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Published: July 18th 2015
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Hi All,
We spent 4 days in Mendoza because we managed to get the bargain of the year for an 8-dorm hostel. We didn’t do a whole lot in Mendoza apart from drink decent wine and watch TV series.
So we arrived in Mendoza about 9.30am on Sunday; the coach was meant to arrive at 6.15am so I don’t know how we could have been 3 hours later when there weren’t any long stops along the way. But anyway, after the total bus journey from Cafayate to Mendoza was 19 hours for a total of £65 we made it.
When we arrived we knew the direction to the Itaka hostel we had booked-it was about 1.5 miles from the station but we thought we would stretch our legs and get breakfast on the way. We had booked 2 nights at this hostel starting from tomorrow night, as we weren’t sure if we were going to make the connection bus last night. So on the walk to the hostel we found some free Wi-Fi to book up tonight’s stay. We had found an amazing deal on hostel-world for 75p/night!!
We
arrived at hostel Itaka, which is on one of the main road for restaurants and shops and it’s only about a 20-minute walk to the main plaza. The hostel was decent enough, warm, a kitchenette, bar, free breakfast.
Like I said we didn’t do that much over the 4 days.
-We went into town for a wander around the shops and Main Square
-We walked around the San Martín Park, seeing the Mendoza city football stadium
-We bought cheap but very good wine (average £3 a bottle)
-We used the kitchenette on 3 evenings (spag boll twice, and one night mash, pork chops and corn)
-We had one posh night out at a steak restaurant called Cordillera. It was delicious! We got first class service from the owner who helped us as the waitress only spoke Spanish. We chose a bottle of Malbec from the cellar and then both ordered steaks (I had tenderloin and Neil had a ribeye).
We knew the weather was bad upon the Mendoza pass, which had been closed to buses and only open for 2 hours a day for cars if that. So we
weren’t able to book our bus on Thursday, as the weather is unpredictable. The options were: fly for a lot of money, go on a ‘tour by car across the pass for the same price as the flight but halved if we find 2 other people to share the car with or the other option that got offered to us and that was our couch surfer in Santiago said he would come to pick us up in his car if we paid him $250 USD to cover for fuel, chains for his tires and his additional car insurance to drive across the boarder. We agreed as it was the cheapest option and less hassle option... well so we thought. But we’ll go into that in tomorrow’s blog.
All in all Mendoza was a nice city. This time of the year it’s very cold though. The bars and restaurants are also the most expensive we have seen so far in South America (averaging about £10 for a meal). Still in the UK a steak dinner with an amazing bottle of wine would cost the best part of £60-80 so it’s still cheap, but if you have been backpacking
and have been paying £3-5 a meal it’s a lot!! HAHA
Love V&N xxx
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