Hotel Cordon del Plata Mendoza

... area which has smaller farms using good old fashioned manual labour (family run vineyards) as opposed to the larger farms which mass produce using machinery, mostly for export.<br><br>Skipping the overpriced tour offered at the Hostel we opt to go it alone and make our way to Maipu. Great decision: we get to hire bikes for the day for 15 Pesos ($4) and merrily make our way to some wine farms selected from the map issued by the bike place. <br><br>About an 11km cycle ...

... exhausting, and because Nathan's feet hit the saddlebags with every revolution, making it necessary for him to have only his heels on the pedals. Feeling in need of a break, we decided to make one final stop...the chocolate and liquore maker. This was definitly the highlight. Not so much for the tour, which was basically a girl with fractured english showing us their wide range of products. That was pretty impressive, with ...

... Sound of Music. The area is much like Napa Valley in its temperate climate, trees and vineyards. It is definitely a bit drier than the Napa and Sonoma Valleys as the Andes block any influence from the ocean (while the Chilean wine region is very much influenced by the mist and fog generated from the Pacific). However, it is distinctly dissimilar to Northern Californian wine country as we distinctly felt the flavor of a small South ...

... vanouis corps et âmes quelque part entre terre et ciel? En particulier à un moment je regardais un col haut perché, et mon instinct me disait clairement qu'ils passaient là, et je me suis surpris à chercher un quelconque débris, une trace de ces tentatives perdues et oubliées. L'arrivée a Mendoza s'est faite au milieu de vignes à perte de vue. Si nous avions besoin d'une preuve que c'est le pays du vin en Argentine, nous l'avions! Étant arrivé tard, je suis ...

... good. A bit of a ix for some of it between Irish music and Argentine so it was interesting. After the parade I got a pic with the bagpipe player and St Patrick himself, and we all got talking to an Argentine family. The grandmother, lovely woman, had an Irish father and she spoke very good english. She was talking Argentine politics to me and saying that she wished her father had gone to Australia instead of Argentina cos they would have had an easier life! Then we went ...

7/2/09-11/2/09 Next stop was Mendoza. Unfortunately there wasn't a direct bus, so we had to spend a night in Tucuman on the way. There wasn't much happening there, but we did get treated to a free drag queen show in our hostel. Seems some of the guys staying there were in town to party drag queen style and didn't mind putting on a performance for us. The overnight bus was ok, but oh my god Argentina is ...

... walked from old-fashioned family operated farm to multinational exporter. Enterprising businessmen in Maipu have started up a tour-the-wineries-on-a-bicycle racket, but after seeing the other tourists struggling on their sorry beach cruiser style bikes, I´d say your feet are a more comfortable, if slightly slower, option. Even if you´re not into wine, any worthwhile impressionist painter could have a ball out here. olive oil too, they have everything down here

... and oak trees provide ample shade everywhere while the little irrigation canals that run alongside the roads gurgle cheerily.  Our lodge, Postales, is situated in an oasis-like setting with the handful of cabanas surrounded by well-groomed lawns, trees and flowering shrubs. That afternoon, we went for a walk around the village. Little did we know but we soon discovered that the village is Mendoza's centre of gastronomy! It's really small but its streets are lined with ...

... can only be used for 40 years and they'd been here 80 years, so they now use the smaller American oak barrels which you can see in front of the big one! <br><br> <br><br>If the wine is good enough to become a 'premium' vintage then it's stored in oak barrels and taken down into the cool cellar ...

... has helped that as well. <br><br>There are several excursion-type activities in the area that I've chosen to soundly ignore. Being the heart of wine country, the province of Mendoza is littered with wineries. Having done the tour thing in Oz and South Africa, I just didn't feel like heading out to learn about the art of wine making. I know the process...now I can walk out my front door and say "Get in my belleeey!" Mount Aconcagua, South America's ...