The road to my vineyard passed two such shrines.  I stopped once in a while in moments of solidarity and left a bottle of water. I am reminded of the joke about the Jewish woman who keeps pleading for someone to give some chicken soup to a person who has just died of a heart attack.  She is finally told that the man is dead, and that chicken soup is not going to help him. It couldn't hurt, she replies.

The motorways of Argentina were to play a rather strange episode in my life all because I was afraid to fly on the local airlines. I had become justifiably terrified each time I flew in and out of Argentina of flying on the Argentine airline, Aerolineas Argentina.  Discovering that Copa Airlines flew in and out of Córdoba, Argentina, I decided to drive hundreds of miles to Córdoba, thus avoiding taking my life in my hands on Aerolineas Argentina. Of course, little did I consider that I was risking my life and my sanity by driving on Argentine highways.

Aerolineas Argentina has periodic strikes. Most of their pilots would rather be soccer players or movie stars, and they view piloting as a side-line on the way to stardom.  I recalled with a feeling of panic the time I was flying AA, onroute from Buenos Aires to Medoza and someone called in a bomb threat. What's going on, I asked another passenger who was passively reading a newspaper. The striking pilots call in bomb threats, the man said, the airplane is obligated to return to Buenos Aries. Good God, what if someone has a heart attack, I asked.  He just shrugged, and returned to his newspaper. Argentines are heroic.

So, I was on my way to Córdoba by car, to get a non-Argentine airline.  It involved a road trip of many miles. I wanted to be prepared. Get a map, I told my friend. Expecting her to get a road map of Argentina.  I had a general idea of the way to Córdoba, but I didn't know the exact route, so a road map was in order. I had my reservations on Copa Airline, my bags packed, everything in order, and I was, so I thought, totally prepared for the trip.

Why was I leaving Argentina? While I had come and gone several times, I was now leaving Argentina for good.  I'd sold my vineyard, which I loved, and was leaving behind a number of commodities, memories, and friends.

Also, I was leaving behind some ideas which had smashed into the Argentine determination towards vacuity. Why do it right, when it's so easy to do it wrong?

I had what I thought was a pip of an idea, why not grow pomegranates?  They grow like weeds in Argentina, the season in which they grow is the opposite of Europe, where they have a excellent market price, are in demand, and scarce.

So began a three year project of planting thousands of pomegranate cuttings in pots, erecting a plant nursery with hail netting, a planting shed, and carefully nursing the pomegranates towards a viable size. Here's the beauty of the idea: it cost much, much less to grow pomegranates in Argentina than Europe where they sell for a dollar apiece. The land in Argentina is cheaper, the labor is cheaper, and the climate is perfect.  I'd thought of everything.  Everything but the mind-set of the Argentine who managed my vineyard.

Here's what happened.  I inherited a 'finquero' from the former owner of the vineyard.  A finquero, derived from the word Finca, (which means farm,) denotes a person who works on a farm. In this case, as in much of Argentina, the finquero managed the property as a sort of farm manager. 

My finquero, had not been paid in years.  He had survived by selling what he could produce on the farm, which, with a lack of investment capital wasn't much. I determined that I would not be so short sighted nor miserly. I bought 'my' finquero a television, a truck, farm tools, and paid him regularly.  Mistake number one.

A few months after I bought him the television I was woken in the dead of the night. The television satellite is not working, my finquero informed me, at what, one in the morning.

Then came the plum trees. I had converted all the grapes to Cabernet by grafting on Cabernet, and to bring in a cash flow while the Cabernet was growing my finquero convinced me that plum trees brought-in a good return. So, I bought thousands of plum trees. I also bought a small amount of Pinot Noir for my own private stock, just something to plant on the side as a sort of hobby grape.

Okay, I knew that the Pinot Noir grape did not do well in Argentina, and wasn't a money-maker, or so I'd been specifically told by my finquero, but, I explained I wanted the Pinot Noir for my own, something to produce a few cases of wine for my own cellar, not something I hoped to make money from.

Now pause for a moment and glance at the photo of the vineyard above right.  You'll note that the vineyards are surrounded by trees. These trees are Alamo, a poplar tree that is used for a wind break in parts of Argentina.  They also grew around the famous fort in Texas that fell to the Mexican army in 1836. Remember?

They are usually cut for firewood before they get too high, because the roots of the tall trees strangle the roots of the grapes. Okay.  I asked the finquero not to cut one stand of Alamo, as I wanted one stand to grow unimpeded.  Great. 

My finquero planted all the Pinot Noir as close as he could to these unimpeded trees. The tender vines strangled and died. Why, you might wonder, did he plant the Pinot Noir vines where he knew they'd die? Because stupid gringos, who want unimpeded growth of trees interrupt the income derived from firewood, and Pinot Noir is a stupid gringo grape that doesn't make money. 

Okay, we're learning. Maybe I should have gotten him a new truck rather than a Rastrojero.*  I might have considered buying him a private jet with a jacuzzi, or a new BMW station wagon, especially if I'd have been more forthcoming and less inconsiderate, but in my shallow gringo persona I thought rescuing him and his family from poverty was a step up sufficient.

Okay, we're getting to the story of the Grenada, (Punica granatum) - a fruit-bearing deciduous shrub, known as pomegranate in the English language . . . and how I came to be driving to Córdoba, Argentina by car, trying to escape from Argentina without flying on an Argentine airline. Who was it that said chance and caprice rule the world?