Vendimia

This week in Mendoza, Zac and I went to the biggest party of the year.

Ok, it was maybe Mendoza's third biggest party. And if you know us, and our penchant for not researching a locale before picking up and moving there, you know that it certainly wasn't our intention. But when we stumbled into the hostel at 5:30am Sunday morning, we had inadvertently arrived smack dab in the middle of Vendimia, Mendoza's annual wine festival. (The still-partying revelers filling the streets around us should have been a clue.)

It's harvest time here, just like it was in Chile, and for mendocinos that means a week long party celebrating beauty and bounty. First, all the vineyards bring the first grapes of the harvest to this little chapel, to be blessed by La Virgen de la Carrodilla.

Then, they have a big parade through the streets of Mendoza, and all the pretty girls who are in the running to be elected reina, or queen, of Vendimia, throw things from the wagons like, oh, MELONS and BOTTLES OF WINE. It sounds like occasionally a spectator takes one of those to the head. Ouch.

Each one of these pretty girls represents a specific departamento of the province of Mendoza and store owners show their loyalty to one, or several, by placing their glamour shots in the front windows.

On Saturday night, in what I'm assuming really was the biggest party of the year, one of these girls was elected queen. That was the night Zac and I arrived and we sort of thought we'd missed it all. Little did we know. The election is such a big deal, and such an event, that they hold it again- not once, but twice over the following two nights. It's prefaced by a full-length concert and lasts until the wee hours of the morning.

Zac and I didn't know any of this. We just thought we'd go check out some local color in a little theater in the park. But pretty soon, as we neared the theater and noticed the HORDES of people coming along with us, as well as the multitude of (apparently legitimate) scalpers along the sides, we began to suspect that we were getting into something a little bigger than we'd expected.

So we don't know what's going on, and hadn't even realized you might need tickets to this thing. The little theater is ENORMOUS and so's the crowd. Zac and I get to the front of the line and a very friendly ticket-taker takes pity on us and explains that while you need tickets to enter the theater, you don't need them to climb the hills behind the theater and watch from on high. So we hike on up there with the rest of the broke-ass frugal people.

 

Everybody had brought their coolers and blankets and other tail-gating paraphernalia along. (We had a bottle of water and half a packet of Chilean cookies.) The city had a special screen set up just for all us hill-people so we could see what was going on and Mancha de Rolando played an entire concert before the event even started. People just kept pouring in- and this is the third night in a row! We already know who the queen will be! It was awesome.

Vendimia is officially over now. The posters are down and the fountains are running clear again. But if celebration is measured in wine consumption, then the party's still going for us me. And maybe by this time next year, we'll be ready to put our party hats on again.