Wine and luxury in Mendoza!

Although we went a few days/weeks with only a few posts, we are going to start catching up before our time in South America is over! (We leave in less than 2 weeks!) As with most posts, there are a million things I want to tell you about our awesome week in Mendoza and somehow I have to organize them and probably leave out a few things so that this post doesn´t become unwieldy! A few days ago we left Mendoza, the most famous wine region in Argentina, after having spent six days enjoying the city, the surrounding valleys, the Natonal Wine Festival, and the outrageously luxurious Sheraton Hotel! You are probably wondering after several weeks of hostels, "They stayed at the Sheraton?" Well, lucky for us, during his time as a consultant, Amit built up several thousand Starwood points, which are redeemable for free nights at several very nice hotel chains. So we decided, given the romantic reputation of Mendoza, that we would cash in some of these points and enjoy the city in the lap of luxury! And so we did: an absolutely beautiful suite-style room with a view of the mountains, wine tasting all day in the lobby, cocktails and hors d`oeuvres in the evenings, a HUGE gourmet breakfast every morning in the panoramic top floor members´ lounge, and delicious desserts unexpectedly delivered to our room several evenings during our stay, all for free! Admittedly, we got a little (or a lot!) spoiled during our stay and so arriving at our next accomodations (a truly lovely hostel in San Juan) was quite a shock to the system! But for ANY of you who are considering visiting Mendoza (on a larger budget than ours), we HIGHLY recommend the Sheraton Hotel! Other than enjoying the incredible ammenities at our hotel, our visit in Mendoza had two focuses... first, touring wineries and tasting wine in the region, and second, attending the events of the National Wine Festival, called Vendimia (Spanish for grape harvest). Similar to the Napa wine-making region, Mendoza has several small valleys around the city where the vineyards and wineries are located. Despite the recommendation from the Sheraton that we hire a private driver (for $200 a day!), we decided to take the public bus out to the valleys and then rent bicycles to ride from winery to winery. It was GREAT fun and a very good way to enjoy the scenery as well as the wineries... and don´t worry, a few tastings didn´t affect our bicycle driving! Our two favorite wineries (one from each day we toured) were Carinae, a very small winery in Maipu that only makes about 60,000 (very tasty!) bottles a year, and Weinert, a much larger winery in Lujan de Cuyo that uses a very old fashion aging process for their wines... they keep some wines in the oak barrels for 10 years! In fact, at Weinert, we saw wines in the barrel from 1994 and wines still aging in the bottle from 1977!!! Amazing that they are still drinkable, but the sommalier said that they are extremely tasty and will even continue to improve for another 10 years. Overall, the touring was fantastic, and the experience will definitely give us a greater knowledge of Argentinian wines when we are searching for great bottles back in the US. And finally, a few stories from the National Vendimia Festival. You are probably thinking the same thing we thought before we got to Mendoza for the festival... wine festival in Mendoza means lots of wine everywhere you look! Ironically, although there is a LOT of wine available in Mendoza all year long, this festival is actually more like a Miss America Pageant than a drunken street party. The main events of the festival are two parades, one on Friday night and one on Saturday morning, where the regional "Queens" (each elected from the various neighborhoods around Mendoza) ride through the streets on floats, throwing (get this!) produce, most often grapes (but sometimes melon or eggplant!), to the crowd, and then a huge musical performance on Saturday night in a large open-air amphitheater in Mendoza´s main park where they announce the Miss Vendimia winner. Although the Sheraton didn´t usually do a good job recommending budget activities to do in Mendoza, they were able to get us two highly coveted tickets to the Saturday night performance, which was outstanding! The show included nearly 500 singers and dancers performing a fictional but symbolic story of one winemaker´s youth and young adulthood in Mendoza, growing his first grape crop and building a winery. The performance and emceeing was all in Spanish, but we got the gist and really enjoyed the event. And, in case you were wondering, the Queen from San Martin won and the Queen from Godoy Cruz was the runner-up! So after a wonderful visit to Mendoza (other than Antarctica, it was probably my favorite place on our trip so far!), we said goodbye a few days ago and set off for our next few adventures in San Juan, Tucuman, and Salta provinces! Keep a look out for more stories and pictures to come! Lots of love, Dena & Amit

