Mendoza: Fast, Loose, and Not a Drop of Wine Wasted

The next day, I rented a car in the hopes of making a 3pm tasting appointment about 40 minutes outside of town. Now, driving in Mendoza funny. Funny strange, not funny ha-ha. Maybe funny isn’t the right word. Maybe something more like maddening, confusing, mildly dangerous, or fast-n-loose. Sometimes there are signs pointing you to where you want to go, sometimes not. There are lines on the road delineating lanes, but they don’t seem to be used much. There are a lot of intersections, but very few have lights or stop signs. What you do when you come to an intersection is tap on your brakes ever so slightly to slow your speed a an mph or two, stretch your neck out to try and see if anyone is coming, then blow through the intersection. It’s harrowing, actually. Turn signals? Rarely. It’s all this continuum of drift. The kicker is that the maps I got from the tourist information office weren’t accurate. The map clearly would show where I could get on the freeway, but then I’d get on that street and it would be one way going in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. I went around and around like this, circumventing where the map showed the entrance to Route 40, then being spat back somewhere in the opposite direction. I tried to take what looked like the long route to get to another entrance to the freeway, only to get completely lost in some desolate suburb. A couple of times, you could hear me muttering curses under my breath and I think once, I actually shouted, “WHERE AM I?” in tense frustration. I did all this for about 1.5 hours. I missed my appointment at Trapiche winery and instead, flustered and angry, found my way back to the hostel.

The tasting day wasn’t ruined however. That evening, I went to a local tasting room called The Vines, which was only a 15 minute walk from my hostel. The Vines is well regarded for serving flights from the top wineries in the Mendoza areas, so I knew this would be a great place to get a great sampling of various wines all in one convenient place. Since it was relatively early – too early to have dinner yet – I went to The Vines on an empty stomach thinking that the pours, of course, would be one or two ounces. I ordered the Uco Valley Reserve flight. The attendant’s first pour, a Monteviejo Blend 2006 (syrah, malbec, merlot) was actually pretty large – maybe more like four ounces. I thought that she might have slipped, but as I tasted and wrote tasting nots in my notebook, she poured my second wine – also a healthy four ounces. So while I trust my tasting notes are accurate, I look back at them and laugh. By my fifth taste, the handwriting in my notebook – which started out so legible and neat – became kind of loopy and sloppy, drifting outside the lines. And then she poured me an extra taste of a rose, which was lovely with strawberry, vanilla, and some lovely tartness, was just some scribbles in my notebook. Yes, there was one point in the tasting that I thought, “I should start spitting,” but the answer in my head to that was, “No spitting on a $250 peso flight, no way. For that kind of money, I’m drinking every drop of this wine.” I awoke dehydrated and with a throbbing headache. I realized I actually didn’t eat any dinner when I get back from The Vines, either. Oops.

Mendoza – Wine, Absinthe, and the Police

On my first afternoon in Mendoza, I signed on for a half-day wine tour. We visited two wineries, the first was Lopez. This is considered the oldest winery in Mendoza. The Lopez family emigrated from Italy because of a disease that struck their vines and destroyed their harvest. They thought they’d have better luck in Argentina. And now Lopez is one of the biggest volume-based wineries in the region. They even still age some of their wines in the massive casks that are considered almost completely antiquated against the current barrel aging. To be honest, the winery seemed more like a factory and the wines that we tasted were terrible – flat and weak. But, the tour was interesting nonetheless – to think that the father of the family likely simply announced that they would pick up and move to Argentina, leaving their fields and home behind to set up in a new country far away. That takes guts.

The second winery, called Vistandes, was a boutique winery and only a few years old. The facilities were ultra modern, cool, and sleek and featured some fine art in the lobby – it struck me as being modeled after some Napa wineries I’ve visited. The tasting room was clad in white and black leather furniture. The tour was lovely and the wines very nice. I bought a delicate and tasty torrontes (the best torrontes I’ve had in Argentina, no less) that set me back a cool $9.

Next was a stop at a shop that made artisanal liquors and jams, and there I had a chance to taste their absinthe, which burned a path down my esophagus and left me lightheaded and goofy. And then on to a small church that housed a statue of the Saint who protects wine crops. She sits like a porcelain doll, dressed in stiff lace and embroidered polyester tafetta, cheeks blushing (perhaps from the wine?), blue eyes softly gazing out over her congregation. In the church was a tiny museum that held antique household objects, rosaries, old photos and similar items. A guitarist played soft, slow Argentinean religious folk songs in the corner.

