I like wine!

Trip Start Feb 23, 2008

Trip End Jul 04, 2008

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Where I stayed

Hostel Alamo (not very good!)

(Mendoza hotels)

Flag of Argentina Mendoza, Cuyo, Argentina
Monday, June 2, 2008

We arrived in Mendoza via First Class overnight bus, very nice, but it is still hard to get solid sleep. We got in at 7:30am and it was pitch dark. We already had booked a a room at Hostel Alamo on Hostel World and started walking there. By the time we got there at 8am it was still pitch dark. It was the weirdest thing. I am used to walking through dark streets at 6am but not 8am! We pay for our room and the guy at the front desk is acting like he is going to give us the keys, but then he says "well check in is a 12 so obviously we don't have a room for you right now." Well it wasn't obvious at all, and we were trapped because we already paid. We slept in the main room, used internet, saw a lot of people leaving, and asked him a few times when the room was ready. I am not sure if he was totally rude or just stupid, but finally after asking again at 12:30 for our room he decides to see if it was ready. It was, and for who knows how long.

We tried to book a wine tour in town, but since it was Sunday all the agencies were closed

Mendoza scenery

. So we had to book a tour through the hostel (even though we really didn't want to give them the money!) We went on the tour the next day and it turned out to be really nice. We went to two wineries and a distillery, all of which gave us tastings and tours. Unfortunately the wine tasting at the first place was horrible and the wine tasting at the second place was average at best. We have had some great bottles of wine from Mendoza so we were really disappointed in that. But for some reason I think they intentionally give out tastes of their cheaper wine. They need to learn better marketing. The distillery actually had the best tasting. Lastly we ate lunch at a winery in a cave. We sat at huge wooden tables filled with cold tapas. Then we got served a bottomless glass of wine, a ton of hot tapas and dessert. The lunch was elaborate and tastings were good, so the whole day was definitely worth the $35 each.

The hostel gave us a coupon for a free wine tasting in town (which we had to ask for 10 times!). The tasting was in this very cool shop/tasting restaurant. They give you 5 small glasses of wine from boutique wineries, which is a $15 value. We ended up getting about 8 small glasses because Chris inadvertently miss led the bartender into thinking we were going to join the wine of the month club. (he thought the price was in pesos but it was actually in dollars!) I was a little confused when he shouted "we should do this, this is a great deal!" It was not a good deal, but the tasting sure was

Monster oak barrel in Mendoza - still in use

!

There are a lot of good bars, shops and restaurants in Mendoza, but it was winter when we were there and the town looked kind of gloomy and it was too cold to hang out outside. I can imagine how popular this place is in the summer.

We found a great happy hour at a new brew pub (I wish I could remember the name). But the beers are 2 for one, so you end up getting 2 pints of good, interesting beer for $4.

We stayed in Mendoza longer than we wanted to beacuse the buses to Santiago, Chile were not running due to a snow storm on the way there. We had read that during the winter the road to Chile can be closed for weeks. So we waited it out for a little but ended up deciding to just go up to Salta and go to Chile through there.