Mendoza & Wine

We arrived in Mendoza last Thursday (Feb 2nd). First things first, I need to mention that buses in Argentina (Andesmar and Flechabus in particular) are AMAZINGLY comfortable. Their buses include WiFi, meals, wine, whiskey, and some even play bingo for free bottles of wine! This is a big plus when traveling because some distances are very long, more than 20 hours.

Back to Mendoza… a fairly large city, the 4th largest city in Argentina and the largest wine producer in Latin America. There are many activities one can do here: hiking, canopy tours or zip lining, rafting, bungee jumping, skydiving, horse riding, etc. Despite all of this, being the good wine-o’s we are, the main reason why we wanted to visit the area was to visit wineries and drink!

Old wine barrel from Mendoza

Random musician statue, Mendoza

Salami and cheese shop, Mendoza

We showed up without a hostel reservation and ended up staying in one that is not worth mentioning, but on Friday we moved to Hostel Lagares which we highly recommend! Later that day I went to visit the museum of history which I found very interesting. We ended the night drinking wine with a German pal and a Swedish girl at the hostel, learning some tips for our future travels.

Museum of History, Mendoza

The following day we woke up bright and early to get ready for the bicycle/winery tour we booked through the hostel. A bus picked us up along with 3 others around 10 a.m., and off we went to the wine region of Maipu. Our guide, a very awesome girl named Catherine from Minnesota, led the way as we started off on our journey.

Biking to Wineries

We visited 3 wineries in all, a very old winery that now is a museum, a very modern and huge winery, and an organic winery that had our favorite wine, a delicious Malbec. We ended the tour at a public swimming pool cooling down, relaxing, drinking more wine and enjoying good conversations with a couple from England and our other tour partner Fleur from Holland. Good times!