When do people work around here?

Mendoza is in the heart of it's blistering summer, which apparently means that everyone goes on vacation and doesn't work. I'm open and flexible to cultural differences in what a "normal day" should be, but this just seems a little crazy. I'm told that once February starts, everyone will come back from the beach to start work again. But until that time, it seems that nothing is open.

Morning opening time seems to be around 10am or so. Then they close for lunch around 1pm. Then they open after lunch around 5pm, closing around 8. It's just strange that there is a 4 hour period in the day where everything is closed, except for the restaurants and major stores. We basically end up hanging out in our apartment, taking naps, cooking, talking, waiting for things to open, baking cinnamon rolls (today's project) and squash harvest bread (tomorrow's project), etc.

In addition, our cable is out, so we don't have TV. It's normally not a huge issue, except for the fact that we need to be here when the cable guy shows up. But when is he going to show up? Who knows? It could be 10am, it could be 8pm. So we end up having to stay around the house, waiting for this mystery cable guy to show up when he's decided it's time. This has kept us from getting out of town to hike in the mountains, go rock climbing, explore some vineyards, basically all the things that we came here to do.

Luckily, we did find a bar to hang out at. Specifically, a wine bar. It's called the Vines of Mendoza and it's a bit swanky, but it's got decent happy hour prices during the week, well, Tuesday and Friday. 50% per glass off all the stuff they opened the day or two before. It gives us some fantastic options to really taste some quality wine. Tonight, we're going to listen to the vintner of Urraca Winery, Familia Langley line, for their weekly "Meet the Winemaker" series. We'll see if it's in spanish or english, but my guess is spanish. Should be fun.