After, our tour group of 10 trundled back to the van and boarded. But something was wrong. Apparently, the van driver left the van unlocked. Mistake #1. Several of the tourists left their bags on the van. Mistake #2. In their bags, they left their documents, passport, etc. Mistake #3. In a way, you just can’t blame the thief for stealing what he did. It’s like the planets aligned for him to do it.

OK, you never, ever, ever, ever leave anything valuable on a tour van. Ever. That’s travelers’ rule A#1. I thought everyone knew that one. Apparently not. The police showed up and we all had to go down to the police station. The tourists were making their statements and filing their report for about an hour and a half. The rest of us couldn’t leave in case we had to make statements and act as witnesses (or we were under suspicion of being the perpetrators of the crime). During the wait, I chatted with a British guy – maybe 28 – who regaled me with all the drugs and alcohol-fueled nights he’s had while traveling. There were a lot and he seemed quite proud of them. Good for him, I guess. I dunno, if I were in a country whose drug laws are akin to something out of the movie “Papillion” and some shady cat offered to sell me a bunch of cocaine, I‘d just have to take a pass. As this guy, who was very entertaining and definitely helped pass the time, poured his stories out, each one more outrageous and gregariously expressed than the last, I thought, “What a complete idiot.” Sorry, but I mean really… seriously? What an ass. But yeah, he was funny. I’m sure all those stories will seem really funny to him until his bony white butt gets tossed in jail in some Columbian prison somewhere.

Finally, we were all released by the police. Back to the hostel and sleep.

Under the Spell of Mendoza

The flight from Cordoba into Mendoza was hairy…. White-knuckle, drenched-palms, gasps and sighs kind of hairy. Unknown to me at the time, there was a Zonda that day. A Zonda is a particular type of wind that they get in Mendoza. It’s a hot, hot dry wind, and as fierce, powerful, and catty as a diva. So in the last 15 minutes of the flight, we were buffeted around the air – up-down-side-to-side, up-down-side-to-side, up-down-side-to-side... It was like a roller coaster ride except I actually like the “safe scariness” of roller coaster rides. I do not like, however, the very real scariness of dramatic turbulence with what feels like a very real threat of plummeting thousands of horrifying feet to my death, each second its own eternity as I watch the earth rushing toward me.

When the plane’s wheels finally touched terra firma, there was an audible exhale from the passengers, a pause, and then we all broke out in applause. Yeah, it was hairy.

My hostel in Mendoza was fantastic. Hostel Empedrado is like a large, really well outfitted communal house. Two kitchens, several common areas for eating, drinking and conversation, a rooftop terrace with beds so you can nap in the sun, an outdoor patio shaded by grapevines, satellite TV, four computers, and a fun, helpful staff. It’s everything you could want in a hostel. And I had a lot of experiences – cooking with other folks in the kitchen, drinking wine together out on the patio, telling each other our day’s plans around the breakfast table – that made me feel like I was in a family. Those moments in travel are so great. Because I think people are somewhat adrift as travelers, we look to each other to find some commonality and ways to relate so that we can feel grounded with each other. There were a lot of sweet moment like this at Empedrado and I’m grateful for them.

Besides having a great hostel to lay my head and meet and bond with other travelers, the town of Mendoza and the surrounding areas are lovely. The town caters to wine tourism, so it has wine shops, upscale gift shops, and wine bars in the center of town, and surrounding that is your standard Argentinean tourist destination with a central shopping area not only catering to locals but also containing several upscale hotels and tour operators. The town has countless tree-lined streets and many cobblestone streets that give it a lovely charm.

To be honest, I’m having a little bit of a hard time writing this blog post. My mind is bewitched by Mendoza – relaxed, empty, soft. I’m going to try again later to see if my brain is up to the task of describing the rest of my time in Mendoza.

Cordoba… It’s Fine

This is the Chrysler Cordoba. -->

The ultimate in style, class, and sophistication.... in 1979.

