ambitious asados.

our first full day in mendoza introduced us to outing planning & several new friends. hostel lao, equipped with an asado barbeque, enticed philip & i to attempt our inaugural, independent asado foray. filled with unfounded confidence we made our way to the butcher & bought, what can only be considered, an obscene amount of meat. dinner plans in the making and the prospect of a relaxing, lazy day on the hammocks found us content to remain in the lovely lull of lao. we booked ourselves appropriate mendoza outings (white water adventures, winery tours, tastings) & spent the rest of the afternoon recruiting two new friends to white water with us. we successfully convinced an entrepreneurial texan wine aficionado & a californian soon-to-be college graduate. with plans laid & energy levels low, the day turned into evening and we prepared ourselves for the asado.

from its inception our skills at asado-ing were glaringly immature. i was playing with large slabs of meat as philip was desperately trying to ignite a fire that would create the beautiful, necessary wood embers so integral to asado. struggling along, i made the industrious decision to enlist an argentine occupant of the hostel for help. he, innocently, obliged: huge mistake on his part. his asado prowess landed him in the position of action & he ended up taking over the show as i apologized aggressively & kept him company while he cooked me dinner. unfortunately, in the midst of the asado flurry, philip fell ill & retreated, mid-meat-making, to bed. this sudden sickness left me alone with a mass of meat & no carnivorous companion.

in an attempt to lessen the load, i peddled my plate o' meat throughout the hostel & made myself some friends in the process. i mean, let's be honest, who isn't disarmed into friendship with a girl & a plate of meat?

i was subsequently co-opted into a group of three aussies & one brit who had temporarily made hostel lao their home. the brit, who i affectionately call "oso" (spanish for "bear"), because of his burly, bearded mug, had been traveling southern america on a road bike; by the time i encountered him, he had already clocked 3,000 kilometers! the three aussies had all worked together in australia & had taken the brit in as their own after having met at lao. we stayed up into the wee hours of morning drinking argentinian beer & i proudly earned the title of "chugsy" because of my unprecedented ability to beat all of them at beer chugging contests. what an unexpected evening.


the infamous "chugerette" miranda.