Bonnie Tucker / FST
In early March, Mendoza in central western Argentina celebrates its grape harvest with two big parades and three evening shows in which the election of the beauty queen who will represent the province and its most important crop during the next 12 months takes priority. The National Harvest Festival, Mendoza’s biggest annual event, is a great party for locals and tourists alike. This year the festival will officially get under way on February 28 with the Blessing of the Fruit ceremony conducted by a priest in the department of Maipú. (Every year this ceremony is held in a different department so as to not center everything in the capital).
However, the events of most interest to tourists are the two parades that take place in the city of Mendoza. Each is seen by around 300,000 people, and admission is free. The Via Blanca of the beauty queens of the province’s 18 departments will take place in the streets of the capital the night of Friday March 5. The parade starts at Colón and San Martín, continues along the latter, heads down Las Heras and Chile, and ends at Paseo Sarmiento and Av. Belgrano.
… foto Vendimia Via Blanca BLOG.jpg
In early March, Mendoza in central western Argentina celebrates its grape harvest with two big parades and three evening shows in which the election of the beauty queen who will represent the province and its most important crop during the next 12 months takes priority. The National Harvest Festival, Mendoza’s biggest annual event, is a great party for locals and tourists alike. This year the festival will officially get under way on February 28 with the Blessing of the Fruit ceremony conducted by a priest in the department of Maipú. (Every year this ceremony is held in a different department so as to not center everything in the capital).
However, the events of most interest to tourists are the two parades that take place in the city of Mendoza. Each is seen by around 300,000 people, and admission is free. The Via Blanca of the beauty queens of the province’s 18 departments will take place in the streets of the capital the night of Friday March 5. The parade starts at Colón and San Martín, continues along the latter, heads down Las Heras and Chile, and ends at Paseo Sarmiento and Av. Belgrano.
… foto Vendimia Via Blanca BLOG.jpg
On the morning of Saturday March 6, the Carrusel – featuring the royalty of the night before as well as various dance groups and other performers – leaves from in front of the entrance to the General San Martín Park (Boulogne sur Mer and Emilio Civit), and proceeds along Civit, Chile, Las Heras and San Martín to Colón.If you want to watch these parades, get the route maps from http://www.vivivendimia.com.ar/ and stake out a place in the front row well in advance. Call (0261) 413-2103 or 449-5800 for the start times.
The parades are a lot of fun. During both, the pretty girls atop the floats toss bunches of grapes, sachets of olives, apples and even melons to the adoring crowds packed behind the barriers. The crews of some of the floats hand out bottles of fine wine as well.
… foto Vendimia Carrusel BLOG.jpg
The fruit throwing is a symbolic act of sharing the bounty of the harvest after a year of hard work. But not to worry: the fruit isn’t thrown at you; it is tossed only if you look receptive.… FOTO NUEVA Carrusel gaucho BLOG.jpg
Horsemen from gaucho tradition clubs and performers such as caporales dancers provide added color to the Carrusel parade.... FOTO NUEVA Carrusel caporales BLOG.jpg
(Energetic male caporales dancers with sleigh bells on their boots represent the hated mulatto work gang foremen who mistreated black slaves on the tropical plantations of colonial Bolivia. Many of these dancers are transient Bolivian farm workers who harvest grapes and other crops in Mendoza.)That same night, the province’s Harvest Festival Beauty Queen is elected during the Acto Central (Main Show) of the festival, which takes place in the Frank Romero Day Greek Theater in the General San Martín Park. This theater, built in a natural hollow behind the Cerro de la Gloria hill, seats more than 19,000 spectators. During the Harvest Festival main show, the additional thousands of people who sit on the hillsides around the theater may bring the total spectator count to 40,000. The light-and-sound performances feature hundreds of dancers and actors on the stage at a time.
… foto Vendimia Acto Central BLOG.jpg
The entire Acto Central show lasts three and a half hours on average and ends with a big firework display. Repetitions of the main show will take place the nights of March 7 and 8, and cost a lot less. Admission to the different sectors varies from 120 to 20 pesos for the Acto Central, and 30 to 10 pesos on the repetition nights.If you are going to Mendoza to see one of the night shows, let a travel agency arrange transport to and from the Greek theater. The park is huge, it is difficult to find parking space amid the overwhelming congestion of vehicles, and it is impossible to walk out before it closes.
The park’s normal open hours are 8am to 5pm in winter and 8am to 6pm in summer. However, the free recreational activities that are offered there on weekends don’t begin before 9am or 10 am.
A few hours in the city
If you have made the mistake of giving yourself only a few hours in which to see Mendoza City, I humbly suggest that you dedicate at least part of the morning after the show to sipping a coffee at one of the sidewalk cafés on the Paseo Sarmiento pedestrian mall that stretches three blocks from the Plaza Independencia main square to Avenida General José de San Martín, and to having a look at Plaza España a couple of blocks from there.