I’ve spent the last several days in Cordoba. It’s a city with malls, lots of storefronts all selling the same clothing and scarves with no significant difference and catering to the small city aesthetic, and restaurants all with menus that are fundamentally similar.

It’s a fine place, but somewhat generic for my tastes.

However, I have seen several nice cathedrals and museums. The museums feature artists from Argentina only, mostly artists from Cordoba. I’ve seen some nice pieces and had a fine time walking about the city.

I’ve visited:

• The Museo Historico Provincial Marques de Sobramonte, a small museum that contained furniture, women’s fans and hair combs, dishware, and chamber pots that belonged to a wealthy family that lived here in the mid-1700s;
• The Criptica Jesuitica, a small stone museum which at one time housed the bones of Jesuit priests (which were then moved), then the bones of those who died from a cholera epidemic. Then they crypst was destroyed and then dug up again in 1986 and is now on display;
• The Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes Dr Genaro Perez, a small, quaint museum with some sculptures and paintings;
• The Museo de la Memorial, a small museum housed in the former Department of Intelligence (D2) building, famous for kidnapping, torturing, and “disappearing” those who opposed the government in the 1970s. Its displays were interesting in that they were quite clean, artsy, and modern but set within the slightly still frightening torture and interrogation rooms;
• The Palacio Ferrerya, a larger museum with lots of nice paintings and sculptures from a host of different eras and an attempt at modern design inside the museum itself, with the benches and staircases covered in black cowhide, including the cow hair. It was odd to sit on and even weirder to grab hold of when walking up or down the stairs;
• The Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Caraffa, the main modern art museum in Cordoba, which was large and well architected, but had very little actual art in it. ???
• The Iglesia Cathedral, the Iglesia de la Compania de Jesus, and the Parroquia Sagrado Corazon de Jesus de los Capuchinos (all churches), the former two were representative of the style in Argentina. The latter one was quite impressive in size and very representative of the gothic style of architecture.

I don’t know that I have much else to say about Cordoba. It seems to me like it’s aspiring to be a “worldly” cultural center, but feels like the delivery isn't quite there. Kind of like the little redheaded sister who follows the cool big sister around, wanting to wear her lipstick and high heels and wanting to be grown up but just isn't yet so looks kind of funny when she dresses up in the big sister's lipstick and heels. In this case, the cool big sister is Buenos Aires, and the little sister… well you get the gyst.

My hostel is fine, nothing special. Really, I just can’t say anything bad or great about Cordoba. It’s fine, just fine. Oh, the weather is nice.

Tomorrow I leave for Mendoza, the place I’ve been aching to get to since I decided to go a couple of weeks ago. I’ve booked well-regarded hostel there and am set to taste wine. Onward.

I pity the fool

If one more person asks me:

• If I’m traveling alone and then looks shocked and concerned when I answer, “Yes.” Then they say, “Really??” with their eyes wide. I and I say, “Yes, really.”
• If I have any children and when I reply, “No,” then asks in a concerned and troubled voice, “Don’t you like children??”
• How old I am (when the person asking is about 19, which are most people) and when I tell them my age, they try to conceal their shock and surprise with a deadpan, silent nod…

...someone’s gonna get hurt.

Cafayete 2: Mountains, Snakes, Wine, and the Help of Strangers

I’m in the Tucuman bus station right now. I have a layover here for about four hours until I hop the night bus to Cordoba. It’s Friday night and the place is hopping. There’s a live musician plugged into an amp and he’s singing and playing a tango version of Frank Sinatra’s, “I Did It My Way” while his guitar gently weeps. These are the little, surreal moments that travel is made of.

I left Cafayete this afternoon, and I was sad to go even though the place may, in all likelihood, have a curse on it.

Here’s why. I had the single worst travel day on the trip so far while here. It was one of those days where anything you try to do, no matter how inconsequential or minor, let alone the big things (and there were several), just wouldn’t… go. No matter how much coercion, praying, force of will or how many deep breaths or secret promises for paying it forward. And the big things were big. Like being on my last 50 pesos (about US$12.50), but still owing my hostel for two days of room and a tour and still having two full days in town ahead of me before I caught my pre-purchased bus ticket to Tucuman – and my card wouldn’t work in either of the two cash machines in town. And no way to contact my bank because there was no Skype at the internet cafes and the hostel wifi was busted. So stuff like that. It was Catch-22 after Catch-22. Each time I tried to solve a problem, the solution to that problem was actually just another problem that needed to be solved. And it all had to be done in Spanish, which I don’t speak.

