Oh No! Who Let These Guys Into the Wine Tasting in Mendoza, Argentina

Dave ad I together make quite the traveling duo. He's dark skinned and locals often mistake him for at least partially Latino, and there is no mistaking the fact that I am a gringo. If someone walks up to the two of us without fail they will speak to him in Spanish and me in English, always. This has had it's advantages, but one thing that always made me laugh is when I order the bottle of wine with dinner they present the bottle of wine to Dave, because he has no idea what he is doing. Dave is the type of guy that a good selection of beer is Coors Origonal and Coors Light. I adimitedly am not much better but know enough to not look like an idiot (well, any more than usual).

So knowing that we would be going to the wine capital of Argentina Dave and I took it upon orselves to do some research on the finer points in wine tasting. We were very diligent an learned a lot of vocabulary like the five S's: 1) see 2)swirl 3)sniff 4)sip 5)savor. We learned key words that are often used to describe wines that we would be sampling, for instance the Malbec often is described as tasting like violets, fruit, or beer. The Cabenet Souvignon reaks of blackcurrants, eucalyptus, chocolate, and tobacco. Beyond that, we leared other common words in wine tasting descriptions such as mown grass, minerals, pepper, bramble fruits, and (my personal favorite) pencil shavings. Besides our vocabulary, we also took it upon ourselves to practice our pretentiousness. We became so good at the whole gig that we decided that wine tasting was not abiguous and pretentious enough yet and the second day of tasting we needed to up the antee some.

So we dressed in our finest trucker hats, workout shorts, and best socks and sandles combo, rented a couple of bike, and went out to show Argentina how wine tasting should be done. Like any good taster we started with our sparking whites which Dave described as being ¨surprisingly light for its darkness.¨ Not to be out done I decided that there was no adjective that was good enough to describe the sample and thus had to describe it as being ¨violently¨. I tell you, that describes it the best.

Sample two was a good (how we pernounced it) Cab-er-ett So-vig-non, to which I went first. Just the nose of the wine made me want to faint, but I pushed through and tried it only to angrly spray down the server exclaiming, ¨Why would you serve this Nazi boot polish?¨ I bet she learned her lesson. Dave actually enjoyed both his glass and mine, and to quoth him, ¨The Maggotty cheese sensation was balanced quite well with the hysteria of the obviously new barrels. It tasted so angry white boy polka.¨

After making a couple of recomendations to the other impressed tourist for Chared-o-nayse that was comfortably numb or more accurately like Lynn's track cletes (hey sis) we moved on to the next winery. This time we were introduced to a wine that neither of us had tasted. The Pee-not No-ire was quite good. It was so very electric that I had o take my finger out of the light socket. It reminded me of a tropial beach on a fall day, and Dave of the color yellow and Bob Barker's retirement.

The cement our fame into the wine tasting history books, Dave and I pulled a move that was described to me by a wine tasting legend who shall remain nameless (but his might begin with `A´ and end with `dam Pivetta´). After going through all the S´s it was so obvious what the wine tasted like. So I opened my eyes to the gathering crowd and announced, ¨It tastes like, like, like... grapes!¨ As everyone rolled their eyes and walked away, I couldn´t help but think how accurate the description was, nor why the owners has not personally invited me to stay as their permanent wine taster. I guess they just don´t tallent if it hits them on the taste buds.

Final Breakdown on Chile:

Country of Origin: Bolivia
Total time in country: 56 Hours
Music: Same-same, but different from the rest
People: Very happy to take my money.
Transport: Maybe some of the best in the world.
Landscape: We saw half of the country from the bus window, and it was as if someone was playing a loop of desert scene for the entire time.
Food: Worth every cent we paid, and there were a lot of them
Safety: There were safety belts on the bus
Gas prices: 648 Chilean Pesos per Liter (5.18 US dollars per gallon)
Surprised by: The pride in the voice of a Chileno when he told me that Chile was the second most expensive country in the Americas (second to the USA)
Final word: Damn, and I mean DAMN, get me out of here and step on it!
Next stop: Argentina

A Chile Shaped Chili

I've always wondered if Chile's namesake came from the fact that it is long and skinny. Not unlike a Chili Pepper. Then Dave ever so crudely bashed the idea to smithereens, reminding me that those who named Chile (a) don't speak English, and (b) spell the country's name differently. I still wonder though...

