Summer in the city

 Summer time, and the living in Mendoza is definitely easy.  Its buildings are not the most attractive in the world – the old ones were destroyed by earthquakes. But life is lived on the streets, not in the buildings. The heat of the day is offset by thousands of trees that shade every street and restful square in the city centre, watered by irrigation canals that separate road and pavement.  And a huge park, almost as big as the city centre, provides a landscaped, leafy recreation area.

After dark, when it is very slightly cooler than the day, the squares are full of families at play, entertained by impromptu theatre and music performances or just chatting with friends. They are happy and relaxed and so am I.

It is light until 9pm and in summer, the warmth of the day relaxes into long, balmy nights. This is a European city in South America, but a very different one to Buenos Aires.  Though it was established several centuries ago, the 19^th and early 20^th century immigrants from Spain and, especially, Italy have made this city their own.

In the heat of Mendoza, I begin to understand the rhythm of Argentinean life; it revolves around food.  A light breakfast -  usually a sweet croissant and coffee anytime up to 10.30.  Lunch around 1 or 2pm followed by the afternoon siesta, with shops reopening at 4 or 5pm.  Around 6 or 7pm another snack is called for, coffee and cake, or Italian ice-cream, or a glass of wine and antipasto. No self-respecting Mendozan would dine before 10pm, and by 11, restaurants and bars, their tables spilling out onto the streets are full. Along with the town’s wonderful ice-cream bars they do a roaring trade until the early hours of the morning – or maybe later.  By 2am, my northern European time clock has given up, and I head for bed.      

Mendoza Mountains Part 2 - In the steps of the Liberator

Mendoza is just 6 hours by road from Santiago, the capital of Chile, and we considered making the full journey and spending a few days across the border.  But then we found out that the buses often spent another 6 hours at the checkpoint while the border guards checked every article brought into the country, and decided against it.

Instead we followed Route 7 to Paso de Los Libertadores, the border with Chile, and turn back. Our route traces that of General Juan San Martin at the head of the Andean army that liberated first Argentina, then Chile and finally Peru from Spanish rule. While they did it on foot or on the back of a mule, we are in the relative comfort of an air-conditioned mini-bus.  

The journey is spectacular.  The carefully cultivated vineyards soon give way to the barren, slopes Mendoza’s own mountain range before climbing into the Andes through the Uspallata Valley and skirting Mount Aconcagua, at 6,962m the highest peak outside the Himalayas.  Of course, it is shrouded in cloud when we pass by. 

Our first stop is the reservoir that provides all of Mendoza’s water and much of its electricity. It is surrounded by desert mountain scrub, a clear sign that without the Andes snow, life would be impossible here.  And there are real fears about the effect of global warming.  Each year there is less snow, which means less water.  The Mendoza River is in full flood at the this time of year, but the channel of rushing water, chocolate brown with mineral sediment carried down from the mountain, covers barely a quarter of the river bed. But the locals have developed ingenious irrigation systems and the few towns and villages we pass on the road to the border announce themselves with rows of trees and green fields standing out against the arid landscape.

General San Martin’s army was not the first to pass this way.  The Inca civilisation spread through the Andes from Cusco, hundreds if not thousands of miles north.  One of their favoured spots was the hot thermal springs along the route.  Legend has it that the bridge across the river here, Puente del Inca, was formed by a line of Inca warriors stretching out to form a bridge for their ailing leader to reach the healing springs.  In reality the remarkable bridge is calcified water, created by the minerals in the springs.  There is no public access to the springs – this ended in the 60s, when the spa hotel there was swept away by an avalanche.  Judging by the roadside stalls, they are now mainly used to calcify old trainers to sell to passing tourists. 

The lorry drivers who regularly use the route are a superstitious bunch, leaving offerings at makeshift roadside memorials that commemorate unofficial “saints”.  The signature red shrine of Gaucho Gil is one of the most popular, but he is unlikely to be canonised. A Robin Hood figure, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, he was eventually sentenced to hang, proclaiming from the gallows his new mission to save the lives of those travelling the roads.  Another shrine to a woman who died in the mountains but whose baby lived by suckling at his dead mother’s breast is bizarrely marked by piles of plastic water bottles.

We manage the journey safely without their blessings, but instead of going through the tunnel to Chile, take a narrow, hair-curling dirt track to climb the 800m in 2 kilometres to the top of the pass where a statue of Christ marks the border between the two countries.  At over 3,800m and in dry, windy conditions the air is thin and scrabbling over the scree to get to the best viewpoints leaves you short of breath.  But once again we fared better than the Andean army, who were forced to eat onions and garlic to ward off altitude sickness.  It took them 22 days to reach Santiago.  I’m betting they won their freedom by breathing on the Spanish forces they met there.

Wine and Mountains in Mendoza - part 1

We are up early to fly to Mendoza – just under 2 hours flying time from BA.  It’s a clear day and we fly over vast areas of cultivated land, all of it flat – which makes the sudden appearance of the snow-capped Andes all the more dramatic.

Mendoza is even hotter than BA, but it is the dry heat of a city in a desert, which has only 6cm of rain a year.  Yet it is the main wine producing region of Argentina. How is this miracle performed?  We hire a guide, and in an attempt not to drink too much of the wine opt for a bicycle tour of the vineyards.

We visit two boutique wineries in the Lujan de Cuyo area a few miles out of town.  And in the baking heat with virtually no rain, we want to know how they can grow anything here.  The answer is simple.  The melt water from the Andes is harvested as carefully as any crop and used not only to irrigate the vineyards, but to provide drinking water and 60% of the city’s electricity.

The combination of the Malbec grape, for which the region is famous, and the hot sun produces a wine that is rich, fruity and heavy.  The first sample we taste, at Filosphos bodega is almost port-like in its intensity.  We cycle on to our second bodega, Clos de Chacras, which is a new winery with an old history.  The pretty pink adobe building with thick concrete vats forming the cellars was built in 1921 but fell into disuse until the granddaughter of the original owner brought it back to life.  The bodega combines new technology for sorting and crushing the grapes with distinctly old technology of fermenting in concrete underground vats. 

The team here are eager to show off their bodega and the 3 wines they produce, not all pure malbec.  We are obviously tourists rather than buyers, but nonetheless have a lengthy conversation with them on where and how the grapes are grown, how they are watered – 37 drops per plant – shaded from the sun etc, etc.  It’s clear that the taste of the wine is largely determined on the vine.  A far cry from the days when Mendoza’s table wine was so ropey it was watered down with water before drinking.   No need to water it down now. A juicy Argentine steak would be the perfect accompaniment, but we are thankful for the cheese and biscuit to soak up the alcohol during our tasting.  The cycle back was only slightly wobblier than before!