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All the tall shade trees with their roots in the acequias (irrigation canals) that line every street, and the city’s five downtown squares themselves, speak eloquently of the spirit and character of the mendocinos. In the summer, the downtown area is clean, neat, pretty and protected from the sun’s rays by the foliage of hundreds of trees. It was built with those characteristics in mind after the big earthquake of 1861 destroyed the first city, the one that was founded by Spanish conquistador Pedro del Castillo in 1561. The trees are the result of 150 years of hard work by several generations who wanted to live in an oasis in the face of the desert around them. And the squares have two functions: they were built to serve as pleasant, shady outdoor living rooms for reading and chatting in the summertime, and as open areas in which to take refuge from aftershocks in the event of another quake like the one in the 19th century.… Foto Plaza Independencia BLOG.jpg
Plaza Independencia, which occupies four city blocks, houses a modern art museum, a theater, and a large crafts fair. It is surrounded by four smaller squares, each of which is located one block diagonally from each of its corners. Plaza Italia and Plaza España bear the names of the major immigrant communities that have made Mendoza an important agriculture-centered province. Plaza Chile and Plaza San Martín are dedicated to the Argentine-born general whose army freed Argentina and Chile from the Spanish yoke with the help of forces from the neighboring country in the second decade of the 19th century.Foto Plaza España BLOG.jpg
Of the four squares, the most beautiful is Plaza España with its blue and white Sevillian tile benches and fountain, and its impressive central monument to Spanish-Argentine fraternity. Inaugurated in 1949 with funds provided by Spanish residents in Mendoza, this square looks and feels like a spacious Andalusian patio, and houses some quality crafts stalls.For more information on what to see and do in the city, visit www.ciudaddemendoza.gov.ar.
The schedule of free weekend activities in the General San Martín Park is at http://www.parques.mendoza.gov.ar/.
PHOTO CREDITS: The Via Blanca and Carrusel parades, Bonnie Tucker. Members of a gaucho tradition club and Bolivian caporales dancers in the Carrusel parade, Bonnie Tucker. The Acto Central show, Mendoza Provincial Tourism Secretariat. The Paseo Sarmiento pedestrian mall, Plaza Independencia and Plaza España, Bonnie Tucker.
During the Chaya, riojanos also enjoy a folk music festival in the capital that lasts several nights, just like in the neighboring province of Córdoba, the national leader in the organization of such events. But this festival comes with flour. Every night, some people dance to the music, others sit and watch, and most engage in flour games. As one musician once complained: “They’re more interested in the flour than the festival!”
One way to protect your hair from the paste produced by the mixture of flour and water is to wear a wide-brimmed hat, as did former Argentine President Carlos Menem and his then wife Cecilia Bolocco several years ago.
As opposed to the European-inspired festivity of large groups of well-trained dancers who parade with impressive floats in front of crowds in many Argentine cities, Carnival in the rural and mining communities in the northwestern corner of the country is a harvest festival in which common people dance; they do not perform for an audience. They don’t even rehearse; they dance to have fun and honor the Pachamama. The carnival dance groups, or comparsas, do not compete with each other for status or money. Each town has two or more of them, and each has its own altar with its respective "Devil."
The Andean Carnival has four stages – two warmer-ups, the main event, and the last act. First there is a Jueves de Compadres (Mens’ Thursday) during which the menfolk get together and sing or talk about the good and bad things that happened to them during the past year. This year, it took place February 4. The Jueves de Comadres (Women’s Thursday), February 11, is considered an even bigger attraction, perhaps because females are cattier than men and are often wont to say what they really think of their neighbors on this occasion. 
Everybody decorates the altar with sample of their agricultural produce or various other trimmings. At the base of the altar they dig a hole into which everybody places a bit of food or drink, or perhaps a lighted cigarette to share with their nature deity.
Finally, the devil doll is unearthed from beneath the altar, a large group of howling youths dressed in devil costumes comes rushing in, and everybody joins hands to dance around the altar.
Quite a few use spray foam aerosols instead of four or talc, and some visitors don sieve masks for protection.
That evening, the comparsa people go from house to house, where they sing and dance, and are served drinks.
In January, some Buenos Aires vacationers head for Punta del Este and steep high-season prices, but others continue on to one of the little fishing towns that dot the spectacular 170 km of coastline of the Department of Rocha further north. In these towns prices are lower, crowds are somewhat sparser, and contact with nature and local culture is more direct for people who value rest and subscribe to the adage about Small being Beautiful.
Uruguay’s portion of the Atlantic coast is full of rocky capes and peninsulas that separate bays and beaches which provide options of surf or quieter waters. The prevailing easterly winds that make the rocks offshore a danger for navigation led to the construction of lighthouses in Punta del Este, José Ignacio, La Paloma, Cabo Polonio and Punta del Diablo more than a century ago.
