Mendoza

What a treat this town was!! After deciding to skip the entire south region of Argentina and Chile, I wasn’t sure where to go next so I spoke to other travellers in the hostel. There was a hands down recommendation to go to a wine region close to the Andes Mountain range called Mendoza.


I booked the overnight bus and arrived early in the morning and walked to the hostel. It was a large colonial style house and had the best service I have experienced in South America. I wanted to do 2 things while in Mendoza, trek the Andes and check out a few of the local wineries.

I arrived on a Tuesday morning and had a relaxing day wandering the town and catching up with someone I had made contact with via couch surfing. Wednesday I decided on a brand new tour that included a 12km mountain bike ride, trekking and abseiling in the Andes Mountain range. I could hardly sleep I was so excited.


The drive out there was pretty special. The weather in town was very warm – around 30 deg so it was quite a sight to see the many snow covered capped mountains. On the way we stopped by the lake build only 5 years ago on top of a little town. The government found the site, approached the town in 2006 and said ‘we are building a dam here, you have 15 days to relocate your belongings in a safe area’. That was how the new dam was built to provide water for the town of Mendoza.


The bike ride was first and predominately downhill, it was brilliant to be back on a bike again. We then had an awesome lunch of cold cut meats, cheese, olives and fresh bread with Andes beer then a frozen ice cream dessert. We then sat and talked or slept off lunch before our afternoon activities. I even tried the famous 'herbal' tea that everyone in Argentina and Uruguay are addicted too - not so bad.

There were 12 of us. 7 went white water rafting and 5 of us went trekking and abseiling. Amazing!!! The trek was only a few hours but it was again fantastic to be doing some exercise. The mountains were so magical.


About 2 hours into the walk we stopped at a waterfall and walked up the side of this cliff. Only 3 of us opted to do the abseiling. It was such a rush, I hadn’t done anything to do with rock climbing since training for Nepal back in 2002. I didn’t’ exactly float down gracefully. We made it down in no time at all so the guide asked if we wanted to go again. We raced up!! Second attempt was slightly better. Great fun!


The next day, another couple of ladies and me hired bikes and rode around a couple of the local wineries. The first stop was to an olive farm – we had free tastings of a dozen different tapenade’s, mustards, chutneys and jams. In addition there were the best olives I have ever tasted and gourmet sun dried tomatoes. THEN in the same place we got to choose 2 liquor’s from their extensive selection. They were potent and generous with their pours! Do you think 11.30am is too early?


We then rode around for a while, visited a couple of nice places before joining a wine tasting tour at Trapiche winery. The winery itself is one of the oldest in the region and the 3 wines we tasted were so unbelievably good I wanted to bring the barrels home with me.
I didn’t’ think I was so tipsy until I went to take a video while riding as I had done previously. Ooops – small error in judgment for the grass but no one was hurt.




Tomorrow (Thurs) I make my way to Santiago, the capital of Chile.