By Alyssa Maunders
Since the last blog article, Leigh and i have travelled even further South. several night busses and many cups of bad coffee later, we arrived in Mendoza, Argentina. we were luckily
Wine patiently sits here for 4 years.
accepted at the last minute by a girl and her boyfriend for couch-surfing Mendoza is a really nice city, it is pretty big but is easy enough to navigate. One of the really great things is the amount of large trees that occupy the sidewalks. Every few meters there is a towering, leafy tree to keep the streets shady. It was really nice with all the walking around we did.
Mendoza also has some wonderful free things for the public like street music, craft markets and evening circus shows with music. This is the first place in Argentina that we began to see craft beers and boy do i miss those New Mexican breweries! I cant wait for all my friends to buy me one when i return…speaking of alcohol, no trip to Mendoza (famous for it´s vinos and bodegas) would be complete without a bike tour to some vineyards. so, we did just that.
We took a bus up to the region of Mendoza called “Maipu,” yes pronounced “my-poo”, and rented bikes with some girls we met through our couchsurfing host. The price is really cheap, like $8 for the day, and you ride around with your map of wineries and decide which ones to visit. upon entering, you pay to have a tour of the property and a tasting. we did that several times and then ended up at an olive farm where we had an amazing tasting of local olive oil. that might have been the best part, and it came with a glass of wine.
Happy Hour Vinoteca
We ended the day at a vinoteca for a happy hour deal that came with an explanation of how to identify the aromas in your wine sample guided by the owner himself. This man was incredibly 
nice and genuinly loves wine and talking with others about it. In fact, he is a member of workaway and has volunteers come stay with him and his family and in exchange, the volunteers go out around town and pass out flyers to promote the business.
By the end of the evening, all of the tourists in the shop had been invited to his house for an “Asado,” a BBQ with lots of Argentinian meat. Leigh is a vegetarian so he bought some veggies. We all pitched on food and Christian, the owner of the vinoteca, 
supplied the wine, of course.
The food was great and the company included some girls from England and France, some Germans, Leigh and I, a guy from Bermuda, which at this point in my life had been forgotten as an actual country but was always followed by the word “triangle,” and some locals of Maipu.
The bike tour was really fun and the weather was incredible; blue skies, bikes and wine, what more can you ask for.
Alyssa Maunders
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