Mendoza

Trip Start Sep 04, 2007
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Trip End May 28, 2008


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Flag of Argentina  ,
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

To break up the long journey between Salta and Mendoza we visited Parque Provincial Ischigualasto, also known as the Valley of the Moon due to its bizarre rock formations. We drove around the park to see different "moonscapes" and amazing fragile rocks.

We then went to Mendoza which is famous for its wines (mainly Malbecs). Three of us hired some bikes from a lovely old guy who was renting bikes for half the price of the main tourist company. The only difference in the bikes was no bags for carrying wine, but when we mentioned this he said he would go and pick up any wine we bought in his car. 

We cycled around different vineyards tasting a variety of wines. Our first stop was a wine museum which gave free wine tastings... not bad for 11am. We then had an early lunch of superb beef cooked in red wine, and we shared a bottle of wine. In the afternoon we visited 4 vineyards and sampled red, rose and white wines. Most of the vineyards are small family run businesses and there was a lot of variation in the wines (some were much better than others!).

We found a very nice "champagne" which cost about 3 quid a bottle, so we bought 6 bottles between us to stock up for Christmas. We gave the sales guy the telephone number of the bike hire company, and when we returned our bikes our wine was waiting on the table. Excellent service! Then the old guy opened a bottle of red wine for us to share. I think he would have kept pouring wine for us all evening but we really needed to head back to the hostel.

It wasn´t just a day of drinking wine though. We also called in at an olive oil factory and a chocolate & liqueur factory to sample the produce. It was a really great day out.
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