La Vendimina

So the first week in Mendoza just happened to be the week of La Vendimia (wine harvest festival).  This isn’t your average state fair either. Every town elects a Reina (think Miss America) and the elite of the province vote for the Reina Nacional de la Vendimia. There were parades and concerts and an espectaculo that was supposed to run for three nights. Here’s how it went down…

My second night here I went to a concert in the Plaza Independencia (like central park) with my host mom and our neighbors who also have an IFSA kid with them. I love being in parks at night. With those ornate white streetlamps that just make everything deep green and navy, perfecto. It was a happy family atmosphere. One thing I really like about Argentina is that even families with small children tend to go out and about together even if it is late. It produces a lot of babies asleep on daddy’s shoulders but I like that the families spend time together. The fireworks afterwards where spectacular but there must have been a million health and safety violations (US violations…I’m sure everything goes here).  We were so close that it looked like some of the fireworks were going off on the ground in front of us and during the show it started raining ashes and bits of charred paper. In a desert full of trees it’s a miracle that everything didn’t catch fire or maybe it’s just the acequias.

I have an extended host family here. Marcela, the daughter of my host mom, her husband Pablo, and their 3 year old Mia, came with us to the next night’s Festa en Piazza (Italian heritage festival). The pizza here is a bit different. I’m not entirely sure I like it. Think Chicago deep dish bread and strong, thick cheese, some grease, and almost no sauce. Popular toppings include a mountain of onions or green olives. Playing with Mia was fun. What she calls dancing most US kids call flying or spinning. You know, when you pick up a kid by the hands and spin them around so that they’re feet are off the ground. I think I’m going to try to get into some volunteering that involves kids here. I miss working with the kids at my daycare a bit.

The most impressive Vendimia display I saw was the Via Blanca which roughly translates to “white path”.  It’s a parade at night where the floats are so bright they make the street like daytime…in real life it’s not that intense but it was really awesome all the same. All the Reinas have floats and they throw the fruits of their towns to the crowds: grapes, apples, pears, melons (and they’re not so small), bottles of water (Mendoza is also the source of bottled spring water for Argentina) and even a very few bottles of wine. One float, without a Reina, was throwing meat from a giant asado cooking right there on the truck! I myself caught one grape.

In the morning the whole Via Blanca parade repeats and that name changes to Carrusel. My host family and I went to watch it and it was just as impressive. The Gauchos, Argentine cowboys, made an appearance in this parade. There were probably 100 or more horses and even some buggies. Several of the gauchos were riding with little babies in one arm. Looks a lot less tough but it was about the cutest thing ever. The Reinas threw even more fruit and the meat truck was back. Most unexpected were the bagpipes. There are a bunch of welsh immigrants in Argentina but it still threw me off.

The last and most important part of the Vendimia is the Espectaculo. Its 2 hours of dance from folkloric, to something that looked like American show tones to tango.  There are famous musicians and the Reina Nacional is elected. I watched it with my host sister and Nicky, a visiting student from the US, in a café while we ate French fries and drank Fanta. The next night the IFSA group got together to go to watch the repeat of the Espectaculo. At the door they gave us red wine in juice boxes (!!!) and an apple. We sat for three hours of very latino stalling and then the announcers seemed to give up. They turned on party music and told the people to dance. It was raining and about a 1/5 of the people were getting up to leave anyway. You better believe a group of 40 American college students turned those bleachers into a dance floor. Granted many of the locals danced too. The show was obviously supposed to have started and we all attributed it to the rain but some of the crowd was rather grumpy and actually throw their apple cores onto the stage. I couldn’t really believe it at first. Finally the music and the lights were turned off and the IFSA staff told us to go to the buses. Turns out the dancers had decided to go on strike…oh Argentina.

Chao!