Mendoza
Trip Start
Feb 25, 2007
1
43
72
Trip End
Aug 25, 2007
Mendoza,
Cuyo,
Argentina
Saturday, June 21, 2008
We arrived in Mendoza after a night bus through some amazing lake district scenery. A big bloke greeted us at the station and said he had a cheap hostel with a swimming pool, free wine and 5 english girls. We took the offer as we hadn't heard of any great hostels in Mendoza, it turned out there were no english girls, the swimming pool becomes a pond in winter, but there is unlimited free wine. It was ok. We met our friends Matt and James and had a wonder around the city. It is quite a big city and feels quite gritty and dirty. After the clean and modern streets of BA it was a bit of a change. We filled the first day with visits to the Aqaurium and Snake Farm, both relatively interesting but also slightly depressing, like the zoo in BA, the conditions for the animals were pretty poor, especially this giant turtle who swam around in circles in a little tank on its own for the whole time we were there.
We arranged a wine tour for the next day, Mendoza as a region produces 80 per cent of Argentina's wine and the wine tours are recommended by everyone. We were driven by this big fat guy who ran our hostel, he was good fun but i bit crazy, to 3 different wineries and were guided around the vineyards and factories and then got to taste wine at each place. The tours became a bit repetative after the first one which was the best by far, partly because our guide was an Argentian girl about our age who found us hilarious and was a good laugh. Th factory was a highlight for me too, something about machines on a production line fascinates me. This winery produced thousands of bottles of wine a day, machines channelling the bottles along to be labelled and corked and packaged in boxes and then into crates and then put in piles, all by machines. Sounds a bit dull to describe but when you are in the room watching the continuous flow, it was pretty cool.
We messed around in the parks in Mendoza which are nice, and 7 of us was enough to have a descent kick about which was nice.
We didn't feel there was that much else to do in Mendoza and as the border crossing was open (it had been closed due to snow) for the first time in a week, we decided to grab a bus into Chile.
