Post by Grubb This was on the window of a café in Colonia.
Author: Grubb
Future doctors? Pharmacists
Post by Grubb Passing a schoolyard in Colonia it was interesting to see that the kids were dressed like extras on the set of Grey’s Anatomy. Wardrobe as destiny? Does a dirty lab coat get you a bad grade? What about that poor boy sulking in the corner who wants to be a fisherman when…
Game of empires
Post by Grubb Colonia is on the Rio de la Plata an hour’s ferry ride from Buenos Aires. Standing on one of the jetties fingering off the coast of Colonia, I felt like I was gazing at the Atlantic Ocean, but it was only the wide mouth of the Rio de la Plata which served…
Out of the blue into the brown
Post by Grubb. Talking to an American woman we ran into at the airport in El Calafate we found out that, coming back from the Iguazu Falls, she had spent a few days in Montevideo. How was it? She grimaced, “The water was brown!” So yesterday, after flying in from Mendoza, we took a ferry…
San Martin’s short cut
Post by Grubb. In 1817, at the beginning of his campaign to liberate Chile and Peru from Spain, San Martin followed a river out of Mendoza, Argentina and led his army into the Andes. Since then that river has been dammed to regulate the amount of water flowing into the acequias for the vineyards. The…
The men and their lenses
Post by Grubb. Yesterday we had a guide take us up into the Andes. With us was a couple, Nick and Patricia, from Rio de Janeiro, and a middle aged man, Bjorn, from Norway but now living in Great Britain. The guys had bonded the day before during a wine tour over the fact that…
Thank you, Walter White
Post by Grubb. Whenever Argentinians ask us where we’re from in the US and we say, “New Mexico,” their initial reaction is puzzlement, the usual confusion about whether we’re one of the united states crossing their minds. We attempt to clarify by adding, “Albuquerque.” Blank looks. Then the clincher, the option that always works: “Breaking…
Party gals
Post by Grubb. For three women in our winery group tour, this was their second winery excursion in as many days. They had taken part in a farewell party that concluded a Patagonia/Mendoza tour they had been on and were up till 2 drinking and singing karaoke the night before. The tour had been offered…
Bottoms up!
Post by Grubb. At each winery we stopped at on our tour of the Luján de Cuyo spread of vineyards, the conclusion of the brief inspection of gigantic stainless steel fermentation tanks along with taking in the vinegary odors of the racked oaken wine barrels led to the long table where vintages were sampled. Usually…
Wine with the tennis jock
Post by Grubb. Tooling through the Luján de Cuyo vineyards noted for their Malbec, I was often, when we were seated for wine tasting, given the chair next to the traveling tennis player from Toronto. He and his young wife had flown into Mendoza from Santiago where he had played a match. We didn’t talk…