Initially while Negar and I were planning our trip to South America we did a lot of research on volunteer opportunities, where in exchange for a few hours of work a day you would then provided with food and accommodation. We figured after a few months of traveling it might be nice to stay in one place for an extended period of time and be useful, and on top of that it would save us some money and allow us to travel a bit longer. We found Mendi Hill Estates, a sundried tomato farm in San Rafael, Argentina, in the region of Mendoza, on the website workaway.info and after paying a few of about 30 EUR we were able to email Johnny, the owner of the finca, and inquire about an opportunity to come work and stay with them.

With a bit of rearranging in our own schedules we booked two weeks on the finca from mid-March until the end of the month, and to be honest, we were very much looking forward to getting our hands dirty and contributing to some sort of cause - whatever it may be. After spending four years at university where you could directly see the fruits of your labors day in and day out in the form of exam marks and such, the past few months we've felt a bit useless. That's not to say we're not loving this whole travel thing - man, it's great and all of you should do it - but we sometimes feel like we're not actually useful members of society.

In any case, we arrived in San Rafael and stayed in a hostel for the first night so that we could check out the city before we took the local bus to the finca the next day. As it was Sunday (our favorite day and dumbest day to travel, don't ya know) there seemed to be no set bus times for the area, so we got up early and prepared to wait at the bus stop for a few hours when within about 45 minutes a bus showed up to take us to our location! Except it didn't... It left us at the beginning of the street, a solid 3 km from the finca. Shweeeet. Walking it is then! After about five minutes into our trek some guy pulled up in a white truck asking us what we were looking for and after we told him where we were off to, he says, "Welcome home." Cringe. He drove us back to the finca before he set off to drop the other volunteers that had completed their two weeks at the bus station. We tried to sense from the girls' body language whether they had enjoyed their time on the finca or not but we couldn't really pick up anything and with Johnny present I'm not sure how an exchange of "run now while you can!!!!!" might have been carried out.

On our arrival at the finca we were shown our room and then invited to some coffee by Johnny's wife, Claudia, where she then proceeds to spout s***e about anything and everything that came to mind. She was the type of person, we came to find out after spending way too much undesired time with her, who was fake educated, as she had a college degree, but was actually the most ignorant person I've ever met. Naturally, she asked Negar where she's from and not accepting that Negar could ever be German, Negar said that her parents are Iranian. "Oh, I could tell that you were Arabic! Arabic woman are so beautiful and you have beautiful eyes just like them. Yes, Arabic woman are lovely, aren't they? Yes, they are." There's only one issue with all of these sentences that come spewing out of her mouth at the speed of light. Negar is Persian, not Arabic. Iran is, in fact, NOT an Arab country. Now, Negar takes no offense that people don't know that she's Persian or that Iran is not an Arab nation, but what she always says is if you are not 100% certain whether she's Arabic or not, maybe just ask her for clarification before you sound like the dumbest person on the planet because you don't know your global cultures. Claudia continued her rants, barely letting us get a word in edgewise, before Johnny returned and put us to work painting fences he had built for a bodega down the road. Yes, that's right, barely an hour into our arrival we were already put to work - a sign of horrible things to come...

The next day we awoke and were told we needed to uncover the sundried tomatoes before the sun rose, so off we went so that the tomatoes could get the maximum amount of sunlight possible. Then Johnny showed us both how to drive the tractor and off we went collecting trays from the racks on which the sundried tomatoes were situated. After we consolidated some trays (as tomatoes shrink immensely from when they're first cut to the finished sundried product), we then stacked them on the back of the tractor where we then unloaded them by the processing station. It definitely involved some heavy lifting and after not having worked out for a few months, it wasn't the easiest I have to admit. After we finished that task we had to go into the greenhouse and box up the sundried tomatoes that were ready to be packaged and sold. Then we had lunch and a break for two hours until we were informed we would be tomato harvesting in the fields with the harvesters in the afternoon, right in the heat of the day. Off we go, collecting buckets of buckets of tomatoes to be processed the next day and placed in trays to be put out in the sun - the most vicious cycle on this planet. And it's hard! Tomato harvesting involves being doubled over for about three hours non-stop searching through the fields for perfectly ripe and beautiful red tomatoes.