The cute company car of Bikes and Wine, who´s motto is "Don´t Worry Drink Happy" Amit outside of Luigi Bosca, one of the largest, most famous, most beautiful wineries we visited The picturesque vineyard at Luigi Bosca Amit and Dena in front of a huge oak barrel (actively used) at Weinert, proudly sporting the Napa Valley t-shirts furnished by Dena´s grandmother The winning Queen (before she won) on her float in the Vendimia Parade Another great float at the parade The Saturday night performance The 15 Queens on Saturday night before the winner is announced

Dena gets a Lu-Lu

It is my incredible pleasure and honor to introduce to the world Dena 2.0. Similar to Dena 1.0 in many ways, Dena 2.0 tends to worry less than her predecessor. She adheres to the "zormim" (Hebrew for "flowing") school of travel, where planning is not required - you can arrive at your next destination with no reservations, no guide book, and you just hope for the best. It was in this way that we arrived in Viña del Mar, Chile. We headed there from Pucon after hearing from some Chileans we had met that it had a very nice beach. With no guidebook and no information, our first stop was the tourist information stand. The clerk was helpful but a little pessimistic about our chances, as it turns out we arrived in the midst of the 50th annual Festival del Viña. Dena 1.0 would have been very stressed out by this, but Dena 2.0 took it in stride, and we eventually found a decent place to stay within our budget. The physical manifestation of Dena 2.0 is her Lu-Lu, a beaded hair accessory (technically called a Trenza, but dubbed a Lu-Lu by all the Israeli girls we have been meeting). Now, whenever Dena 1.0 tries to surface, Dena 2.0 just has to channel the worry-free power of the Lu-Lu. While in Viña, we also spent a day in Valparaiso, a port city between Viña and Santiago. It was a true labyrinth of a city, where maps are all but useless. We spent most of the day wandering around aimlessly, getting lost and then finding ourselves. Having nowhere to go and nothing to do is one of the great pleasures of this trip! That's all for now (brief post for once)... Stay tuned for updates on Mendoza as we continue to work our way North through Argentina! -Amit & Dena P.S. I almost forgot to mention the store in Viña that sold nothing but avocados. Now THAT is my type of shopping!

The flower clock outside Viña Dena gets a Lu-Lu (1 of 2) Dena gets a Lu-Lu (2 of 2) Dena 2.0 shows off her new Lu-Lu A mural in Valparaiso A view of Valparaiso (when the sun finally emerges) One of the many "ascensores" in Valparaiso that carry people uphill and downhill (for about US$0.50).

Three action-packed days in Pucón!