It was the single most frustrating day I’ve had on this trip so far and I have to admit, I got to that point – you know, where you start to feel that little kid frustration, so powerless and overwhelmed. Well, I had a moment in the hostel kitchen when I broke down and shed a couple of hot tears while my voice, quavering, told my hostel-mate Laura from Buenos Aires, what was going on. She was great and told me that she’d help me sort out all the issues tomorrow.

As it turned out, Bertrand, another person from my hostel helped me solve my biggest challenge. He spent 20 minutes on the phone with the agency in Jujuy who booked my air travel to Mendoza and sorted the issue out for me by actually going to Jujuy and the agency to take care of it for me. Something I love about travel is that people can really step up and help one another. It’s great to be reminded that we can’t survive alone, that we depend on each other to make it through life’s difficulties, and that we do step up and help one another.

As far as cash? The wifi in the hostel got fixed, I Skyped my bank, and all issues are now resolved. I didn’t have to devise an elaborate plan to hop a bus with my last 50 pesos to some other town in the middle of the night, get money from another town’s ATM, and hop back to Cafayete to pay people before they noticed I was gone. Whew. That would have been an inconvenient drag.

Besides the whole curse thing, Cafayete is wonderful. As one of the top two wine producing regions in Argentina, it carries a beautiful mood about it. The town square is picturesque and charming. The people mellow. The countryside is stunning with tall desert mountains in beautiful deep clay and green colors. The fields of grapevines curling around their posts and strings, clusters of ripe fruit hanging in the hot sun.

In Cafayete, I love that a very hearty pour of any restaurant’s or café’s house Malbec is $1.10 USD… and it’s good. I love that my hostel felt so comfortable, clean, and homey, with actual attention to décor, a great center patio where we all could gather and have a glass of wine or a cup of mate tea and talk about our days, and a well maintained kitchen for cooking.

I loved the areas around Cafayete for their incredible, heart expanding beauty and proud history and heritage. I loved the people I met at my hostel, all of whom were entertaining, funny, sweet, helpful, wry, interesting, or a combination of all those traits.

I loved the House of Empanadas, who served me the best empanadas I’ve had either in Brazil or Argentina.

Details, you ask? Happy to.

One day, I took a tour in the afternoon to visit the major landmarks of the Quebrada de Cafayete, the region I passed through on the bus trip from Salta to Cafayete but was pretty much too sick to actually appreciate. So let me preface this next part with a disclaimer. If you’re tired of hearing about how unbelievably beautiful the mountains are in Northern Argentina, stop reading now. OK, you’re still reading. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It seems like, since I arrived in Argentina, the scope and scale of these mountains, their intensity in every way, have grown. The colors, the scale, the sheer force of them. First there was the Seven Colors Mountains in Humahuaca/Purmamarca. Then there was the next level, the Quebrada del Torro, with its height and its gauchos and its lonely beauty. And now Quebrada de Cafayete, with its tremendous scale, its rock formations so unique and unusual that they didn’t seem at all real, but maybe something out of an epic hero’s story or something on the far side of Mars. Rubies, rusts, oranges, pinks, clays, ochres… and also blues, violets, greens, and yellows. With their immensity so intense that the eyes just can’t see them, but flatten them out like a paint by numbers to just try and absorb them.

I saw these with Neil, who had just arrived at my hostel that day. Neil is a 31-year old freelance carpenter from Dublin, but living in Melbourne. A month ago, he was on a three day party streak in Melbourne and, while intoxicated during said three day streak:

· Decided that he had to travel to South America and figure out if he wanted to move there

· Logged onto a website, priced tickets and bought his one way plane ticket to Buenos Aires

· Packed and caught a taxi to the airport

· Rung up his Mum from the airport and told her he was leaving in an hour for South America and wasn’t sure when he was coming back

· Boarded the plane and immediately asked the flight attendant for a beer because he had “flight anxiety.” Sadly, he was turned down, the attendant saying that she couldn’t serve him until they took off. They took off, and he was served.

So Neil and I happened to be the only two people on this tour. There’s nothing like getting to know a crazy Dubliner over some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world.