Upon finishing that evening, we were broken. Ten hours of work our day amounted to. TEN. From sunup to sundown. We were so tired after our showers that we only went into the house for supper and within ten minutes we were in our beds ready to pass out for the rest of time.

The next day Johnny got us started processing tomatoes. The process is as follows: Johnny had built this tomato cutting machine that cuts tomatoes perfectly in half so one person puts the tomatoes into the machine that are then cut in half and sent through a shoot onto a conveyor belt that transports the tomatoes to a tray at the end. Another person spreads the tomatoes around the tray so that they're face up and after filling a tray, salt is sprinkled atop the tomatoes to help with the drying process. Negar and I were on to our fifth tray when Johnny informed us the other two volunteers were at the gate, so we took a break and headed over to meet the newest victims. Fabio is Italian and Noelle Irish. Two of the loveliest people I have ever met, and thank God they made the mistake of coming to the finca because Negar and I would never have survived the two weeks without them...

Turns out the poor unsuspecting souls had just arrived on an overnight bus (20 hrs) from Bariloche and had had also just walked the whole distance from the top of the road to the finca (3 km). Johnny said we should take a break and have some tea before we got to work again. After our break we all got going with the processing once again and it was truly incredible how much easier all our work was from then on out. I have no idea on God's green earth how Johnny had expected only Negar and me to complete all the work he had planned for us... We filled Noelle and Fabio on our work from the previous days and said we feared that Johnny expected us to work ten hour days for the rest of the two weeks. And we were right for the most part. After putting out the processed trays we took a break for lunch and were then sent harvesting once again. Another ten hour day under our belts, but the worst thing was that it was in fact St. Paddy's day - a day only the year before I had spent drunk with my friends in bar in Dublin, loving life. This year was a bit different to say the least, but I refused to go to bed without alcohol in my system because what kind of Irishwoman would I be?! So we went to the shop and bought a five-liter bottle of wine (yes, it exists) and proceeded to get hammered. Excellent.

Yet, the next day was much the same as the day before. Another ten hours. So we said we needed to get smashed again that night on the wine we had from the night before, and get smashed we did. After working so hard for so many hours, wine offers that balance at the end of the end and contributes immensely to the feeling of relaxation. I'm not even sorry about the amount of wine we drank on that finca cause goddamn did we need it to remain sane...

Let me just set the scene for what I'm about to describe next because what we were planning to do is run away in the middle of the night, get a cab and stay in a hostel in San Rafael before we could get a bus back to Mendoza. That's right - we were planning on jailbreaking, and we had a plan and everything about how we would do it. Conditions on the farm were really, really hard. I already explained about the ten hour days, but what we were receiving in return for our work (ie. food and bed) in no way matched our work contributions. I would never compare it to slavery, but it was definitely exploitation in its purest form. To keep that finca running it was very plain to us that Johnny needed to employ workers. He needed to pay people to produce his sundried tomatoes but to save money he instead employed unsuspecting victims (ie. us) who were drawn to the beautiful Argentinian countryside in search of a different kind of travel experience. And damn was he saving money! We were running his business for him all the way from harvesting tomatoes to packaging the finished product with nothing but a quick thanks from him. On top of that, Johnny has this very strange sense of humor that was neither funny nor fun to be around. It made me uncomfortable and the other guys said the same. Then he would make very offensive comments, one day commenting on how terrible Fabio's English is (which it isn't, it's actually damn good) and another that homosexuality isn't human. He was mean and ungrateful for our work (he barely wanted to give us ONE day off the entire time on the farm). Claudia, his wife, was so freaking annoying as well, always talking at you while she held her own monologue about whatever she considered important that day. So you see, we saw no other solution than to run away. We could have told him, yes, but after Negar talked to her mom and described Johnny's temperament to her, her mom said we shouldn't tell him because we couldn't be sure how he would react to the news. We suspected he was a bit of an alcoholic and he desperately needed us to work his fields and process his tomatoes or he was going to lose a lot of money. Who knows how desperate people react to bad news...

