From white water to red wine

Mendoza is a place most people visit for two reasons, adventure sports and wine. With some White water rafting and a cycle tour through the vineyards we put a tick in both of those boxes.

On Valentines day we jumped into a van early in the morning (well 9.30..) which would take us about an hour or so up into the Andes where there are grade 3 - 6 white water rapids. We can safely mention this now since we got out unharmed and it is unlikely our insurance agents will ever read this. At the basecamp we were kitted out with our wetsuits, life jackets, water resistant sweaters, helmets and anythign else you needed to look absolutely ridiculous but feel a bit more comfortable on/in the river which fed from melted glaciers in the mountains very high up in the Andes. The water up there is cold, very cold we noticed soon after our safety briefing. A briefing that surmounted to three pieces of simple advice

• dont fall out
• if you do, try to get back in the raft quickly
• if the safety kayaks try to save you, try not to flip them over, they will get wet and upset.

Which all sounds very sensible.

So after some exercises to make sure we'll not do something stupid we set out on the river,which seemed a bit calm for white water rafting. And in adition, the water looked very much more chocolatey than white. The water was a bit low and slow, but even so we did hit a few rapids that were quite interesting where we got completely soaked and nearly fell out. We kept in the raft all the way though, and we had loads of fun.





Since this was Valentines day we went out for dinner, traditional Argentinian parrillada, with some nice local wine. Dinner was followed by a nice 'death by chocolate' dessert accompanied by a chocolate Marguarita. All in all a nice way to spend Valentines day.







Next morning, almost as early, we were again picked up by a van - this time to be deposited in wine country, where we picked up our bikes and headed out among the vines. The Maipu Wineries maily focus on red wine and the most popular is Malbec, which is one of our favourite varieties so we had high hopes for this day. Though not as scenic as the Barossa valley or Marlborough, the wines certainly made up for it and some of the vineyards had stunnig views of the Andes and endless fields of grapes and olives. If you get a change to lay your hands on some Tempus Alba or Vina Maria, take it, they had some varieties that were fantastic. And true to our habits, we are now carrying some of Mendozas fines grape produce in our bags.