Mendoza – Argentina

Wine, Olive Oil, and a Pointless Chairlift.

Kim likes wine.

We had decided to visit Mendoza for one main reason. Wine.

The city is in the centre of Argentina’s wine producing region and we had heard great things about various wine tours. The owner of our hostel, being a friendly and helpful woman offered to arrange a day-trip for us and also recommended we sign up to a tour that would take us up high up into the nearby Andes. We agreed to both, and so the next day we were collected and driven out into the Argentinian countryside.

The tour was OK, we saw wine being made on both an industrial and artisan scale. We also paid a visit to a small Olive Oil factory, and enjoyed sampling their wares. The highlight however was the 6-year old brat that had been annoying the hell out of us for the whole day eventually getting his comeuppance. He had spent the day with his slightly older brother running up and down the minibus, screaming, throwing things, and then screaming again. Right at the end of our trip however he messed with the wrong thing. Sitting outside the tasting room of our final vineyard of the day the brat was once again playing up, when he decided to play with a bright blue handle attached to a rather large metal pipe. With a sturdy tug from his little arm the handle moved downward. In the blink of an eye a gusher of water burst forth. It hit the little brat right in the face. Oh how we laughed, and through the magic of laughter his ear splitting screams changed from painful and annoying to the sweet sound of righteous justice.

The Puente del Inca bridge, a natural formation of Sulphur.

The second tour was a bit of a waste of time. There was a great sulphur formation, and some decent views from the top of a mountain (after being driven up a terrifyingly precipitous winding road by a maniac who thought it was funny to turn the steering wheel at the last possible moment for each hairpin). However, we were encouraged to take a chair-lift which went only halfway up the mountain and offered views of basically nothing, a total waste of money, and our guide seemed terribly put out when we decided we didn’t want to have the 3 course buffet lunch at the restaurant we stopped at (clearly commission was involved).

The high point of Mendoza was probably our meal the night before we left. We dined at Anna Bistro, and enjoyed a fantastic three course french meal set in their atmospherically lit garden.

From Mendoza, we continued heading northward with San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, as our eventual goal. First however we took a brief stop in Salta.