Argentina: Workaway in Mendoza (San Rafael)
Mendoza is the malbec capital of Argentina. The city is full of students and tourists looking to do super naturey things. Every outdoorsy excursion event you can think of, Mendoza has it. But within the small city, though there are an abundance of parks and fun hipster places to visit, most of the attraction seemed to lie outside the streets.
I only spent a day in the city visiting a few parks only to find them all under construction. I love visiting local markets, so I headed over to the Mercado Central (central market) but it was actually very small (~20 shops) and though the empanadas I got were good, I was disappointed.
A local favorite for empanadas though is here:
The hostel I stayed in — International hotel campo base — was amazing in terms of service and location! Highlight recommend it.
My farm is located in San Rafael, a wine center within the wine center, so I hopped on a bus for 170 pesos at the bus terminal in San Rafael. Not only does the bus have reclining seats and air conditioning, there is also a snack service. They bring you water/tea/juice and a little box of goodies for you to eat while you watch the movie. Screening today was Daddy’s home 2. Lovely.
San Rafael, located in a semi-arid desert, is an even smaller city than Mendoza. The notable thing that was immediately visible was that the whole town seems to sleep 1–6pm for siesta. Originally meant in hotter regions so that farmers don’t work during the hottest hours, siesta is still very much a part of the central argentinian culture. You will find that a lot of restaurants or stores are closed during the time!
I met one of my hosts at the bus terminal, and after running a few errands, we drove to the farm which was ~25 minutes away. My hosts are Cecilia — a chemistry professor from Buenos Aires — and Izaac — a farmer from Colorado. Cecilia speaks no English, and Izaac speaks unconjugated Spanish but they have been married for four years! Incredible.
Here is a drone video of the farm!
They live with three large dogs who spend a lot of time outdoors, but are so large that their friendliness might literally knock you off your feet. They also have an adorable cat that acts more like a dog.
The farm is made of thousands of ciruela (plum) trees, durazno (peach) trees, malbec grapes, some other grapes I forget, and a few fruit trees just for funsies. When I went in mid February, the peaches had all been picked, and the plums were just starting to be picked. One 20kg box of plums sold for 2 pesos (I know, right), and the farmers pay the workers 1 peso per box. The grapes sell for a lot more, and peaches are just only a little better.
On this huge farm, they have a small house with an extra room, and a lovely grape vine terrace out in the front. They have 4–5 types of grapes — organic too. Yum -, and often, I would just pull down a bunch of the moscato grapes and load up on sugary goodness.
Here, there is close to no signal. No TV and very little technology overall. If you want to take a hot shower, you pick up some logs and twigs and start a fire under the hot water tank outside! Normally it was too hot for me to feel like I needed a hot shower, but I appreciated that while I feel like I am living in a civilization, I got to experience the lack of common items I would normally expect from a house in civilization. Apparently there are scorpions that visit houses once in a while but I got to miss those, which I am totally okay with.
The work that I needed to do was help clean the house, pick plums, and take care of the grapevines. The house was orderly, but always covered with a layer of the desert dust. The dogs didn’t help. How you pick plums is, you get a tarp and lay it at the base of the tree. Then you stand by the tree, grab a sturdy branch, and shake till you make it rain plums! To get some stubborn ones, the workers had assembled long forks to pick the ones that we couldn’t reach by hand. School had not started yet (starts in March) so the worker’s whole family was there from grandparent to a 5 year old kid. The grapevines all grow in all sorts of directions, and the farmers want the grapes to grow in a particular way to get the best quality grapes and to be able to spray better. So my work was to go through the rows and cut the vines where they needed to be held back.
Oh another fun thing was, in the states we are worried about organic produce because of the pesticides. In Argentina, they call organic farming lazy farming. People grow things organically if they don’t want to invest the time and money into spraying their plants!
With some of this organic fruit that they have growing on their fruit trees, they like to make jams either to eat or use as currency! Because they live in a desert, water is a hot commodity. So most clothing is washed by hand, and some are taken to the city to a laundromat to get it done. Instead of paying in cash, Cecilia brings in some of her jams as a trade!
So I do a 4:1 fruit to sugar ratio and made jams out of apples, peaches, plums, pears, and even tomatoes (!!).
Food, as a part of the volunteer program, was all provided by the host. But the volunteers are to help in the cooking process! For breakfast, we had light foods: some tostada (crostini), jam, and mate/tea/coffee. For lunch and dinner, Argentinian food in the farm is a lot of meat and a lot of veggies, and not much cooking. Often, Izaak would girll some asado (meat), and Cecilia and I would cut up fresh vegetables to eat with it. One day as a treat, we bought sandwiches de miga — a soft crustless bread sandwich that has many thin layers and is generally a few times bigger than a regular sandwich of the states — from a bakery for pre-dinner. Mostly we cooked, and once we cooked a bunch of milanesas. This is very similar to the katsu of Japan — so a fried breaded piece of flattened meat, but the Argentinians like to load it up with some other things on top, like fried eggs, or put it in a sandwich.
One day, as a cultural exchange, I cooked them bulgogi and steamed eggs (:
Normally for dinner, we’d open up a bottle of wine — so readily available in the area — or have a classic Argentinian drink: fernet and coke. Izaak, on an off day without too much work, took me on a tour of the famous/favorite wineries in the area. One was a friend of his — XXX — and the wine pours were generous! We got a tour and came out with bottles of our favorites. Another one, the famous XXX, the pour was scant for just one wine, but the vineyard was beautiful and the tour was pretty cool! Personally I think most wineries look very similar, but this one had a cave like structure and worked on an impressively large scale.
In my free time, I would chat with the couple, or read, or play with the dogs, or just sit outside. San Rafael is very flat, and since we were in the countryside, there were no tall buildings. The time I was there was strangely rainy (I probably saw their half year’s worth of rain in my week). One night, we knew there was a storm coming, and we saw in three different directions thunderbolts striking down and lighting up the whole sky! The three of us went outside to admire the sci-fi like scene until it started raining and we sat and watched the rain with the scared dogs next to us. That’s a sight you don’t easily get to see anywhere!
On my last day, Ceci and Izaak drove out to San Rafael to treat me to a dinner at La Massa — a classic Argentinan restaurant. I ordered a pizzanesa, which is a milanesa and pizza. A heartattack, if you will. The restaurant was cute, but service was lacking. I think I wrote a Yelp review. Then I treated them to dessert a block down at the delicia del boulevard. Both are on my recommended list for San Rafael local experience (:
