Last week, I made my third trip to Mendoza, Argentina, which is about a 1.5 hour flight from Buenos Aires. Mendoza is a charming city that sits along the border of Chile. They are most famous for the excellent Malbec wines they produce in that region.
Every year (the last week of February through the first week of March), there is a national celebration that takes place in Mendoza called Vendimia, which is the celebration of the harvesting of the grapes used to make the wines.
For a full week, the streets are full of parades, there is a HUGE concert at an ampitheater right outside of the city and plenty of opportunities to drink wine nonstop. The first night was the first parade, which featured local beauty pageant queens on floats throwing fruit and wine to those watching. Prior to the parade, I actually had the chance to make my own wine by jumping on the grapes! The second day was a more family-friendly parade with the same contestants and the following day was the concert/performance.
The performance is made up of more than 2,000 local residents who spend nearly six months of the year preparing for the shows. Prior to the performance, I went through a transformation - shaving my head entirely bald to raise money for cancer research, so as you will see in some of the pictures I have hair and in others I don't.
The best part was being able to catch up with my friends Belen and Javier and their family, where they treated me to an asado (BBQ) at Belen's mother's house.
For more photos, click here. To see a short video of the concert (although it doesn't do it justice), click the video link below:
1 comment:
Nice article and pictures !
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