Mendoza

One of the two reasons that Mendoza is famous is that it is the center of Argentia´s wine district. While Argentina wine isn´t exactly world renowned, it is a very fast growing industry and Mendoza has done its best to capitalize on that fact. The popular thing among backpackers, is to rent a bike and ride to a bunch of wineries. A few routes have been set up in areas where there is a fairly high concentrations of vineyards.

So we got on a bus that would take us to the outskirts of Mendoza where we would begin the tour. It turned out to be a bit tricky to pay for the bus as, it is very difficult to get change in South America and it only took exact change. After trying to pump the ticket machine full of coins, it finally spit out one ticket. I am not sure if the driver even noticed or cared but we got a ride out to Mapu, a small town outside of Mendoza. Here we payed for our bikes, and set out down the road.
Our first stop was at the Museo del Vino. This was a small muesum set up at a vineyard, which had a collection of wine making equipment streching back to colonial times. We were given a good tour, in english, that explained how the equipment was used and how it had evolved from collecting graps in baskets made from hide, crushing grapes with their feet and storing it in clay vessels to the modern stainless steel vats and pneumatic press used today. After a tour around the museum, we were taken into the modern winery and given a tour of their current operations. It was all very impressive and I actually learned a little about wine making. After the tour we were given some wine to sample, a chardonnay, which wasn´t too bad, although whites are not the regions specialty.
After the museum we got back on our bikes and headed off to the next stop, a winery called Vina el Cerno. This winery was a few kilometers away, and by the time we arrived we had discovered how increbily uncomfortable the bike seats were. I have ridden quite a few bikes and nothing compared to how hard and lumpy these seats where. Luckily, we were on a wine tour so we head to the tasting room to dull the pain. At this winery we sampled their chardonnay, cabernt sauvignon, syrah, and their malbec, the varitey the region is famous for. Malbec, is actually the variety looked down on by the French (Mal meaning bad and bec meaning kiss.) I thought it was pretty good but Katie prefered the syarh and the cab sauv. After the wine we got back on the bikes, the seats seamed to be a bit better by then, and headed to our next stop, a winery by the name Bodega Carinae. We arrived just in time to join an english tour that had just started. This winery had just been restarted a few years ago, after being abanonded for a generation. Appartently the son had not want to continue the family business and after the father had died, the vineyard just sold their grapes to other wineries. In 2002 or so a couple had bought the land from the son and started the up the current operation, which had already won a couple of international contests. We tasted several of their varieties and bought a couple of bottles to bring back with us. We also had a picnic lunch in the the vineyards.
After that we went across the street to visit an olive plantation. We wandered around a bit and sampled some olives and oil in their gift shop but decided not to take the tour. It was getting late and we still had one more winery to visit.


The last winery we visited was called Familia Di Tommaso. We took a short tour of the facilities, which were no longer be used to produce wine. We were able to walk into one of the large storage barrels, which had been cut open for the public to view. The ceiling of the barrel was coated with crystals, which had formed during the many years the barrel had been used for storing and fermenting wine. They were quite beautiful. We tasted a couple of wines, and bought a bottle of Malbec. Then we biked back to the rental place and caught a bus back into Mendoza.

The second trip we did from Mendoza was the Alta Montaña Tour. We had heard from several people that the road from Mendoza into Chile was spectacular and we wanted to see more of it than just from the bus window. We found a tour that would take us to see most of the sites we wanted to visit.
The trip started off with a surprise, due to a unforeseen time change. We were informed, five minutes after waking up, that the tour group was downstairs waiting for us, and that it was eight o'clock, not seven. We threw our stuff together as quickly as possible and headed off for the mountains. The first stop was at a reservoir that supplied Mendoza and the surround vineyards with water. The drive up there reminded us how dry this region was and how important this water was in maintaining the productivity of the surrounding area. The reservoir and irrigation system was originally built by the natives, but since had received considerable modification to keep up with modern demands.We continued on stopping at the small town of Uspallata for a snack and Los Penitentes Ski Resort. The next stop was the one I had been looking forward to the most, Aconcagua. At 6962m it is the highest mountain in the Americas and the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. We were able to hike for about an hour on a loop out to a lookout point and back to the park entrance. It was nice to get out of the van and stretch our legs after all that driving. It was a beautiful, clear day, and we enjoyed the chilly sunshine. It was the first time we had to wear jackets for a couple of weeks.

Following our short hike around Aconcagua National Park, we drove off to Las Cuevas, a town close to the Chilean border. We drove through the town and began to wind our way up a switchbacking gravel road up the side of the mountain. We were climbing to a monument called Cristo Redentor de los Andes monument located at 3800m above sea-level on the Argentinean-Chilean border. The road was once the only way to cross the border, but now a 3km international tunnel cuts through the mountain, eliminating the need to take the winding road over the pass.
The top of the pass was freezing and the wind was blowing hard, chilling us to the bone in seconds. The view, however, was amazing! The snow capped peaks of the Andes stretched out before us in all directions. After snapping a few photos, we were quite cold so we piled back into the van and headed down the mountain.


The last stop on our tour was the Punte de Inca, which despite its name, was not built by the Inca. It is a natural bridge formed from sulphurous deposits spanning the Vacas river. Their are hotsprings located under the bridge, but after an earthquake in 2005 , the bridge was closed as it was unsafe to cross.The bridge was the last stop of the day, and we all piled back into the van for the drive back to Mendoza. After spending a lot of time in big cities was nice to get back out into the mountains and stretch our legs a little.

We chose to spend New Year's in Mendoza, as it would be considerably more expensive to spend it in Chile. We decided to head out to the bar district only to find everything closed. There was only one bar/restaurant open and it was packed with tourists. Apparently, residents of Mendoza do not go out for New Year's, although I think they tend to have private family parties. One thing they do like to do is light off fireworks, loud fireworks. We had a mediocre meal, a good bottle of wine and rang in the New Year as explosions rattle the window panes around us.