Mendoza

The bus journey from Santiago to Mendoza needs, by necessity, to cross the mighty Andes - the worlds second highest mountain range. It was a stunning bus journey I have to say, and made all the more enjoyable by the bus being very modern and comfortable, and the roads were in great condition (a big contrast to the only big bus journey I did with Hanno on my last visit to South America - it was a pretty horrible 36-hour trip from Santiago to Bolivia on a clapped out banger of a bus).

The customs stop at the Chile-Argentine border was at a high pass in the mountains, and we got the chance to walk about for a bit in the snow and have a little snowball fight. The scenery all around us was magnificent (including fleeting views of the mightiest of the Andean mountains, Aconcagua), and I was really regretting not having the opportunity to go snowboarding, as the season wasn't due to begin for a couple of weeks yet.

So arriving in Mendoza city, we tried to ignore the usual touts and we just headed to the nearest hostel (although we were kind of 'assisted' by this 'auld guy with no English that we thought was just chancing his arm by looking for money for showing us the way, but who turned out to really work for the hostel, and didn't look for any money in the end!). Yet again it turned out to be the best deal in town (amongst all the places we subsequently checked out anyway), and so we ended up staying 4 nights.

Again, Mendoza is another town I really like, although not as much as Santiago. We stuffed our faces repeatedly at all-you-can-eat places that had brilliant food (they are quite common here), strolled about as usual (the modern art gallery was particularly impressive), we had a 1-hour tour of the large city gardens (in Spanish!), followed by a nice stroll around the artifical lake with numerous rowers rowing about, as they tend to do (apparently the lake irrigates the entire park, which was all man-made on desert soil, or something).

One of the days we took a day trip to the local vineyards, about a 1-hour local bus journey away. After walking to the first vineyard and having just one tasting, we hired bikes and cycled to the main town centre for some lunch on the pleasant square. Then we headed off to check out a few more vineyards, but only one was open, and again we only had one tasting (although the girl was great, and gave us a pretty informative private tour of the winery). Another day we got another local bus to the famous Argentine vineyard of Concha y Toro (Mr. Mullins' favorite apparently), and had a nice relaxed tour of their operation, followed by a tasting and then we just relaxed in their nicely done wine bar (as all the poor tour group people got herded back on their bus).

So having 'done' Mendoza and a couple of it's main wine regions it was time to hit the capital, Buenos Aires.