We stopped at several key formations and vista points to appreciate the rock formations the likes of which rival or surpass Monument Valley, Utah and the scale of which makes Monument Valley look like building blocks from a child’s toy box. We saw the sweeping playas and peaks, the mountains stretching back millions of years and looking ahead for millions more. The naturally-formed amphitheater, which was once a huge cave in the rock then was opened up by eons of rain and wind erosion. In this amphitheater, Cafayete has an annual music festival to take advantage of the incredible acoustics this naturally-formed amphitheater provides. I wish I could explain the scale of this formation. My pictures, for the most part, don’t capture it. Except for one. In this picture, you see the layers of compressed minerals and rock in beautiful arching and swaying patterns. And then, at the lower right center of the picture, you see a tiny speck. That’s Neil. That’s the scale we’re talking about.

We also visited the Devil’s Throat, another incredible formation equally massive and equally as impressive and awe-inspiring as the amphitheater. Here, I kicked in my rock climbing skills and scaled some short and easy faces to crawl inside the Devil’s Throat. The colors, the patterns, the scale. I felt dumbstruck.

These places throw me into simultaneous states of awe and confusion. As I marvel at them and am rendered speechless by their ancientness and immensity, I also think of how we humans have this odd tendency to think the world revolves around us. When in reality, the world is more ancient and more powerful than we could ever comprehend. It will live on millions of years past any memory of our species and will continue to be part of the grand scheme as it came into being at the beginning of time. And even how ideas like time, when used with these places, are simply weak constructs that humans have created to try and classify and understand and place and compare ourselves next to them.

That’s what these places, this excruciating beauty and immensity, are doing with me. I’m properly put in my place and get a tiny glimpse into the immensity and wide open infiniteness of space and time and mass and energy and spirit and physics and math and art, which are flimsy expressions of something nameless, unspeakable, limitless. Something unclassifiable and indescribable. Something infinitely beyond anything we can ever grasp. And that’s right and perfect.

But I digress.

While in Cafayete, I also visited the ruins of Quilmes. I took this tour, about an hour outside Cafayete, with Guillaume from Nice, who had also arrived the same day as Neil. His dry French sense of humor and vow each day that he was going to quit smoking today (“no really, today for sure, I just want to finish this pack…”) prompted me poke him in the ribs with a wry smile. Dating about 1000 AD, Quilmes was a complex indigenous urban settlement that occupied about 30 hectares and was home to about 5000 inhabitants. These people survived contact with the Inca, which occurred from about 1480 on, but sadly, they couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the Spaniards who in 1667 deported the last 2000 inhabitants to Buenos Aires. The site itself is impressive. Though no building still stands, a good percentage of the foundations of the site have been excavated. The foundations start at the base of a large hill and crawl up the hill in steps. I hiked up the treacherous hill to see the community layed out before me, making geometric patterns in the hillside.

When I arrived on the site, I was given a brochure in “Spanglish” explaining the story behind Quilmes. But fundamentally, what the brochure really was was an angry tirade against the invaders who broke apart the Quilmes community, which was rich with culture, heritage, history, and indigenous identity. It spoke of never allowing this type of invasion to happen again and called out to readers to vehemently support the preservation of indigenous people and Pachamama (translation: Mother Earth). It also called for things like restitution and reclamation of the tribal lands. In short, Quilmes is a symbol of all the genocide and destruction that non-native people have brought to Argentina and how change must occur to preserve these indigenous cultures.

I’m often struck by how the history of colonialism the world over is so bloody and horrible. And how it’s still occurring today under the auspices of “spreading democracy and promoting a free-market economy.” Sigh.

I also mountain biked while in Cafayete. I wanted to head up to the path that would take me to the falls at the Rio Colorado. I came across a rattlesnake on my way. Yes, another snake. I didn’t see it, but I definitely heard it. I was walking my bike past a cluster of low rocks and I heard a rattle. As I got closer, it sped up, and as I passed by and went on my way, it slowed and stopped. And the funny thing was, I didn’t even realize what it was until later. Oops. I should know better being from Oregon and California. This is snake story #3, just for the record.

Also, on my mountain bike ride, I had the chance to ride past several beautiful fields of grapevines and wineries (and did some tastings, of course). It was quite picturesque, with the green vines and dusty earth set against the tall blue-green mountains.

