What a fab
weekend in Mendoza, Argentina!
Friday morning
we headed off early to take the bus on the 7-8 hour journey across the Andes to
head to Mendoza, at the heart of the famous Argentine wine region. The views on the Chilean side were
spectacular, including the winding road known as Los Caracoles (The Snails in
English). You do literally crawl up the
mountainside at a snail’s pace. We were
sat on the front row upstairs so actually hung over the mountain edge as the
bus turned each corner. It was quite exhilarating,
and definitely added to the whole experience.
Getting to the border we waited quite a long time in the wind at the top
of the mountains for our turn to head to passport control. Despite being a slow process, it was really
simple and we headed on our way as it started snowing. A couple of hours later we arrived at the
hostel and were invited to try the traditional and extremely popular drink of
Maté. It is a sort of herbal tea, and
nearly every Argentinian carries a thermos, a bag of Yerba (the herbal mix), their
maté (what you drink out of) and a bombilla (straw) wherever they go. We learnt about how to prepare the drink, how
it should be drunk, and the history about the drink and local variations that
have developed in different regions.
On Saturday
we woke up early to head out to Maipú, to rent bikes for the day to tour the
vineyards. After passing by two
vineyards that were closed we headed into one for a tasting session. All 6 of us thought we would get about 50ml
of 4 different wines that didn’t sell well, after all it was only a
tasting. How wrong we were. An hour and a half and 4 full glasses of our
choice of wine later and we were pretty tipsy!
Nonetheless, we hopped back on the bikes to share a bottle of wine at another
winery down the road. We rounded the
trip of heading to a beer garden for a pint, before heading back to the
hostel. It was then time for a fantastic
Argentine asado (BBQ) with chunks of meat, empanadas, salad and of course more
wine! By the end of the day I think we
must have consumed about 3 bottles of wine each as well as a couple of pints of
beer.
Sunday morning
was more relaxed, due of course to the hangover that followed our frolics on
Saturday. We decided to go to Parque San
Martín, which is the biggest park I’ve ever been to. Measuring some 7km by about 4km, we didn’t get
to see all of it, but walked round the lake to find a place to sunbathe for our
first day of sun. Mendoza is an oasis in
the barren desert and only receives rain two or three days a year (obviously
being a bank holiday, it rained the first two days of our trip!). After a few hours in the park we met up with
someone who works at the hostel and also for a charity run by a church in
Mendoza. He actually lives in the old
cloisters with the chief priest, but it is a massive building and was look
something out of a horror movie.
However, he had the keys to everywhere, so we climbed the church tower
which had amazing views of the surrounding mountains and also went into a secret
chapel. This is definitely not something
many tourists get to do, and so was a fantastic experience.
Monday it
was time to chill before catching our bus back to Santiago. There wouldn’t have been much to write here,
but after a smooth weekend something had to go wrong! And on the scale of things this was pretty
bad. At the highest point of the
mountain road the brakes on our bus failed!!! Luckily we were on a flat part of
the road and weren’t going too fast.
However, having to wait 6 hours for a mechanic to fix the problem when
its freezing outside and dark isn’t fun!
Thankfully there was a little café nearby so we could buy food and
drink, as I had scoffed all my food before the border, as there´s loads of things
you can’t take into Chile. Arriving home
at 2:30am I was not looking forward to work later the same day, but overall we
had had a great weekend, and what made it even better is that Mendoza was sooo
much cheaper than Santiago!
