Suicycle, or Aimless Wineless.

On the face of it, a cycle ride around a vineyard-rich countryside, sampling olive oil, jams and wines sounds incredibly relaxing. However, if you put together one cyclist who doesn't know how to ride slowly, a terrible sense of direction, a forgotten suncream bottle, recent recovery from a nasty illness and 34º heat, and the whole thing starts looking a bit less clever. 

It started well enough. OK, even that's not actually true. The grand plan for the day was to ascend the Municipal Council building to appreciate their famous terraza with panoramic views of the city in its mountains' foot nesting place, then hop a bus to Maipu while there was still a morning's coolness in the air. I got going quickly enough, but got lost finding an ATM and then more lost finding the city council, which looks a little like an east end tower block. 

I then got more confused, if not actually lost, by the fact that following directions to the terrazzo leads you to an office where the city council staff are tapping away at their computers. Noone looks up. An elderly Spanish-speaking lady says something, but obviously in Spanish. At my look of incomprehension and my muttered "yo no entiendo, no hablo Espanol" she points at a younger man chatting two another two slightly confused looking people.  

It turns out that the famous terrazzo is now so famous that depressed citizens seek it out to end their lives with a stunning backdrop. Therefore the council can only let people onto it with supervision. They refer to you to the designated officer charged with jangling the keys and making pleasant small talk with linguistic incompetents. He was very nice.
   

Not being able to speak Spanish provides innumerable opportunities for unnecessary panic. It's a bit like being a real man: you can't ask directions and you always have to be right first time. LP recommends you take the 176 to Maipu and that it costs at least $6. I arrived at the bus stop to see a bus already there with “Mendoza-Maipu” emblazoned on it. So I leapt on, muttering 'Maipu?' as I did so. The driver nodded curtly.

 

This is obviously a good start, but I clocked that I'd boarded a number 10, not a 176. I then used my 'Redbus' oyster-style card (which had taken a ludicrous amount of time to ask for. In London, if you walked into a newsagents with an Oyster sign and just said “Oyster, please” I suspect they'd know what you meant. Not so in Mendoza, unless I looked up the word for 'Bus'. Despite what LP claims, it's apparently 'Bus') and was charged only $2.75.

I still don't know if I was somehow supposed to pay more for going all the way to Maipu, but noone said anything. My next challenge was working out where to get off. Again, LP wades in and describes a triangular roundabout. Unfortunately, these are quite common. I held my nerve past several trianglabouts, until instinct kicked me off the bus on a pleasant, tree-lined avenue. It was all very leafy, but I had no idea if I was in the right place.

I was saved by a young local accosting tourists in front of me. He was handing them maps, advertising one of the many cycle-hire businesses (in his case Maipu Cycles). It turns out I was in exactly the right place, and just 50 yards further down the road was Mr Hugo's bike hire. A more confident tourist might have checked Mr Hugo's bikes and rates and then gone shopping around. I was just relieved to be where I was supposed to be, and took a map and bike for $35.

My first stop was La Rural, a nice looking establishment with obsolete equipment littered prettily about its gravelly yard. Tours were $50 – in Spanish. They kindly let me wander about on my own.

A bored girl at the gate was handing out flyers to everyone inviting them to come to the next stop, an olive oil producers (Olivos) on the edge of civilization (or so the proprietor told me, warning me not to cycle in the wrong direction lest I be skinned and eaten). The $20 tour consisted of one olive bush, but it was a native olive bush, called an Arauco (no relation to Monkey Puzzles, alas), and it was followed up with, basically, lunch as I was invited to tuck into 3 different oils, 5 tapenades and 6 jams. Oh, and then 24 pieces of chocolate and two shots. The banana leche was so nice I bought the company. Sorry, a bottle.

Not where I was supposed to be

And that, dear reader, was where it all started to go wrong. I was not skinned and eaten, which I suppose is a victory of sorts, but as I made my way to the next tasty venue I missed a turning, forcing me to cycle an enormous loop before I got myself back onto the map. At this point, my levels of fitness, the heat and my stubborn insistence on caning it combined to leave me struggling a little energy wise, and also in the process (unbeknownst to me at this point) of developing nasty radiation burns. Right, I think – let's get to the furthest point on the map and then I can drift back in short easy stages.

The problem is the road north is not the beautiful poplar-lined avenues like those down which my unfortunate detour had taken me; there is a mile at least of open, sun-bleached, truck-rumbled, dusty highway to contend with before wine country resumes, and I was no longer in great shape for it. The temperature had probably got close to its 34º peak, my drinking water was as hot as tea and I was beginning to feel the sun burning me. Foolishly, my response was to try and get through this Mordor-like stretch as quickly as possible. I rattled through the mile until the road transformed from Mordor to Mirkwood, and endless tunnel of green stretching as far as I could see. The damage was done, however, and I flopped off the bike and sat under a tree for a while, pondering the distances remaining to be covered.

If it had all been like this...

By the time I actually rolled dejectedly into the Antigua Bodega, run by the family Di Tomaso, I was about as interested in wine as I am in football. What I needed was water, and lots of it. Fortunately Antigua has a pleasantly shaded outdoor restaurant where I was supplied with water and a minty sort of lemonade, of which I guzzled a whole jug. I was too hot to eat, and I was certainly too hot to taste wine, and by the time I began to feel myself again the time had slipped on so much I was starting to worry about organising trips for the next day. I slunk back to my bike and drifted back to Mr Hugo, having drunk precisely zero ml of wine on my wine tour.

Oh, and on the way back I got overtaken by a tandem from Maipu Cycles. They're worth a look, I would guess.