When all is said and done, despite the travel challenges I faced, I come away from Cafayete loving its beauty and uniqueness.

I guess, then, that Cafayete isn’t cursed at all. It’s blessed.

I’m in the Tucuman bus station right now. I have a layover here for about four hours until I hop the night bus to Cordoba. It’s Friday night and the place is hopping. There’s a live musician plugged into an amp and he’s singing and playing a tango version of Frank Sinatra’s, “I Did It My Way” while his guitar gently weeps. These are the little, surreal moments that travel is made of.

I left Cafayete this afternoon, and I was sad to go even though the place may, in all likelihood, have a curse on it.

Here’s why. I had the single worst travel day on the trip so far while here. It was one of those days where anything you try to do, no matter how inconsequential or minor, let alone the big things (and there were several), just wouldn’t… go. No matter how much coercion, praying, force of will or how many deep breaths or secret promises for paying it forward. And the big things were big. Like being on my last 50 pesos (about US$12.50), but still owing my hostel for two days of room and a tour and still having two full days in town ahead of me before I caught my pre-purchased bus ticket to Tucuman – and my card wouldn’t work in either of the two cash machines in town. And no way to contact my bank because there was no Skype at the internet cafes and the hostel wifi was busted. So stuff like that. It was Catch-22 after Catch-22. Each time I tried to solve a problem, the solution to that problem was actually just another problem that needed to be solved. And it all had to be done in Spanish, which I don’t speak.

It was the single most frustrating day I’ve had on this trip so far and I have to admit, I got to that point – you know, where you start to feel that little kid frustration, so powerless and overwhelmed. Well, I had a moment in the hostel kitchen when I broke down and shed a couple of hot tears while my voice, quavering, told my hostel-mate Laura from Buenos Aires, what was going on. She was great and told me that she’d help me sort out all the issues tomorrow.

As it turned out, Bertrand, another person from my hostel helped me solve my biggest challenge. He spent 20 minutes on the phone with the agency in Jujuy who booked my air travel to Mendoza and sorted the issue out for me by actually going to Jujuy and the agency to take care of it for me. Something I love about travel is that people can really step up and help one another. It’s great to be reminded that we can’t survive alone, that we depend on each other to make it through life’s difficulties, and that we do step up and help one another.

As far as cash? The wifi in the hostel got fixed, I Skyped my bank, and all issues are now resolved. I didn’t have to devise an elaborate plan to hop a bus with my last 50 pesos to some other town in the middle of the night, get money from another town’s ATM, and hop back to Cafayete to pay people before they noticed I was gone. Whew. That would have been an inconvenient drag.

Besides the whole curse thing, Cafayete is wonderful. As one of the top two wine producing regions in Argentina, it carries a beautiful mood about it. The town square is picturesque and charming. The people mellow. The countryside is stunning with tall desert mountains in beautiful deep clay and green colors. The fields of grapevines curling around their posts and strings, clusters of ripe fruit hanging in the hot sun.

In Cafayete, I love that a very hearty pour of any restaurant’s or café’s house Malbec is $1.10 USD… and it’s good. I love that my hostel felt so comfortable, clean, and homey, with actual attention to décor, a great center patio where we all could gather and have a glass of wine or a cup of mate tea and talk about our days, and a well maintained kitchen for cooking.

I loved the areas around Cafayete for their incredible, heart expanding beauty and proud history and heritage. I loved the people I met at my hostel, all of whom were entertaining, funny, sweet, helpful, wry, interesting, or a combination of all those traits.

I loved the House of Empanadas, who served me the best empanadas I’ve had either in Brazil or Argentina.

Details, you ask? Happy to.

One day, I took a tour in the afternoon to visit the major landmarks of the Quebrada de Cafayete, the region I passed through on the bus trip from Salta to Cafayete but was pretty much too sick to actually appreciate. So let me preface this next part with a disclaimer. If you’re tired of hearing about how unbelievably beautiful the mountains are in Northern Argentina, stop reading now. OK, you’re still reading. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It seems like, since I arrived in Argentina, the scope and scale of these mountains, their intensity in every way, have grown. The colors, the scale, the sheer force of them. First there was the Seven Colors Mountains in Humahuaca/Purmamarca. Then there was the next level, the Quebrada del Torro, with its height and its gauchos and its lonely beauty. And now Quebrada de Cafayete, with its tremendous scale, its rock formations so unique and unusual that they didn’t seem at all real, but maybe something out of an epic hero’s story or something on the far side of Mars. Rubies, rusts, oranges, pinks, clays, ochres… and also blues, violets, greens, and yellows. With their immensity so intense that the eyes just can’t see them, but flatten them out like a paint by numbers to just try and absorb them.

