July 4 and 5,2019: Mendoza Mentations--So Much More than Wine

Although I cannot imagine a more picturesque place for a vineyard, Mendoza is so much more than malbec.

LA DIFUNTA CORREA
She died & from
her breasts
her newborn babe
sucked life.

Her sanctuary
at the Inca’s lake
still fills
the flattened earth.

And here Cecilia offers
rocks & roses
where two condors bow to us
guarding the sky.

For a couple of days, the pirate and I set out to find the real Mendoza mostly on foot. And it was a wonderful adventure. 

Travelers tip: GOOD NEWS--If you come to Mendoza in the winter season, all the wineries are open and serving tastings. BAD NEWS--the art museums are closed. So after making a really nice long walk to the doorways of the cities three most mentioned art museums, only to find them closed for the winter school holiday period around their independence day, the curator at the Annexo museum took pity on us and told us to go to the Foundation Museum. We thought this was private art museum (silly us), but it was instead a museum about the founding of the city located at the spot on which the Spanish founded the original city in the 1500s. The plaza mayor contained the usual structures of the Spanish plaza, including the cabildo and church. There was also a market there and at one point a butcher shop. We learned a tremendous amount about the irrigation system (acequias) from the Mendoza River that made the settlement possible. Of course, the system copied what the local Harpe indigenous people were doing to irrigate their crops.Amazingly, the remnants of these initial canals are still visible on the city streets. Mendoza started with just twelve people. Current population is about a million.

A depiction of what the city might have looked like around 1800.

It is estimated that fewer than 80 Spanish settlers lived in the area before 1600, but later prosperity increased due to the use of indigenous and slave labor, and the Jesuit presence in the region. When nearby rivers were tapped as a source of irrigation in 1788 agricultural production increased. The extra revenues generated from this, and the ensuing additional trade with Buenos Aires, no doubt led to the creation of the state of Cuyo.

Indigenous beads in the museum

The pirate compares his fashion sense with inhabitants of the 17th century.

A slaughterhouse was once located on Plaza Mayor.

Water filtration system from days gone by. 

The museum is literally the site of excavation of the foundation of the cabildo.

Mendoza suffered a severe earthquake, aftershocks and subsequent fires in 1861 that killed at least 5,000 people. The Plaza Mayor was almost completely destroyed and the Jesuit church (which had been converted to a Franciscan church based on Jesuit objection to slavery of the indigenous people) still has its skeleton on the corner of the property. (P.S. Go Jesuits!)

The remains of the original church in Plaza Mayor.

The St Francis Church has been rebuilt closer to the new center of Mendoza and features the late Pope John Paul II and a statue of the virgin at the altar.

Pope John Paul II in the new St Francis Cathedral

St Francis cathedral wall

Since I’m tangentially on a religious subject, there is a saint in Argentina that I find fascinating. She isn’t recognized by the Roman Catholic Church,but she has many followers in parts of Argentina and Uruguay. Difunta Correa (the Dead Correa) was Deolinda Correa who went to find her husband who was involuntarily conscripted into battle. She became aware that he was injured and she attempted to cross the desert with her infant son to find her spouse. Unfortunately, during the transit, she ran out of water and died. According to the legend, days later she was found deceased by passing gauchos (apparently one of the gauchos was also a forensic pathologist who determined the time of death 😊),BUT the infant son was alive and still feeding from her breast. Her body is buried at the shrine city of Vallecita, near San Juan, and supplicants pray to her. If their prayer is answered, they bring emblems to her grave at Vallecita (things such as their wedding dress, a scale model of their home, a model car, etc.) and leave her water. The hillside where she rests in peace is littered with water bottles to quench her eternal thirst. There are also roadside shrines to her of which we saw many in San Juan province and people leave water bottles there as well. She is the patron saint of gauchos and truck drivers and there is an annual festival attended by up to 200,000 people. It’s one of the weirdest legends I have heard, but apparently a significant number of Argentinians are into a dead woman. By the way, in theory, the baby boy survived and lived a long and obscure life. His mother’s experience is reflected in the poem at the beginning of this post. 

When the city was rebuilt around a series of city squares specifically designed to increase survival should there be more seismic activity. The squares are equidistant empty in the middle , except for a fountain or occasional statue and lined by tall trees to keep buildings from falling onto the square. They are large and have central space for people to escape falling buildings and to gather in an emergency. We visited several of the squares and they are the centers of social life.

Plaza Independencia lit up at night is now the main city square about a mile from the original Plaza Mayor. 

From here, we proceeded to the San Martin Park which is a huge city park with many features including sports stadiums, eco-park, a rowing club, a large lake and statues and trees galore. The crowning glory of the park is the hilltop featuring a huge statue commemorating the battle in which Argentina gained its freedom from Spanish rule called Cerro de Gloria. That was our goal, but we saw many beautiful sights in between.

The gates of the city park were manufactured in Scotland for a Saudi sheik who then decided he didn't want them. They were purchased from a surplus catalogue by the city of Mendoza

One of many park fountains. This one installed during the Victorian era was almost removed due to mermaid nudity

We saw these Patagonian mara in the park.

The view from Cerro de Gloria

One of two stadiums in the park

The huge statue commemorating San Martin's victory and independence for Argentina (and later Chile and Peru.)

The pirate has clouds in his coffee on Cerro de Gloria.

