Vineyards in Mendoza

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We got up this morning knowing it was our last day in Mendoza. So far this has been one of my favourite places in Argentina (not to mention, the nice hotel that we treated ourselves to). We packed up our stuff and put it in storage for the day. The Lonely Planet recommended heading to Maipu for wine touring. After some confusion over which bus to take we finally got on the right one and had about a 40 min. ride to the outskirts of Mendoza which is known for good vineyars all close together. We got off the bus and headed to Mr. Hugo´s to rent bikes for the day. I wanted a bike with a basket to carry the wine around but it turned out those bikes were more rickety than without. I nearly ran over an Argentinian just trying to get out of the driveway of Mr. Hugo´s. We had pretty limited time so we heade to the furthest vineyard first.

It was about an 8 km bike ride along the road and you can choose whatever vineyard you want to stop. We chose a family vineyard called Tomassas first. They gave us a short tour of the facilities and then we got to start tasting wine. It was a lovely small vineyard and we decided to stay for lunch. We sat out on a small table made out of old oak barrels and sipped wine in the sun. We ordered a sort of tapas lunch with prosciuotto and deer and cheeses and olives and sun dried tomatoes. It was DELICIOUS!

Now for the tricky part... I´m not that great of a drinker and by now i´ve had at least 3 glasses and we had to get back on our bikes. Meanwhile, my bike had no breaks and no gear shift. I had been having a pretty hard time biking along and when we arrived at the vineyard a police officer pulled in behind us. It turns out they have these officers just follow the tourists around all day to make sure they don´t get hit by a car or have bike problems. He called Mr. Hugo for me and Mr. Hugo himself came with a bike replacement. It certainly made drunken bicycling a lot easier 😊

Next stop was just a little further down the road. We´d met up with a few other tourists that had told us this vineyard wasn´t very friendly but we thought we´d try it anyway. We smiled a lot and got really friendly service and HUGE glasses of wine. We also met up with a group of guys who rented tandem bikes and having a good ol´time. Turns out they were taking the same bus as us that night.
We ended up sitting out in the sun sipping wine and chatting with the owners of the vineyard for so long that we ran out of time to visit any other vineyard. They gave us some amazing tasting bbq sausage and then we headed back to Mr. Hugo´s to drop off the bike. Mr. Hugo certainly knows his clientele. The moment we arrived back with the bikes he passes you a glass of his homebrew wine (pretty strong stuff) and you sit out with the other drunken tourists until you´re barely able to get back on the bus into town. I barely made it back to the bike rental place, I kept falling off my bike!

We partied another hour at Mr. hugo´s and then barely caught a bus back to Mendoza. We still had to pick up our bags and get to the bus station. We missed our stop in Mendoza and ended up taking a cab to the hotel from who know´s where, got our bags and hopped back in the cab and just made it to the bus station in time for our (hopefully) last overnight bus.

20 hour bus from Mendoza to Bariloche! No cama suite available so we went regular cama (only difference is the chair doesn´t go all the way down). We are now bus snobs. The bus wasn´t too full and our new friends (Chris and Adam) kept us company on the journey. The best part was early the next morning being woken up to play BINGO?! The bus attendant convinced Adam to call out the numbers in English. It was hillarious, they even had prizes for the winners.

We arrived in Bariloche around 1:30 in the afternoon and headed straight for the hostel. Turned out my reservation never made it through the email so we wandered around for about an hour trying to find a new place. We ended up at Tango Inn Hostel - it was pretty nice. We got a twin room so that I didn´t have to be in a dorm for my b-day.

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