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Published: February 20th 2007
After an awful overnight bus journey from Malargue we arived in Mendoza feeling a little tired - and hungover. A crazy hostel tout bundled us into a taxi and sent us to his "amazing" hostel. It was pretty good apart from the fact they played loud music all night and early in the morning (and that was the staff). Not the place for us oldies to stay! We moved the next day to a great place called hostel Lao. Run by an English guy and his Argentinian girlfriend it was just what we were looking for. Graham and Lynny came along too and we had our own little room with ensuite out in the garden - perfect. It even had a swimming pool if the weather turned out finer.
Mendoza is a pretty city with tree lined roads complete with drainage canals running alongside and there is also a massive park to wander around in the sunshine - very nice! There are several stunning plazas and some great restaurants.
Mendoza was also a good staging post for day trips. It is the heart of the Argentinian wine industry so a tour of the vineyards was definately on the cards!
Five of us hired bikes for the day and followed a well ridden route taking us to wineries, delis, chocolate factories and more wineries. We cycled about 20km that day so it was probably just as well we didn't sample too much.
At our last winery, we treated ourselves to a bottle of Rose in their garden, a fine way to finish off the day and give us that justified rest before our ride back to the bike depot.
Whilst in Mendoza we decided to hire a car, with our sidekicks Graham and Lynny, and take a day out to explore the surrounding mountainous area, get a view of the great Mount Aconcagua - the tallest mountain in the Andes, and visit Punta del Inca - a sulphur bridge. The sun was shining as we left Mendoza and all was well until we reached the 'Road of the Year', so called because of its 365 turns. Luckily I was not driving, Nick was, and as the wind picked up we made our way up the narrow road winding its way around the side of the mountain. At one point, its safe to say that our car ride was
more like a white knuckle ride as rocks fell off the side of the mountain onto the road infront of us and the wind shook our little car beyond belief. We were encouraged not to look down as the other side of the road was a sheer drop. Thanks to Nick's fab driving and lots of adrenaline, we made it to the top to enjoy the view of Mount Aconcagua....unfortunately it was not to be as it was covered in cloud, c'est la vie!
We went on our way to the next town called Upsallata that is in the middle of nowhere, the main reason for our stop here is because we could not go any further as the road was closed ahead (due to the weather) and there was a queue of about 1500 trucks infront of us waitng to get on the road to cross the Andes through to Chile. Lucky for us, the road opened whilst we were there and we went on our way. It started to rain and then to snow very heavily as we reached the ski resort of Los Penitentes - most of the lifts were closed but it was so tempting
Our Hostel
Hostel Lao - cool placeto get out there and enjoy the snow, jeans and trainers were not the most appropriate dress so we cracked on. We were next met by a police barricade as the road to the bridge was closed, what a bummer but we had had enough of hair-raising car rides for that day so we were not too bothered.
En route back to our hostel we stopped at the World Cup stadium of 1978, the wind was still blowing a gail and half of the roof of the stadium was blowing off and around the stadium, a bit hazardous so we did not stay too long.
As we wanted to make the most of our car hire we headed off to a Tibetan restaurant in the evening, opened by an actor who had starred in 7 years in Tibet which had been filmed in the very same area we had visited that day. On the way to the restaurant we passed broken power cables and a bit of carnage caused by the high winds, still the restaurant was beautiful and food very enjoyable (even though I tasted little as had a stinkin' cold!).
The next day we were
telling the hostel owner about our day out and he said that he could not believe that we went up the Road of the Year in the winds they had had (they were the strongest winds Mendoza had experienced in 30 years)...ahhh ok 😊
Mendoza was one of our favourite cities in Argentina, mainly due to the fabulous wine, gorgeous food (inclu. our BBQ), knee trembling car journey with Graham and Lynny and top hostel !
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