I saw these with Neil, who had just arrived at my hostel that day. Neil is a 31-year old freelance carpenter from Dublin, but living in Melbourne. A month ago, he was on a three day party streak in Melbourne and, while intoxicated during said three day streak:

· Decided that he had to travel to South America and figure out if he wanted to move there

· Logged onto a website, priced tickets and bought his one way plane ticket to Buenos Aires

· Packed and caught a taxi to the airport

· Rung up his Mum from the airport and told her he was leaving in an hour for South America and wasn’t sure when he was coming back

· Boarded the plane and immediately asked the flight attendant for a beer because he had “flight anxiety.” Sadly, he was turned down, the attendant saying that she couldn’t serve him until they took off. They took off, and he was served.

So Neil and I happened to be the only two people on this tour. There’s nothing like getting to know a crazy Dubliner over some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world.

We stopped at several key formations and vista points to appreciate the rock formations the likes of which rival or surpass Monument Valley, Utah and the scale of which makes Monument Valley look like building blocks from a child’s toy box. We saw the sweeping playas and peaks, the mountains stretching back millions of years and looking ahead for millions more. The naturally-formed amphitheater, which was once a huge cave in the rock then was opened up by eons of rain and wind erosion. In this amphitheater, Cafayete has an annual music festival to take advantage of the incredible acoustics this naturally-formed amphitheater provides. I wish I could explain the scale of this formation. My pictures, for the most part, don’t capture it. Except for one. In this picture, you see the layers of compressed minerals and rock in beautiful arching and swaying patterns. And then, at the lower right center of the picture, you see a tiny speck. That’s Neil. That’s the scale we’re talking about.

We also visited the Devil’s Throat, another incredible formation equally massive and equally as impressive and awe-inspiring as the amphitheater. Here, I kicked in my rock climbing skills and scaled some short and easy faces to crawl inside the Devil’s Throat. The colors, the patterns, the scale. I felt dumbstruck.

These places throw me into simultaneous states of awe and confusion. As I marvel at them and am rendered speechless by their ancientness and immensity, I also think of how we humans have this odd tendency to think the world revolves around us. When in reality, the world is more ancient and more powerful than we could ever comprehend. It will live on millions of years past any memory of our species and will continue to be part of the grand scheme as it came into being at the beginning of time. And even how ideas like time, when used with these places, are simply weak constructs that humans have created to try and classify and understand and place and compare ourselves next to them.

That’s what these places, this excruciating beauty and immensity, are doing with me. I’m properly put in my place and get a tiny glimpse into the immensity and wide open infiniteness of space and time and mass and energy and spirit and physics and math and art, which are flimsy expressions of something nameless, unspeakable, limitless. Something unclassifiable and indescribable. Something infinitely beyond anything we can ever grasp. And that’s right and perfect.

But I digress.

While in Cafayete, I also visited the ruins of Quilmes. I took this tour, about an hour outside Cafayete, with Guillaume from Nice, who had also arrived the same day as Neil. His dry French sense of humor and vow each day that he was going to quit smoking today (“no really, today for sure, I just want to finish this pack…”) prompted me poke him in the ribs with a wry smile. Dating about 1000 AD, Quilmes was a complex indigenous urban settlement that occupied about 30 hectares and was home to about 5000 inhabitants. These people survived contact with the Inca, which occurred from about 1480 on, but sadly, they couldn’t withstand the onslaught of the Spaniards who in 1667 deported the last 2000 inhabitants to Buenos Aires. The site itself is impressive. Though no building still stands, a good percentage of the foundations of the site have been excavated. The foundations start at the base of a large hill and crawl up the hill in steps. I hiked up the treacherous hill to see the community layed out before me, making geometric patterns in the hillside.