In José Ignacio, Argentines as well as Uruguayans who fled crowds in Punta del Este 10 or 20 years ago are fighting to keep the look and lifestyle of their chosen spot as untouched as possible by developers intent on building mansions and luxury hotels, and travel agencies that bus in tourists for a day on the beach. The recent construction of wooden stairs down to the beach and a boardwalk beside the part most frequented by visitors has increased comfort and improved safety, although some locals feel that the structures mar the view and feel of the place.
Each of the towns on the Rocha coast has stories to tell. But they deserve a book, they won’t fit into a blog article. 
The beach favored by surfers is La Balconada, where people also go to thrill to sunsets.
The rocky point that gives La Pedrera its name is home to Costa Brava, the most famous of the town’s renowned seafood restaurants.
Cabo Polonio has both agrarian and seafaring sides to its personality, and fewer than 200 year-round residents. There are no streets, just paths amid the houses. Apart from the inns that have electrical generators, the town has no electricity; at night, people make do with the light provided by the revolving beacon of the lighthouse. There is no drinking water or telephone service, either. The treelessness of the cape makes all the sand, rock and sea expanses around you feel very broad indeed. The beaches are good for swimming, diving or surf, and the rocky areas are good fishing spots.
The cape is so low on one side that the ocean’s waves appear to rush past beside you on their way to the beach.
Alicia Fernández de Servetto, the owner, raises sheep and cattle, and offers a distinctive Uruguayan ranch experience to travelers who are genuinely interested in the area. For her, the tourists to whom she divulges ombú lore are "not tourists, but visitors." They hear, for instance, that botanists tend to classify the ombú more as a shrub than a tree.
A retired schoolteacher, she enjoys telling visitors how survivors of shipwrecks on the Rocha coast became leading butiaseros during the 19th century.
In the main house two recycled rooms with private bathrooms are available for guests, who are shown local flora and fauna during horseback rides or cart rides. Fishing and canoeing on the lagoon are additional options. 
The main pastimes are walking on those beaches and watching the local fishermen bring in their catch. The place fascinates everyone from backpackers to the bohemian bourgeois set.
While the thing to do is rent a rancho (hut) with few if any amenities for a week or a month, there are also 27 more conventional accommodation options, of which only two are inns, one is an apart-hotel and the rest are mostly cabin courts.
There are several good seafood restaurants and other eateries, a couple of pubs, and a cybercafé. The stable population is 600, a number that increases twentyfold during the summer high season. More information at: 
Set on a rise within view of the coast to the east and overlooking the Laguna Negra marshlands to the west, the fortress was well restored in the 1930s. It occupies an area of one hectare. Its buildings house interesting displays that illustrate life in the garrison, as well as scale models of all Uruguay’s colonial forts. It is open daily during the summer high season, and on weekends only during the low season.
The Santa Teresa National Park that surrounds the fortress has an area of 3,000 hectares. Its 2,000 native and exotic trees were planted to fix the dunes, which were threatening the fortress when restoration work began. There are a hot house, a cool shady area formed by shade trees and a museum that shows the restoration of the fortress and the design of the park, as well as cabin courts and campgrounds. The park extends down to four of the country’s most beautiful, pristine beaches, which offer good fishing and excellent waves for surfing. 
LA CORONILLA. This modest little town 25 km south of Chuy consists of three loosely connected neighborhoods and the traditional Hotel Parque Oceánico, recently refurbished.
Surrounded by a big seaside (or "oceanic") park of butiá palms and eucalyptuses that links it with the beach, the hotel is a pleasant, self-contained refuge for older people and families with small children who don’t want crowds, noise or night life. Open all year round, it is near the Cerro Verde and Coronilla Islands nature reserves, as well as the Santa Teresa Fortress in the national park of the same name. 
Dark but homey like an old castle that smells of fireplace wood smoke, the inn is the right base from which to explore both the fort and the museum. It is a favorite of esoteric groups who say it has good vibes because the San Miguel hills lie atop one of the positive energy lines that emanate from Mount Uritorco in the province of Córdoba in Argentina. It has two good restaurants and a swimming pool that is ideal for relaxing for a few days in a setting very different from those of the nearby sea resorts, and a world away from fast-paced big cities.
The fort complex is located less than 10 km from the city of Chuy, and it is easy to get there directly from the Montevideo bus terminal. Of the many buses that go from the capital to Chuy every day, several return on a different route that leaves you on the inn’s doorstep.
The Barra del Chuy is an immensely broad beach whose northern sector belongs to Brazil, and to Uruguay in the south. The Brazilians have removed the dunes from their sector. The Uruguayans, more ecological, have left them in place to renew the sand of their part of the beach.
Hot and muggy in the summer, Chuy is best visited during the cooler months. The temperature is always more bearable in the San Miguel hills.