After living in relative comfort on pocket change in Bolivia, we were brutally awakened to the fact that Chile is in fact NOT Bolivia and prices reflected this. I'm sure there is some economic vocabulary word for the enjoyment that one gets by saving money and getting to do something cool, and therefore the opposite is also true. Case in point, while we walked around the driest desert in the world in Valle de la Luna near San Pedro de Atacama, seeing some of the most amazing countryside in the world, I couldn't help but give it a lethargic ¨yippee¨ and get easily distracted by all the other tourists that could not take enough tacky pictures of the lamest things (including themselves). I know, I know, I know! I am guilty if this as well, but at this time I couldn't help but feel sorry for all of the friends these people have back home that will have to sit through all the awful pictures (and video is worse) as these people share their trip and experiences. To my friends and family I apologize now, well in advance.

I realized though that I can't blame them. They are trying to appreciate the small time they have to appreciate the masterpiece that this country side is. The fact that they show up, say ¨yep this is cool¨, take the tourist photo, mark it off the list, and get back on the bus to go to the next place on the list is too critical. Especially when I considered the fact that I have traveled for almost three months since finishing Peace Corps so to some degree this slump I appear to be in should be normal. The more time one spends admiring something the less impressive the next thing gets. It's like walking through the Louve, the Vatican, or the Smithsonians. Eventually everyone gets to the point where they go, ¨Oh, another masterpiece, who wants a beer?¨

But then I remember what my other options are. Suddenly I feel like I may have missed something, maybe I'll go back for a second look.

Final Breakdown on Bolivia:

Country of Origin: Peru
Total time in country: 24 Days
Music: The national Andean music was a little hokey and redundent, but all the independent music was great.
People: They are friendly, helpful, and honest. They haven't figued out that they can charge a tourist more than a paisano.
Transport: You pay for what you get. We were only on a paved road for five of the 40+ hours of traveling we did.
Landscape: In the western half we saw all the different regions of Bolivia from marshland/jungle, to beautiful mountains, to high desert salt plains.
Food: As much as I wanted to continue to eat ceviche I thought it may not be the best idea in a land locked country. Llama and alpaca were good, but I still perfer goat to them.
Safety: I think the Bolivians were more worried about our saftey than we were.
Gas prices: 3.50 Bolivian Pesos per liter (2 US dollars per gallon)
Surprised by: It was harder to get an entry visa from the Brazilian Government than it was from the Bolivian Government
Final word: Bolivia (sometimes called the 4th World) is a great place with cheap everything and a range of things to see. It was a good vibe from a people that are still unjaded to the tourist, but I could see it changing within the next five years.
Next stop: Chile

Will You Pass the Pepper With the Salt House in Uyuni

We made it back to La Paz for the new year. After spending a week trapped there we figured we knew all the ropes to make for a good night out, but due to some bad Cuban food I was sadly in bed at 10:30 pm wondering why it felt like there was a three hundred pound midget sitting on my stomach trying to rip out his circus partner from inside my intestines. Our escape from La Paz was finalized despite the scare of a blockade on the road we were traveling. After the all nigth bus we climbed right onto an SUV and trip through the southern Bolivian salt flats, through the mountains, and finally to grandmother Chile's house.

For the advertised salt flat tour of three days we spent a total of four hours actually on the salt flats. Of these four hours three were spent in the car waiting for the rain to stop. The rest of the trip we spent in the truck doing stupid calculations because honestly there was nothing better to do. According to the guide, the salt flats cover 12000 square km (slightly smaller than Connecticut), and at the deepest points get up to six to seven meters thick (20 ft). That is a lot of salt that is farmed to sell for household use all over South America. How much salt you ask, there is so much salt that they cut it up to use as bricks to make houses, tables, chairs, and gravel sized salt is use floor hotels. It was certainly strange, and the most surreal location we had been since the floating reed islands on Lake Titicaca.

The salt flat is created from two tectonic plates move together, isolating an ocean, elevating and drying it over time. The ocean at the point of being closed off in Bolivia would be roughly the size of all the great lakes put together, or 100 times as big as the Great Salt Lake in Utah assuming they started with the same salinity. It weights roughly 34060 Tg (tetra grams, X 10^12), or enough to give each person on the planet 5500 Kilograms (11000lbs) of salt (almost an H2 Hummer and a half). If you were to farm all the salt for building, it would be possible to build 10,000 Hoover Dams. I realize that salt would not be the best material choice for a dam, but it gives you an idea of the size. Please make all the ¨engi-nerd¨ jokes you want. They are well deserved and very doubtful there would be anything I had not heard before. I really don't know of a better time killer for the rest of the two and a half day trip through the high desert to the border. Honestly I am just relieved we got out of La Paz.