In any case, the following day s*** hit the fan. We processed tomatoes much like the other days and then took a break for lunch. We were broken and we knew Johnny had tomato harvesting planned for us in the afternoon, but we had other plans - mind you we were still planning on running away the following day (Friday). Noelle and I were sitting at the table outside the house when he came up to us and said he needed two trailers full of tomatoes that afternoon. I responded saying that I didn't think we could physically go harvesting that afternoon. With three ten hour workdays behind us, we were wrecked. He said that's fine, that he could just call the harvesters in and I told him that would probably be best because we were very tired. He then made some comment that he had no other work for us to do that day so he didn't know how we were going to fill our afternoon and we could tell he was pissed - this was costing him money. Uhhh, visit the most famous vineyard in Argentina down the road? He said that was fine and that he didn't care what we did. OK, it's settled then! Afternoon off it is ;)

We actually didn't end up doing anything all afternoon except sit around and drink wine, but it was the principle of the matter that we were standing up for. The workaway guidelines state that a fair exchange for food and accommodation is somewhere around five hours of work a day for volunteers and that the program is meant to offer some sort of cultural exchange - neither of which Johnny was adhering to.

That evening he came up to us (still sitting around the table) and asked if we went harvesting. No, you said you were going to call the harvesters. He couldn't believe it and asked again if we really didn't go harvesting because he has some man with him who wanted to buy tomatoes. No, I said again. He asked something like, did we just want to sit around and drink pina coladas all day because then we need to pay for our accommodation. Excuse me? I didn't just sit on my ass today - we worked five hours this morning and ten hours the past few days. I let him have it and said that we find it to be incredibly unfair what he expects from us for what we're receiving in return - fully expecting him to tell us to hit the road. Instead he asked what we wanted. I tell him five hours a day and he says that's fine with him. I was shocked but my mind still hadn't changed about leaving the next day.

That evening we drank our wine, as we had grown so accustomed to doing, and I'm the last one still up when Johnny appears asking if he can have a glass of wine with me. I feel quite uncomfortable in his presence but I can't say no so he takes a seat. He then apologizes for everything and says he never meant to exploit us, but he often never knows how much is too much for some volunteers because some people finish tasks and then return to him asking what other tasks are to be done. He says he's grateful for our work and for the first time since arriving on our farm I felt like he was genuinely being honest and open. He starts talking about his life growing up in Zimbabwe and how being persecuted in Africa led him to Argentina and the sundried tomato business. It's a tough market in Argentina because of the f***ed up economy and it's genuinely interesting to hear some of the stories he tells. My mind changed that evening and when I climbed into bed I told Negar what happened and she said she wouldn't mind staying if Johnny truly was going to change his attitude towards us. The next morning Noelle and Fabio said the same thing and we stay on with the agreement of five hour workdays instead the ten we had previously been doing.

The work was much the same each day, varying from harvesting tomatoes to processing them to consolidating them and then boxing them. The whole process we did from start to finish and then are free to spend our afternoons how we please, like visit the Bianchi bodega up the road one day. Our tour guide around the vineyard (one of the most famous in Argentina) is a guy named Martin who chats us up at the end telling us he's moving to Ireland soon, and as all four of us have at some point lived in Ireland we are only too happy to talk to him about his upcoming trips. He allows us to sample a few more expensive wines (predominantly due to Fabio's silver tongue) and invites us to an asado as his home for the following week which we say we'd love to do. What a great guy, we think...

Two of the days during the second week it rains so we end up have two days off doing f*** all. We then have an asado at Martin's house on the Thursday and have such a lovely time. So much red wine and red meat - stuff dreams are made of, I tell you. More on the rest of that night in my next post, though... You'll see why.

In any case, I wish I could tell you that our time on the finca was all we had imagined it would be and more. It wasn't. We were stuck digging trenches and picking rotten tomatoes (the stench of which I'll never mistake again) and the only positive thing that came of our time there was meeting Noelle and Fabio. They're the best. I honestly can't put into words how much fun they are or how important they've become to both Negar and me during the past few weeks, but I'm so, so grateful that they're now a part of our lives. They're the only good thing that came from our time in San Rafael... But who said traveling was always easy, right? Often it's the hard times that affect you the most and we sure did learn a lot. I have very few good memories on the farm but the ones I do have were spent with my three homies - Negar, Fabio and Noelle - and I know I'll cherish those forever.

More to come on how this trip became a nightmare within a split second... f***ing Martin...