuelled day!!
Biking around the winneries with the girls was really fun and I would have probably done it again the next day had I known and had I not booked my ticket to Cordoba. I'm also planning to meet the girls in Buenos Aires when I go.

Till next time...