Mendoza

I arrived in Mendoza early on Saturday, September 25th after an overnight bus journey from San Carlos de Bariloche.

Mendoza is the capital city of Mendoza Province in Argentina. It is located in the northern-central part of the province, in a region of foothills and high plains, on the eastern side of the Andes. It is also right in the middle of some of Argentina’s best vineyards, producing 70% of the country’s wine.

In all honesty I didn’t have the best of times in Mendoza. It's a nice enough city surrounded by the Andes with wide avenues and several attractive plazas, Plaza España being my favourite, but the hostel I had pre-booked and paid for in advance on the recommendation of my hostel in Bariloche was not great, nor was the weather. Add to that a couple of disappointing tours and well, you get the picture.

Tile detail in Plaza España.

The first of the tours I went on was called ‘High Peaks’. We were picked up from the hostel early on Sunday morning and left Mendoza heading along the Ruta Nacional 7 Carretera Libertador General San Martín (National Route 7) which crosses the country from east to west linking the Atlantic coast with the Andes. Our destination was Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas at 6,962m (22,841 ft) and only 15 kilometres from the border with Chile.

The drive to the Aconcagua Provincial Park where the mountain is located offered breathtaking views of the Andes but unfortunately our schedule did not allow for stops. We arrived at the park around midday but due to it still being winter the road to the base of the mountain was closed. We therefore had to view Aconcagua from afar.

A snow capped Aconcagua in the distance.

On the way back we stopped at Puente del Inca, a natural stone bridge spanning the Rio Mendoza River stained yellow by warm, sulphurous thermal springs. Underneath the bridge there’s an old spa which is no longer in use due to the bridge now being unstable.

Puente del Inca.

Monday was a washout and so the tour I had hoped to do of the vineyards surrounding Mendoza, ‘Bike and Wine’, didn’t happen. I therefore booked myself onto another tour on Tuesday which would take us to two wineries, one using modern technology, the other organic, an olive oil factory and a chocolate factory.

The wineries we visited were situated in the Maipu region where we spent twenty minutes at most at each location. We were given a whistle-stop tour of the winery followed by the smallest of tastes of the wines they made, on each occasion a Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Next on the itinerary was a small olive oil factory. Here we were shown the processes involved in making olive oil and the differences between Extra Virgin, Virgin and plain old regular olive oil were explained. We were given a small taster of their produce before being herded back into the van and taken to our final location.

A painted mural at the olive factory.

The last stop on the tour was supposedly a small family-run chocolate factory which as it turned out made everything from absinth to marmalade. Each of the places we visited were interesting enough but the tour was too rushed.

We arrived back at the hostel around Six O’clock. I collected my things and took a taxi to the bus terminal for the three hour journey north to San Juan.