During the final weekend of Vendimia festivities, floats of beautiful young women parade through the principal streets of Mendoza City, happily waving, throwing kisses and chucking fresh produce into the crowds.

Produce?  Yes.  And lots of it.

So when you find yourself thinking, “seen one parade, seen them all” – Vendimia provides quite an exception to get back into the street and share in the excitement.

Two parades in two days – one at night and the other the following morning – keep the streets of Mendoza packed with onlookers and littered with bits of confetti.

The parades are the last chance for the 17 beautiful Mendoza wine queens to be in the public eye before the formal coronation of the La Reina de la Vendimia.  Each queen and her entourage of princesses makes a slow circuit through the masses of on-lookers and every region of Mendoza province is represented by a float.

Along the way, the royalty tosses the agricultural fruits of their particular provinces into the crowd.  Standing on the street and looking up towards the sky, you’ll see apples, clumps of grapes, carrots, heads of garlic, peaches, whole melons and sometimes even chunks of meat whizzing through the air.

As I watched the spectacle from the front lines, I couldn’t help but think that this is an Argentine twist on Supermarket Sweep, and that getting caught in the crossfire could be fatal, or at least, a little messy.

But because the fruit drawer in my refrigerator is empty, I had come not merely as a tourist, but a hungry tourist with a mission.  Sadly, my softball skills have long fallen into disuse and I quickly discovered that the fruit-snatching learning curve is painfully steep.

Apparently, the younger generation, specifically, those under 3-feet tall, have a wildly unfair advantage.  They throw on a crown, a cape, a sweet smile and the queens lavish upon them all kinds of eatables.  But for the twenty-somethings in the second row, it’s slim pickings.

But not everything depends on an innocent smile, there’s also something to be said for ingenuity.  And this is where the learning curve makes all the difference.  Veteran fruit catchers know that a saucy smile and an outstretched hand will only get you so far.  Therefore, they come equipped with what I like to refer to as the Bucket Pole.

Sleek design, cheap construction costs, easy to wield and hard to miss, the Bucket Poles make the difference between a mighty melon and a measly grape.  Perched atop the shoulders of dad or mom, little children calmly extend their Bucket Poles and nudge them into view of the closest queen.

And because the queens neither like to induce produce related injuries nor have they developed their curve-ball skills, they prefer to gently plop the fruit into the Baskets and roll on down the street.

This tactic was my downfall.

Needless to say, I went home stomach grumbling and empty handed.

Day: El Carrusel de las Reinas

Night: La Vía Blanca

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