Mendoza and the Andes - January 8-11, 2013

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Mendoza is a beautiful little town, very walkable and easy to navigate thanks to five large plazas. The biggest, Plaza Independencia, is right in the middle of town and is surrounded by four smaller plazas. They all have fountains, beautiful tiles, and monuments. There's lots of pedestrian streets and an impressive canal/irrigation system.

On January 8, 2013 we arrived in Mendoza shortly after 8am on an Andesmar bus. This bus ride was pretty nice because we got the front seats on the top deck giving us fantastic views of the landscape between Rosario and Mendoza. The seats were black leather, we had lots of leg room, and despite being given ridiculously narrow blankets it was a rather comfy trip.

We walked to our hotel, the Argentino, which is right on Plaza Independencia, from the bus station, about a 20 minute walk. After leaving our bags until our room was ready, we wandered around Plaza Independecia and drank from a fountain spewing delicious aquifier water fresh from the mountains. We had breakfast along pedestrianized Sarmiento and then found a tourist info office to arrange a couple excursions - a half day wine tour and full day tour of the Andes.

Next we went to the Terraza Mirador at City Hall to take in the views from the rooftop terrace. At first it seemed closed, but just as we were heading back down the stairs disappointed, we ran into a city worker who let us out on the terrace and gave us a little tour.

We had a rather bland and salty, but otherwise ok lunch at Qunita Norte before checking into our hotel to finally shower and nap. Later on, we passed by the Museo Popular Callejero on Avineda Las Heras. It's a sidewalk museum with dioramas depicting the changes over time to Mendoza streets.

We had dinner on the sidewalk of a nice looking place with a parilla special for two people at $180 pesos. It included two very delicious empanadas, ice cream, and a giant heaping plate of various types of meat. I'm not sure in what universe this plate of meat is an acceptable amount for two people to eat in one sitting; we couldn't even get through half of it! (See before and after pictures for the evidence.) The blood sasuage seemed a bit over-rated to us, but it wasn't bad spread on some bread with chimichurri. I tried a little bit of intestine, but it didn't taste that great to me. The beef and chorizo were by far the best parts in my opinion. There were also chunks of chicken and pork. We had a bottle of malbec/syrah mix from Tierra del Fuego and got a doggy bag for all the meat we couldn't eat. We ate some more of it for lunch the next day, and left the rest on the street for one of the many stray dogs to find. I began to realize why all the stray dogs in Argentina are so big and healthy looking compared to stray dogs in other countries - because of tourists like us who can't possibly eat the amount of meat locals do, so feed our leftovers to the dogs. Or maybe locals don't really eat that much meat either, and also feed scraps to the street pups - or the dogs eat directly from the restaurants waste. While I like to see dogs eat well, I still think it's a little silly that restaurants insist on serving such copious amounts. You see the result not only in all the well-fed dogs, but also all the over-weight people. The latter is partly also explained by the copious amounts of sugar deemed normal here, especially at breakfast. My partner ordered a jugo naranja natural and the place added sugar to it! On the bus, breakfast consisted of an alfajar (chocolate covered cookie with caramal), a dulce de leche (caramel) filled muffin, and crackers with marmalade. The breakfast we had at the sidewalk cafe was cafe con leche, a tiny glass of juice, and two sugary croissants.

On January 9, 2013, we slept in a bit, had breakfast in the hotel that was pretty good, and then swam in the hotel pool, which was small but really nice. Then we went shopping in some flea markets along Las Heras, and bought some bread for our leftover meat at Mercado Central (Av. Heras and Patricias Mendocinas.) Unfortunately we weren't able to find any chimichurri sauce to go with it - very disappointing. Chimichurri makes everything better.

That afternoon, we got picked up for our wine tour by El Cristo tour company (we picked them because they were only pamphlet we found at the tourist info office that actually had prices listed - only $90 pesos.) Everyone on the tour was Argentinian, mostly from Buenos Aires. I could understand most of what the guide was saying in Spanish, which was good because she didn't translate just for the two of us. Thank goodness Spanish lessons.

Our first stop was an industrial winery called Lopez. We got an english guide for that part of the tour. We tried a sparkling wine and a red. We had some time at the end waiting for the rest of our tour group to finish with their spanish guide, and inquired about having some more tastings. They wanted to charge us $45 pesos just to taste - with no waiver if you purchased a bottle after tasting so we forgoed that. There was an American girl that didn't want to taste any of the wine. Not sure what the point of a wine tour is if you don't like wine, but whatever. I suppose it's just one of things people feel they have to do while in Mendoza. I later overhead the same woman complaining about the blandness of food here, reaffirming my own thoughts. There are of course some amazing exceptions (empanadas, chimichurri, chorizo), but it sounded like this woman was a vegetarian.

