sparkly sneakers DO have traction!

This past weekend I, along with 8 other girls and John went to Mendoza, Argentina's wine country. We left for Mendoza on an overnight bus with my bag full of warm comfy clothes, gloves, and of course my sparkly nine west sneakers (the only tennis shoes I had).

The overnight bus was close to luxurious. Who would have known buses were made like that? The seats were synonymous to first-class plane seats with recliners and plush leather armrests. They even gave us dinner and breakfast (all of which contained meat, even the desert--welcome to Argentina).

After getting a whole five minutes to settle in our hostel, we were off to our half day wine tour. We rented bikes from a place that advertised free wine (so why not right?) and rode from winery to winery to become connoisseurs of wine-- or just to drink it. The first place we peddled to was a wine museum that had posters of the different types of grapes, old wine making machinery, and barrels and barrels of wine. It was funny to see how even hundreds of years later our wine making process has not really changed, minus the unhygienic foot crushing of grapes. After tasting their wonderful malbec (a type of wine made from malbec grapes that are in Argentina) we were off to our next excursion.

The next place was possibly my favorite. It was a chocolate, liquor, and marmalade store. A mere 15 pesos bought us a taste of their wonderful freshly made balsamic and olive oil, three desert liquors, and marmalades. I felt pretty daring trying the chocolate mint and hazelnut liquors but I still did not have it in me to try the Abstince (alcohol banned in the US for making people hallucinate) that the other girls shooted.

Too many shots later we all found ourselves a little wobbly on our bikes but my sparkly sneakers proved strong enough to aid in my biking despite the teasing they received from the others (in the US we could have gotten dui's...or perhaps bui's?). Our next journey was to a beer garden. Although it was a long bike ride, the amazing pizza and beer at this place made the soreness of our butts worth it. The 'beer garden' was a small hut with weird artwork and random cushions for seating. There was nobody there but the man who owned the garden. We ordered the best pizzas I have ever tasted along with light, dark, and red beers. We learned that 3 small pizzas was not enough between 9 starving people, but because it literally took the man 30 minutes to make each pizza (I don't think he was used to serving more than 2 people...ever) so we decided to go the last winery of the night, Trapiche.

Trapiche was the prettiest winery we had seen yet. It was once an important center for wine in Argentina and was later abandoned. Recently the Trapiche family bought the vineyard and transformed it into one of the most famous in Mendoza. There we saw how wine was stored and aged in barrels. The lady who showed us how to taste wine analyzed the color and stuck her ENTIRE nose in the glass to smell it. She tried to get us to smell the hint of vanilla and chocolate and even though I pretended to agree I really smelt nothing but grapy wine.

The next day we took a bus out to the Andes mountains for tracking, repelling, and hot springs. In North Carolina I am used to hiking on dirt trails that do not really require hard core equipment, so naturally I once again thought my sparkly sneakers would suffice because they did perfectly the day before. However, when we got out there, I realized that 'tracking' was not anything like I thought it was. We basically climbed an entire mountain, and while everybody made fun of the shoes, somehow I fell a lot less than the people around me. The way down was a different story, and while they faltered a little, making me slip down some of the slopes, they helped me make it down the mountain...so HA.

After the tracking I did the most daring thing I have ever done (not that thats really saying much...I am such a darpoke), I went repelling. Basically repelling is being attached to a harness and repelling down a huge stone mountain. It was the scariest thing I have ever done, but was such a rush. And yet again, the sneakers sparkled in the sunlight on the tall mountain, and helped me make it down safely, while still being cute.

Overall this weekend made me realize a couple of things:
1. riding a bike while drinking wine is not easy
2. random huts in the middle of nowhere have the best beer
3. take real tennis shoes when going out of the country
4. nine west is pretty reliable