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Published: November 10th 2009
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I woke up at 8am on my overnight bus from Bariloche to discover it was snowing. After 19 hours on the bus, I finally arrived in Mendoza at 9am on Sunday 27 September. I took a taxi to Hostal Lao and had breakfast there while I waited until check in time. There were still a couple of people in the lounge who were still partying from Saturday night. The rest of the guests were appearing one by one, all with serious hangovers. After getting my luggage in the room, I went for lunch with a few people from the hostel. When we returned, everyone was sitting down to watch Tropic Thunder on DVD so we all had a lazy afternoon. I spent the evening walking around town and getting some dinner. On Monday morning, I walked to General San Martin Park where I spent a couple of hours walking around the lake, the gardens and then up to the zoo. I took the bus back to town where I walked around some more before going for lunch in the indoor market. Then I went to the internet cafe for a few hours to catch up with my travel blog. I grabbed
a bite to eat on the way back to the hostel where everyone was sitting in the lounge chatting. It was quite amusing as a group from the hostel had been on a wine tour all day and so were very drunk and very chatty. After breakfast on Tuesday I went into town and booked a tour for the following day. Then I sat in Plaza Independencia and read before going to the internet cafe to watch Liverpool lose to Fiorentina. Another couple of hours were spent on my blog and then I went for dinner in a cafe overlooking the Plaza. I went to bed at 10.30pm as I was very tired and had to get up early for my tour. I woke up at 7am on Wednesday and had breakfast before being picked up at 8am. The minibus took us the 50km to Villavicencio. Our first stop was the visitors’ centre which showed where the water comes from for bottling. The bus continued to climb the winding road and we made another stop for taking photos. Our final stop was the Villavicencio Hotel. I needed to get back to the hostel for 1.30pm to join the others for
a wine tour so I jumped on another tour company bus that was returning to Mendoza. I got back just in time and we took the local bus for 30 minutes until we reached ´Mr Hugo Bikes´. We each got a bike and a bottle of water before setting off along the road in search of our first winery. It was a lovely sunny day and the road was bordered with olive trees, vineyards, fields and mountains. We had heard people say that you get police escorts on these tours and sure enough we were soon being followed by a police car. After a few kilometres we pulled into our first winery. There was a 45 minute wait for the next tour so we sat outside and ordered lunch with a couple bottles of red. The tour was very interesting and at the end we got to taste 4 types of wine at different price levels and maturity. Now a bit tipsy, we jumped back on our bikes and continued on a few more kilometres until our next stop. As it was already past 5pm all the wineries were now closed but this one allowed us in. The lady here
was very nice and informative about their small scale winery. She then allowed us to sample a few glasses of different wines and we were now very talkative and merry. With the nice policemen waiting outside we got on our bikes and headed back to Mr Hugo's. As we rode the 10km, we passed stationary police bikes and they also joined our convoy and we now had a police car at either end and also bikes alongside which made us feel very special. Safely back at Mr Hugo's, we sat outside and he gave us big plastic cups which he then filled with red wine (for free). Before we could finish, he was round again filling our glasses. By 8.30pm we had to leave as the last bus back to town was approaching. Once back at the hostel, we decided to go straight out for dinner so we walked to a locally recommended restaurant. After a steak with mash and a beer, we walked further along the street and found a good hostel bar where we could sit outside and enjoy a few more beers. I eventually got to sleep around 3.30am and then had to wake up at 8.30am
to shower, have breakfast and pack my bag. After checking out, I took a taxi to the bus terminal for my 10.30am bus to Vina del Mar in Chile. I had heard that this was a trip well worth doing because it was so scenic and I wasn´t disappointed. However, the border crossing proved to be difficult and took 2-3 hours. The sniffer dog had smelt something on our bus but nobody could find anything. After a long wait, the border patrol appeared with long thin fibre optic cameras and were poking them through the air conditioners. With nothing to be seen they proceeded to unscrew most of the compartments of the bus. I don´t think they found anything and eventually they let us go. The funny thing is that they were probably searching for fruits, vegetables or meat which is what they are really strict on not letting into the country. Immediately after the border was a long, long, long, long winding road that seemed to take forever to navigate down the mountain. After a while the landscape turned from snow covered mountains to green pastures and fruit trees. Finally we could see the sea and the coastline of
Vina del Mar and arrived at 6.30pm.
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