San Martin is a larger than life sort of figure for both Chile and Argentina, as like Simon Bolivar (whom he assisted) in the northern countries of South America, he is the liberator . Argentinians celebrate their independence day on July 9^th. San Martin was born in Malaga and educated formally, then moved to Argentina where he became involved in their war for independence. Along with several other generals and the Army of the Andes, they were able to wrest Chile and Argentina (once a single nation) out of the hands of the crown. For this victory, San Martin was offered the political leadership of Argentina, but declined it and instead, moved to the coast of France. (Sounds wise to me!). He died in northern France after living a reasonably long and subsequently battle-free life. I am pretty sure the dude was NOT welcome in his homeland of Spain.  This very large and complicated statue pays tribute to San Martin and the Army of the Andes. There were multiple sculptors involved, but the principal sculptor was Uruguayan. This stands on top of the highest hill inside of the city limits of Mendoza and at the pinnacle of the large San Martin city park. There is a walking path to help get you up or down the hill , as the area is inaccessible to buses (but passable to cars and taxis!)

Dining in Mendoza is a really enjoyable experience and there are many excellent foodie choices. Think Napa Valley in that there are many world class restaurants, some of which you’ll find in wine magazines like Wine Enthusiast (which the pirate subscribes to.)  Most of us think Mendoza and Malbec comes immediately to mind, but they are purveyors of many types of distilled grape juices and grow both standard Rhone and Burgundy crops as well as unique ones such as Bonarda. We chose to eat at a lovely restaurant called Azafran which started as a grocery store and grew into an amazing culinary experience in which there are many open bottles of small production, non-exported Mendozan wines in the restaurant and you are welcome to drink from any of them. Take our advice and let the sommelier pair with your food choices. You can’t go wrong. Another nice feature of Azafran is that they accommodate numerous dining styles--- You can have the elaborate mega-tasting menu, a six course tasting menu, or they allow you to pick any number of courses and they just charge by the number you choose. Paul and I did a three course menu each and then traded plates halfway through. We weren’t able to eat it all, mind you, but we enjoyed what we had.^th century and after World War II. Consequently, Italian food is all over nearly every menu and you can get a pizza and gelato on every corner. Crazy delicious fresh pasta dishes populate every restaurant menu. Which leads me to the last restaurant we ate in in Mendoza—Maria Antioneta. This is a very small establishment right next to our second hotel (more about that in a minute). This is house made pastas and antipasto at its finest in a quiet intimate setting and we highly recommend it.

Dessert wines at Azafran from small producers.

A couple of things that bear mentioning here are:1. Argentine restaurants imbue you with generous East Tennessee size portions. Amazingly, obesity doesn’t appear to be a major issue. But I guess they aren’t eating every night in Azafran. At any rate, no need to order too many courses unless you have a gargantuan appetite. 2.  Italian immigrants flooded Argentina both at the turn of the 20th century and after World War II. So nearly every town, even the smallest,  is flooded with Italian restaurants and every restaurant has pasta on the menu.

Carrot ravioli at Josefina restaurant. Yes, carrot. And it was yummy.

Squash and burrata salad

Which leads me to another observation about Argentina (subtitle A Not So Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Airport). We were supposed to leave and go to Buenos Aires by aircraft on July 5^th, but on the way to the airport, we were informed that the pilots of the national airline, Aerolineas Argentina, decided to strike and ground all flights into Buenos Aires. Since we are on a group trip and have 43 people, the airline could not promise accommodation for such a large group (We have 43 people in the tour group)…and no one knew when the strike would end. They did arrange an express bus —to take a 14 hour overnight bus ride! The pirate and I discovered we could fly out on Norwegian Air the next morning (early) , so we opted out of the bus ride from hell. Actually, most of the group enjoyed the ride (they got in after us the following morning) and stayed up all night partying with bottles of wine they bought in Mendoza.  Sounds like they had fun, but I don’t think Paul and I would fit in all that well with an all night wine party anyway. We gratefully slept in a nice hotel room (the Diplomat) and got to B.A. on a two hour flight. That said, airline strikes are not uncommon in Argentina and typically last 1-2 days and nearly always, for purposes of making a point to the government, are scheduled at the beginning of a long holiday weekend. So if you travelling to Argentina and it is near a holiday, we don’t recommend you use Aerolineas Argentina. Fortunately, we had the $ to take care of the problem, enjoyed an extra night in Mendoza and enjoyed a nice Italian meal. My pocketbook is a bit lighter , but all’s well that ends that way, right?

"But, of all the people I met in South America, the Argentines were the least interested in the outside world or in any subject that did not directly concern Argentina. They shared this quality with white South Africans; the seemed to imply that they were stuck at the bottom of the world and surrounded by savages."

 Paul Theroux

Paul's Ponderings:  Mendoza is a pretty impressive place and we had a great time there, with a sort of "bonus" due to the airline strike.     It's a lovely tree lined place, quite South American, and not as bustling or European as Buenos Aires.     We had some great meals in town as well.   

It was a bit cold the second day, but we wandered about to the tune of about 10 miles of walking and it wasn't too bad overall.    Lots of closed museums as it turned out, but we hit a winner on the one about the city founding.    Then it was up the big hill to see the San Martin monument which was a very impressive thing and then a walk back down to the hotel but through the giant park and the university campus.   

Mendoza is definitely a place I'd come back to!