September 2023

30
Wanstead Fringe
The Wheel Argentina
In a Wanstead Fringe travelogue with a difference, Carole Edrich invites
you to sample some of the wines emblematic of her experience of
cycling to every winery in Argentina
Salta Province has sub-tropical weather.
That means either pouring rain or
hot sun and humidity in the lowlands
or hot sun with more hot sun everywhere
else. Salta is mostly desert. The thermal
amplitude makes for amazing wines.
Downhill towards the city. Wet and humid.
On a normal trip, humidity would have been
welcome. Humidity is useful when so many
people smoke because it makes the smoke –
and all smells – stick to the people who cause
them. Not this trip. Cycling in this humidity is
like swimming through treacle. Exhausting,
sweaty and no sane person would do it.
I find my hotel in Salta – the only one in the
entire five-month adventure that the local PRs
have organised – and immediately go for a
shower. The pipes grumble. I wait. The water
comes out a bright, vivid green. I decide to go
without. No energy for grumbling. Tonight, I
decide that sweaty is betty-er.
There are few excitements to compare with
one’s first night in a strange new place.
Despite my weariness and a deplorable urge
to throw off my cycling kit and watch Latin
soaps on the probably black-and-white
portable TV in my room, I set out to immerse
myself in the town. After all, I might never
come here again. Live this precious moment
to the full! I think. Savour the experience. Meet
people. Make notes. Crush each ripe fruit of
sensation against the palate until the appetite
is cloyed in intoxicating richness.
Richness. Savour. Palate. Appetite… That
brings me to food. The restaurants are closed
when I eventually find them, what with it
being a Sunday, half-past March and everyone
being at home for their weekly family asado
(directly translated: ‘bar-b-cue’ or ‘grill’,
culturally translated: more meat than you can
eat and then some). In the end, in a garage
that has run out of petrol, I find a couple of
boiled cardboard media lunas (pasties) and
two dented plastic bottles of water in slightlyless-than-two-litre
holders.
That night, I wake up to scuttling. After
being run over by cockroaches in bed in the
‘pleasantly intimate’ cupboard they have
booked for me to share with said cockroaches,
the minutes of the luminous green clock that
I can neither turn off nor cover creep to 6am. I
make the decision to get up and cycle through
horizontal rain to my next destination, leaving
the cockroaches to feast on the second media
luna, which I haven’t been able to face.
Onwards, and uphill (again), to Cafayate. This
is the penultimate stage of my nine-stage bike
ride through the wine trails of Argentina. On
12 September, we’ll have time to talk about
four of the stages – and we’ll be tasting four
wines that match my experience that covered
4,500km through the wineries of Argentina.
Which four sections we cover will be up to you
(interactive, innit).
For more information on Wanstead Fringe
events, visit wnstd.com/fringe
© Carole Edrich
For more information and to book tickets, visit wansteadfringe.org