Next up we visited an olive oil factory and bought a three pack of different types. The other bodega was an artesanel winery called Cavas de Don Arturo. We were able to sample three wines here, plus one of their reserves the owner offered us and two other english speakers from a seperate tour group that kept stopping at the same spots as ours. We bought a cabernet sauvignon and two alfajars, which were a bit different than the ones in Buenos Aires in that they weren't dipped in chocolate. Unfortunately, the bottle of wine and our olive oils got stolen from us on our last day in Argentina. I hope those fuckers enjoyed it. They were probably pretty pissed they didn't get any cash or other valuables.

The last stop on our Maipú and Luján de Cuyo wine tour was the Iglesia de la Carrodilla (patrona de los viñedos). The tour dropped us off two hours late at 7:30pm so it was a good thing we had no plans. We went and swam in the hotel pool again and then went wandering looking for Aristedes Villanueva, a street I had read had lots of good restaurants. For some reason, we couldn't find the obviously yellow highlighted street on our map, but instead a tiny little street called Villanueva. We walked to the latter and it was pretty obvious it was not the right place, and the neighbourhood seemed a bit sketchy, so we walked back down to Sarmiento and had a couple glasses of red wine with an appetizer of grilled veggies on bread with goat cheese. It was a cocktail bar, and the menu didn't list the wines, but said "ask about our wines." We ordered two glasses of malbec without asking the price, and they totally ripped us, charging $50 pesos per glass! At other restaurants in Mendoza, you could get a whole bottle for $55, glasses ranged from $18-35. So we didn't tip. I hate getting ripped off, but as a tourist i guess you just have to expect it.

As we were eating and looking over the map, we finally found Aristides Villanueva, and it wasn't far so we walked there. There were lots of bars and restaurants, and we went to Antara craft beer pub again so we could try the barley wine the Antara in Palermo, Buenos Aires had run out of when we were there.

January 10th we woke up at 6:30am to start our Alta Montaña tour. The first stop was Villavicencio, a boarded up hotel and the source of mineral water from a company of the same name. We had lunch in Uspallata. I bought a black and purple toque made of llama wool at the market by the Puente del Inca, which was super cool. Then we went to the Cristo Redentor, which is at the border with Chile. So technically we stood in Chile. We bought a ceramic cup filled with hot chocolate and agua de miel from some Chileans with a stand up in the mountains at the Cristo Redentor. It was a very nice souvener cup, but we have since broken it. At least the beverage was delicious.

The tour took us along the Sanmartiniana route through the Andes. Other spots we visited were Valle de Potrerillos, Puente Picheuta, Valle del Penitentes, Mirador del imponente Aconcagua (6962 metres above sea level), and Villa Las Cuevas. We got back to Mendoza at 8pm, a half hour ahead of schedule. We went to Wines of Mendoza and had a flight of wine, followed by two glasses the waiter suggested based on our favourites in the flight. I liked the blended varieties, my partner preferred the Malbecs. We also ordered a cheese plate with candied walnuts, which was big and amazingly delish, and spoiled our dinner appetites. We were both tired from our long day in the Andes, and our ears were all messed up from all the changes in elevation, so we were satisfied with going home to bed.

Our last day in Mendoza we went to the Parque General San Martin. We wanted to take the bus up to the Cerro de la Gloria, but it never seemed to come and we got sick of waiting so we rented bikes instead. The guy at the bike rental place suggested we leave our passports so we could pay after based on how long we were. Yeah right. We prepaid for an hour. It was much too tiring to bike up the hill in the heat of the day, so we decided not to attempt it after wearing ourselves out on the slight slope of Av. Libertador heading to the Aboriginal Park. It was a little scary biking up that road with traffic passing next to you so quickly - there were much nicer, more relaxed, shaded, and non-uphill portions of the park to bike around.

We had a very nice middle eastern lunch at Cocina Poblana and after walking around a bit more to see the two plazas we hadn't yet been to (Italia and España), we had a couple more glasses of wine at a wine bar, picked up our bags from the hotel, and caught our bus back to Buenos Aires for our return flight home.

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Photos

Mendoza Car Park
It gets so hot they have little tarps in their parking lots!