Chimbas Hostel Mendoza

Well, I've spent the last week here in Mendoza melting away in the scorching heat. Mendoza is Argentina's wine country. One of the first things I did after escaping the miserable humidity of Buenos Aires, was take a wine tour through Maipú region. I did a half day tour that brought us to one organic winery, a more industrial winery (where they have one barrel imported from Germany that holds 44,000 litres of wine), a place where they grow olives and produce olive oil, and finally a liquor and...

Après 20H de trajet en bus, me voilà arrivé à Mendoza (ou "Mendoza-capitale", vu que Mendoza est aussi le nom de la province). Incroyablement, le bus longue distance était encore meilleur que d'habitude, avec un fauteuil qui se transforme en vrai lit (entièrement plat), une TV par siège et un excellent petit-déjeuner (meilleur que tout ce que j'ai eu depuis 5 semaines!). Ca fait en effet près de 5 semaines que je suis en Argentine, ce qui est un peu difficile à croire. D'un coté, j'ai l'impre...

Aujourd'hui, je suis allé faire un petit tour dans les montagnes près de Mendoza: Upsallata, Penitentes, jusqu'à la statue du Cristo Redentor, à 4000m d'altitude à la frontière avec le Chili.

Mendoza est connue pour ses vignobles, j'en ai donc visité, ainsi qu'un site de production d'huile d'olive.

We decided to sleep in a bit and get up late as our flight was at 5:30pm. So we got up latish, had breakfast and then packed. I decided to try and update my facebook entries as I have not been a good facebooker! So I began doing the cities visited etc. when suddenly Julie ran down the stairs to tell me that we were actually leaving at 2pm!! We ran around like blue ar$$ed flies, organised a taxi and made it to the airport easily on time ............. we even had an hour to spare! And then the ...

Our hostel was a short walk from the bus station. Despite being next to the motorway, the hostel was very quiet. The guy running the hostel was so welcoming and friendly (and the hostel itself was very warm) we felt like we were really at home. Our room was more like an apartment with a lobby and adjoining bathroom. Throw in cable tv and a gas heater and we were happy chappies. Straight away we noticed Mendoza was a lot cooler than Tucuman. After showers, we made our way into the city centre ...

Lazy start to the day (we know you´re probably sick of hearing about this) and shared breakfast around the kitchen table watching the Olympic Argentina v New Zealand women´s hockey match. Today was a national holiday commemorating San Martin´s death. General San Martin is an Argentinian hero who led the southern parts of South America in their fight for independence from Spain. We booked a wine tasting tour for the afternoon and had a couple of hours to chill out. We walked into the centre an...

Woke up to another beautiful sunny day in Mendoza. It was hard to believe but we were hungry for breakfast. During breakfast we watched Argentina beat Brazil in the Olympic football semi-final match. (Taj wonders when rugby will be an Olympic sport!) Olivia thought it would be a bad idea for Taj to wear his Brazil football jersey today. We thought just for a change, we´d visit a vineyard in the afternoon.... We walked to the bus station to sort out our tickets for the next day and to Olivia´s...

So now we're in Mendoza - our last stop before Santiago (Chile) from which we depart South America on our way to New Zealand. Mendoza is on the middle of wine-country and so, being the exuberantly sophisticated wine connosieurs that we are, we thought it a good opportunity to sample some of the local produce. So to this effect we hired a tandem bike from Mr Hugo's in the neighbouring town of Maipu and headed off on a tour of the wineries. Our skills on tandems are well practiced. Nonetheless ...

Have spent the last few days in Mendoza. I´ve been having a great time here. Going to the wineries is so much fun and it´s amazing to see the differences between all of them. I have definatly not bought enough wine..but Im not out of the country yet! Tomorrow I have to fly back which is sad...the time has gone by really quick but I knew it would. This country is amazing and the people are all really friendly. Today we got treated to some rafting and proper Asado by Maries friends who live her...