When I arrived on the site, I was given a brochure in “Spanglish” explaining the story behind Quilmes. But fundamentally, what the brochure really was was an angry tirade against the invaders who broke apart the Quilmes community, which was rich with culture, heritage, history, and indigenous identity. It spoke of never allowing this type of invasion to happen again and called out to readers to vehemently support the preservation of indigenous people and Pachamama (translation: Mother Earth). It also called for things like restitution and reclamation of the tribal lands. In short, Quilmes is a symbol of all the genocide and destruction that non-native people have brought to Argentina and how change must occur to preserve these indigenous cultures.

I’m often struck by how the history of colonialism the world over is so bloody and horrible. And how it’s still occurring today under the auspices of “spreading democracy and promoting a free-market economy.” Sigh.

I also mountain biked while in Cafayete. I wanted to head up to the path that would take me to the falls at the Rio Colorado. I came across a rattlesnake on my way. Yes, another snake. I didn’t see it, but I definitely heard it. I was walking my bike past a cluster of low rocks and I heard a rattle. As I got closer, it sped up, and as I passed by and went on my way, it slowed and stopped. And the funny thing was, I didn’t even realize what it was until later. Oops. I should know better being from Oregon and California. This is snake story #3, just for the record.

Also, on my mountain bike ride, I had the chance to ride past several beautiful fields of grapevines and wineries (and did some tastings, of course). It was quite picturesque, with the green vines and dusty earth set against the tall blue-green mountains.

When all is said and done, despite the travel challenges I faced, I come away from Cafayete loving its beauty and uniqueness.

I guess, then, that Cafayete isn’t cursed at all. It’s blessed.

Arrival in Cafayete and Wine

I’ve left the Salta area and am making my way down the country. As of this morning, I’ve pretty much changed the rest of my itinerary in Argentina. The thing about the Lonely Planet guide books are that they say something nice about everyplace. In other words, not every place is as nice as they say. I had a conversation with some travelers and Argentineans last night and this morning and they gave me some pretty pointed reviews about a couple of the places I was planning on spending three to four days at. Now, they’ll only be pit stops on my way elsewhere. This is all good stuff. It means that I’m going to lengthen my stay here in Cafayete (which is completely lovely) and lengthen my stay in Mendoza, which, the more I hear about, the more excited I become to go there. To think that it wasn’t on my itinerary at all when I initially planned this trip! I’m glad that I went ahead and dropped the relatively small amount of money to fly down there. It helps that the exchange rate right now four pesos to one USD.

My trip from Salta to Cafayete was mixed. It was my third straight day of being on a listing, tilting vehicle as it careened around multitudes of tight corners. My stomach started to lurch and my head was pounding so it was a little difficult to enjoy the absolutely unbelievable territory of the Quebrada de Cafayete, a massive gorge of towering and stunning proportions and incredible rock formations and colors. My cranky self was saying, “Yeah, more stunning mountains, uh-huh.” And the non-cranky part of me was saying, “Wow, incredible, absolutely and totally incredible!”

The way I’ve decided to resolve this is to take a trip back into the gorge in the afternoon to a few of the key landmarks and watch the sunset set the mountain’s colors on fire. I think it will likely be utterly spectacular.

My first day in Cafayete, I settled into my new hostel, a quiet, clean and roomy place just off the main square.

Then off to taste a few wines.

I visited the two most recommended wineries in the area, Bodega Nanni and Bodega El Transito. Argentina is specifically known for malbec, but I also tasted a cab, a tanat, and a torrontes. The interesting thing about this wine region is that it’s desert so that has a very intense effect on the grapes. The reds are all hot, meaning they have a high concentration of sugars that make the wine very alcoholic tasting. Most of the wines are in the 14% range. And most of the wines that they drink here, no matter a white or red, it’s meant to drink young, to drink now. Aging apparently won’t do any favor for these varietals.

The interesting this is that this also makes these wines perfect for what they eat a lot of here, and that’s red meat – beef, llama, goat, and other strong and gamey flesh. So it’s this perfect partnership. However, I’m so far not finding a lot of subtlety or dimension to the wines, which is what I’m really used to, and like in my favorite California, French, Australian and New Zealand wines. So I’m adjusting my expectations and thinking instead of how to appreciate this wine exactly for what it is and what it does. This has helped me begin to appreciate the straightforward characteristics of the wines made here.