As we may have indicated in past posts, we are running into a LOT of Israelis on our travels. In fact, at most of the hostels where we have stayed (all recommended to us by none other than Amit´s Israeli cousin, Eitan!), nearly all of the other guests are Israelis! So, as you would expect, we have made quite a few Israeli friends. One of the many benefits of this is that we get all the insider tips that Israelis pass to one another about traveling in South America... where to stay, where to eat, and what to do. So while we were in Bariloche, we were talking with one of our new friends, Sivan, and she told us about a great place to visit in Chile where we could hike up a volcano, raft down a whitewater river on a boogie board, and rapel down waterfalls, all in 3 days! This magical place was Pucón, only six hours away, and so a few days later, off we went with Sivan and her friend Hila to see about some adventuring! I have to apologize, though... we are a few days behind on our blog posts, and we have actually left Pucón now, but here is the tale of our three adventures in this great city. We arrived in Pucón on a Tuesday morning (one day behind Sivan and Hila) and found our friends walking around the (very small!) city. They had just purchased their three adventures, but they were beginning that same day, so we decided to relax for a day and join them for adventuring the next day. We visited one of the local travel agencies, purchased our three-day package, and prepared for our first adventure the following morning... hiking up Volcano Villarica. Now I have to admit, while the hike was extremely challenging, we did cheat a tiny bit. We woke up at 5 AM, donned our gear, took a bus to the bottom of the volcano, and then (along with most of the group) took a chairlist halfway up the volcano. Oops! But it was okay, because with two more days of adventuring in front of us, the last thing we wanted to do was kill ourselves on the first day and then limp through the remaining activities... and don´t worry, the remainder of the volcano hike was plenty challenging to earn our dinner! See the pictures to the right... we hiked on glaciers for most of the way up, and then enjoyed a high-speed SLIDE (similar to but much longer than the video you´ve seen on our blog) down the glaciers on the way back. At the top of the volcano, we were a bit disappointed not to see a huge pool of glowing, molten lava... but we were VERY impressed with 1) the unbelievably nasty sulfur smell coming out of the volcano, along with some dramatic white smoke, 2) the cool gurgling noise produced by the volcano every 10 minutes or so, and 3) the gorgeous views! All in all, a great first volcano experience! Hopefully we´ll have the chance to visit more volcanoes in the future and perhaps see some molten lava! On our second day of adventuring, we again joined our friends Sivan and Hila to raft down a local whitewater river (class II and III) with no raft!!! This activity is called body rafting, although they do give you a boogie board designed for the sport. This was something we´d never seen in the US (perhaps because it is a bit too dangerous for our lawsuit-loving society!) and was really a huge thrill. Class II and III rapids are not usually very exciting in a regular raft, but when you are at water level, riding through rapids with nothing separating you from the waves, swells, and huge holes but a little board, they are a BLAST! See more pictures to the right. The entire ride was only about 45 minutes, but with the bumps and bruises we got from hitting shallow rocks with our thighs and feet, we probably couldn´t take much more. After rafting, we took a short nap and then went to the grocery store with our friends to buy ingredients for a group dinner (menu: steak, mashed potatoes with onions, homemade babaganoush, sauteed mushrooms, salad, and ice cream cake for dessert!). While we have been to some great restaurants here in South America, this may have been one of the best meals of our trip! On day 3, our friends left for a multiday trek in the area while we took off on our rapeling adventure. The rapeling trip took us to a local river/creek where we had the opportunity to rapel down three waterfalls and hike through beautiful, lush canyons filled with water up to our waist. It felt like we were in a secret rain forest... absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, I am not going to go into much detail on this activity for a few reasons. First, we don´t have any pictures yet. The guides take pictures of you during the trip and then burn a picture CD and provide it to you the next day. We had scheduled to leave Pucón that night, however, and so we had to ask some new Israeli friends we met in Pucón to pick up the CD on our behalf and send it to us in the US or Israel (whichever would be easier). The other reason I won´t talk much about the adventure is that the trip took MUCH longer than expected and we were so close to missing our evening bus that I almost had a heart attack... so too many details bring back unneeded anxiety :)! As soon as we have pictures, we will post them and you can see how beautiful and exciting the experience was! Overall, our sidetrip to Pucón was a HUGE success! These adventures were well worth the detour into Chile, and positioned us to travel a bit further north to enjoy the Chilean beaches before returning to Argentina for the Mendoza Annual Wine Festival! Several more posts are in the works... so look forward to more updates from Amit & Dena´s Great Adventure!!! Love, Dena (& Amit)

Our hike up Villarica The stinky but cool gas coming out of the top of the volcano The gorgeous, rewarding view from the top of the volcano Amit and the view! Amit sliding down the volcano Our friends Sivan, Hila, Roi, and Amit (from left to right) after our delicious, homecooked dinner The body rafting group (we are in yellow helmets, Sivan is in white, and Hila is in blue) Sivan, Dena, and Amit getting ready to go down the rapids The two of us going down a small rapid The whole group going down a bigger rapid (on the biggest rapids the guides said it was critical for safety to stay very close together... as you can see, we are very close together!)