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Published: June 21st 2017
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Geo: -32.8927, -68.8331
We had two seats upstairs at the front of the bus from Cordoba to Mendoza, seats that reclined to be fully flat beds. Comfortable but for those that don't sleep well at the best of times not sleep-inducing!
Arriving in Mendoza we took a taxi to our hotel about 14km to the south in the Maipu wine area. We were expected that early and our room was waiting for us as was breakfast served by Monica. And we found ourselves in a little piece of paradise, lovely room in a converted adobe building on a wine/olive estate. Lots of shady terrace space, a lovely swimming pool among the vines, the snow capped Andes in the background and staff only too willing to help us organise all the things we wanted to do - except faced with this lovely place we didn't want to do too much. So that morning we swam and lazed by the pool, and Peter got sunburnt sitting in the shade. Then we wandered down the road about 300 metres and found a lovely local restaurant where we had a bottle of Alta Vista Reserva Torrontes (Argentinia white wine) and a few bites to eat then walked
The winery's own railway siding
But trains no longer go to Mendoza - so it's defunct! back (very hot) to the nearby wine museum. And that was it for Day 1, then back to our hotel, siesta, more swimming, dinner on the terrace with their own Malbec.!
Day 2 - late breakfast, sitting doing not too much then out to hire bikes to go visit the Trapiche winery, very upmarket, then back to hotel to sit on the terrace while thunder rolled and the wind blew ands after a while returned the bikes and went back to the same restaurant for lunch (bottle of Traphice Malbec) - aready familiar faces and greeted with cheek kissing by the waitesss!
Back to the hotel for more sitting and reading and swimming (we have the place to ourselves - only 4 rooms) before making up our own light dinner of cheese and stuff to go with the bottle of Reserva Malbec we bought at the winery.
Great to meet the family who own this wonderful garden and hear about how their family bought and sold land over the generations. Julia's aunt next door told us that Argentina was once the most cultured and prosperous country of S. America but now they aee neighbouring countries, particulalry Brazil, becoming more prosperous. Argentina
encouraged Europeans immigrants, handing oot land and UK immigrants to set up the railways, now only freight, so is full of all nationalities. Mendoza has thrived from Italians setting up vineyards.
We have loved the lazy days in the countyside, listening to birds, dogs yapping and growling, a thunder storm that didn't rain but cooled the temperatures considerably. A taxi at 8am tomorrow takes us to Mendoza - which we didn't get to see though everyone says what a pretty town it is - for our 9am bus over the Andes to Santiago. So we might get up close to some snow like you guys inLondon!
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Sean Harvey
non-member comment
Oh my god!