We arrived in Mendoza, Argentina last night via a beautiful six hour bus ride east across the Andes. We had just left Santiago, Chile for this famed wine region in hopes of finding jobs and saving a bit of money. What we found upon our arrival was something more precious than money--good, old fasioned, grade A, meat! Argentina is known world wide for their beef industry. What makes the beef so tasty is the way the cows are raised. They are, mostly, free-range cattle that feed primarily on grass. Weird thing is, you can taste it.
As we settled in, a guy with 3 plates of beautifilly marbled, ruby red carne came walking past us. He had no less than 8 kilos of meat! Thats close to 17 pounds of the beautiful bovine! I watched him prepare the BBQ and throw the slabs of meat on for a traditional Argentinian slow cook. It took about 45 minutes to cook the meat to a delicious medium temperature. Okay, okay, if it seems like we were a little too excited for the BBQ, consider this: we havent eaten steak since we were in Italy and that was back in December. But the wait was well worth it! The steak had a sweet taste with a slight tang at the end, you could definatly taste a hint of wheat grass.
We are planning on staying in Mendoza for a few weeks, so we´ll have time to catch up on a few blogs and tell you all about the various wineries. Today, we plan to just take it easy and walk around the city a bit, well...not before a breakfast of steak and eggs!