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Published: September 20th 2009
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Tim Version:
* Loved the bus journey over the Andes.
* Had an awesome and unique wine and spirits tour on quad bikes.
The slightly inebriated version:
Mendoza, my entry to Argentina, famous for it's food and wine. Not something at the start of my trip that I would have been excited about but by now when I'm up for a bit of the easy life it sounded perfect!
The bus ride from Santiago to Mendoza, crossing the Andes, was rumoured to pass through some amazing areas up over the top of the Andes with incredible snow capped mountain scenery. I decided a while back that it was definitely to be done in the day and was to be part of the trip rather than just transport. I'm very glad I chose to do it that way!
Heading out of Santiago when the road bends to the right and you start heading straight towards the towering snow covered Andes, it's hard to believe that it is where you are going to cross to Argentina! The road winds around the edges of the mountains, up through valleys, through some communities that look a bit like how
I would picture a Canadian logger's village, and you slowly lose the green in favour of darker tones of brown and black, punctuated by a hardy little grass bush that grows right up into the snow. When you start to see snow on the side of the road and look back and see how much altitude you've risen, the difficulty of building such a pass sinks in. What a mammoth task it must have been! On the way up once in the solid snow areas you pass by multiple ski slopes and ski lifts in action with people skiing and snowboarding around you and sometimes even over you (while you bus through tunnels the skiiers can ski over the top of the tunnel). Its not a huge ski area but substantial enough that depending on price I'm tempted to stop for a few hours of fun on the way back to Santiago in a few weeks...
Checking the conditions of the roads through the pass before going is essential as it gets snowed in at times stopping all transport. Thankfully for me it was clear and the weather was great - well, great for being at high altitude in
the Andes in the freezing snow!! Outside you could see the wind was fairly strong and it must have been chilling to the bone. After we passed what seemed like half a dozen border posts we stopped at one that housed the immigration officials and got off and got our passports stamped - the final new country on my world trip! I very nearly ran out to the snow to play like a little kid but then remembered why we had stopped and why there was more than a dozen customs officials with weapons and large well trained german shepherds and sniffer dogs. Me running to the snow kinda looks a lot like a guy caught with drugs trying to get rid of them before being caught... not good. All went smoothly for all though and we were shortly back on the bus heading into Mendoza.
In Mendoza I stayed at a hostel called Oasis Hostel and its a nice place with a family atmosphere but still good for a drunken night. I was worried with it being low season that I would be the only one there but there was an Australian couple and a family there with
the kids being around my age so all sweet. I also rocked up right on time to have the most incredible barbecue with succulent juicy steaks of the best quality, sausages (with real meat!!) and all sorts of other meat, cheeses, onions and peppers etc. and some of the famous Malbec style of wine that the region is most famous for. Being cold, tired and hungry I ate about twice my share and drank maybe 5 times that but had a wicked conversation with them all about Brazil and South America (a US family, but they had been living in Brazil for around 15 years). I was here to do a wine tour and was thinking the bicycle style of tour that seems popular but when the guys said they were going the next day on a quad bike tour of a winery and distillery I thought hell yeh, drinking and driving, sounds perfect!!
I slept sooo fat and happy (and admitably abit drunk) and the next morning about 9:30 we headed off on the quad bike tour. I've done wine tours before but never like this! We got to ride around some roads, some dirt trails, to try
a little bit of the harder stuff down some steeper rocky slopes and so forth, and for me when at the back of the pack a bit of fun fishtailing and sliding around in the dirt - not big powerful bikes but good enough.
The winery we stopped at was a nice small family run place with 100% organic wines (hangover free! Well, you get less of a hangover than the non organic ones anyway, much less...) and after a while of explanations and seeing the machinery they used along with a tour of the rest of the plant we got to do some tastings. The owner was right in that their Merlot isn't that good, but their Malbec is incredible! I ended up buying a bottle of a Malbec and Syrah mix, and the others bought other things before we all headed back out on the quads for lunch by the river - in quads this means dirt tracks, then thruough some shallow parts of the river over sand and rocks and having lunch actually kinda in a middle large dry island bit of the river bed! Such a good lunch including a killer sandwich, lots to drink,
dessert, it was nuts... I was expecting maybe one small crabby chicken sandwich or something.
Next up we drove to a Distillery named Tapaus and it's amazing! Still in the early stages of life it was very artistically designed by a skilled Argentinean architect. The physical building and the ideas behind it's various design features is fascinating. They also make - and you get to test - a whole lot of different distilled liqueurs and they taste so damn good, again all 100% organic with no chemicals. My personal favourites were the Caramel liquor, the Peach liquor (with 100% pure hand crushed Peach added for flavouring, much better than the artifical stuff, trust me), the Lemon (which is like the peach in being all natural) and then to me the best of the best - DULCE DE LECHE! My new addiction even comes in liquor form!! So I had to buy a bottle of that (it's awesome by the way, works really well as a liquor) and we headed back to drop off the bikes off and head home.
I could have left that night for Cordoba but decided to take it easy and spend another night, to
relax. All I did the day after was chill, eat some good food, drink some nice coffee, get my mop of a head of hair trimmed back to something a little more reasonable (I've been waiting about 3 months for a country where guys have haircuts other than buzz cuts to get one) which was a bit of a fear facer for me after my last freakin horrible one in Mexico, and well, I wrote this! The bus isn't until 10pm so I think a good large beer should help with the bus sleeping thing, or maybe just some more of the Dulce de Leche liquor... I know most people would find it disgustingly sweet but to me, man, its so good... then by 7:30 tomorrow morning I'll be in Cordoba!
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