Back at Mr. Hugos, we got on our bicycles and peddled on to our first stop. We arrived at our first tour, which was a place that made homemade olive products, chocolates, and liquors. We got a small tour, and then the tasting began. The lady set out a ton of jars of dulce de leche flavors, oils, peppers, olive spreads, liquors, and chocolates. She asked us which ones we wanted to try, and I tried two different flavors of dulce (chocolate and hazlenut), a black olive spread, balsamic vinegar, spicy picante spread, some liquors, and some of the chocolates. Everything was delicious, and it was all homemade including the olives, which were grown right outside. We each bought some jars of our favorite olive and picante products and then peddled back to Mr. Hugos eo drop off our stuff.
After we put our new purchases in a locker, we headed for the beer garden. It was a really chill place in the middle of nowhere, where a small family and their dogs lived and ran a small restaurant that served empenadas and pizza. We sat on a cushion on the dirt outside, and the warm sun felt really good as we ate some empenadas, porkskins and drank a glass of homemade beer. Next we went to an actual winery called Trapiche, which is the most modern one in Maipu. The dogs from the beer garden had followed Mat and I the whole way on our bik s. Trapiche gave us a tour and then a tasting, and this is where we met two guys from Australia, Johnny and Ben, and then two guys and a girl from England. After Trapiche, we peddled for a few miles to another winery called Familia de Tomasso. We ate some lunch there, and then got a tour of the winery followed by a tasting. Here, we met Eoghan (Owen) from Ireland. Eoghan followed us to the next winery called Vina Al Cerno, where we ran into the Australians again. The place only had 15 minutes until closing time, so they gave us a quick tour and then the five of us split 8 glasses of different types of wines.The city was shutting down by the time we finished our wines, and to make sure we were safe there was a policeman waiting to escort us back to Mr. Hugos. He followed behind us with his lights on the whole way, with a line of cars backed up behind him. It was exhilarating flying down the road on our bikes in front of him, as the sun was setting behind the mountains to the left of us all the way back. We finally made it back to Mr. Hugos, where the English couple, the other English guy, and a French guy were all sitting around a table talking to Mr. Hugo. Mr. Hugo pulled chairs up around the table for us, handed us some glasses, and filled them with red wine. There we all sat for about two hours – Americans, French, English, Australian, Irish, and Argentinians – talking and laughing like we were all good friends as Mr. Hugo made sure our glasses stayed full. We caught a bus back to Mendoza, and then Mat, Oeghan, and I met at a nice steak restaurant for dinner.
