Argentina- Viva Vino!

The drive from Santiago, Chile to the border with Argentina was spectacular. As we looked from the bus window, winding roads and snow capped mountains raced by.
At one point we passed a ski resort where the road wound beneath the chair lift giving us an amusing view of legs and skis in the sky above. Our first indicator that we were approaching Argentinean territory was of a faded battered transparent flag; thankfully not an indicator of things to come.

Mendoza

Our first stop was the city of Mendoza. We got a nice heated room in Hostel Independencia and boy did we need it; unfortunately our summer days are behind us. It’s a really pretty city and thankfully cheaper than Chile. We chilled out for the first day or so, sampling the local cuisine and wine, while viewing the city. Mal quickly became obsessed with Argentina’s empanadas, after being somewhat disappointed with the salty dry Chilean variety. Empanadas are little pies with various different fillings, the most common being meat. We actually can’t walk past a stall or shop selling them without him buying a few.

The next order of business of course was to get serious about the wine. The region around Mendoza produces 70% of the country’s wines, hence a tour was in order; and what better way than on a ‘Bikes and Wine Tour’? For $4 each we arrived at the office, were given a glass of wine and some empanadas, a route map and the low down on the best wineries to visit and sent on our merry way, with bike break-down service available if needed. There was a 22km circuit to bike including: a museum, a chocolate factory, an olive farm and eleven vineyards! We had no idea; otherwise we would have arrived at nine am!

We biked to the furthest vineyard, a small family affair and caught the tail end of a $4 tour, so we ended up sampling the wines first (not such a bad thing!) with the big group, thus having a private tour of the vineyard where we learned a lot about wine. Time was racing past as we quickly popped into the olive factory and picked up a few jars of goods; one jar of black olive tapenada, one green jar and a jar of sun dried tomatoes, all made on site. They were delicious; we scoffed them down with freshly baked bread for days afterwards- yummy.



The next winery we stopped at on recommendation of some other drunken cyclists was another small one, which still used the traditional vaults to store and make the wines and which looked amazing. We samples four wines here and were impressed with one of the bottles, so we bought it and definitely enjoyed it over dinner a few nights later. There was only time for one more bigger winery before we discovered to our horror that we hadn’t changed our watches back an hour when we entered Argentina (two days before!!) and had to be back in 30mins. Can you believe that for two days we had the wrong time!? I guess you can, we’re pretty laid back at this stage of the holiday, and with a glass of wine with lunch and dinner- what difference does time make?

Unfortunately on the last day or two in Mendoza things began to shut down due to the efforts to contain Swine flu, which was beginning to sweep through the country. Buenos Aries was under containment and the lockdown was heading to the western side of the country. So things were pretty quiet. We were worried we may actually get trapped there so we bussed it up to Cordoba for our next stop off as soon as we could.

Cordoba

We discovered the joys of the ‘cama’ busses on our overnight trip to Cordoba. The busses are double-decker luxury, depending naturally on how much you pay. A regular bus is the cheapest, next is the ‘semi-cama’ (cama means bed), where the chairs recline quite far, but not as much as in ‘cama’. Cama also includes a meal and drinks service- and depending on price, the drinks can be whiskey or champagne! We slept well over the 12hr ride arriving in the morning to the beautiful city of Cordoba.

Cordoba is absolutely packed full with churches, universities and museums. It was named the cultural capital of the Americas in 2006, so you can guess what I’m on about!

We probably spend too much time there, but when the ice-cream’s that good and every corner produces a new café beside another stunningly beautiful church, what can you do?

We took a day trip from the city to the town of Alta Gracia. This is the childhood home of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, which is now a museum and kept us entertained for a few hours.

There are hundreds of photos from his life and the legendary motorcycle from his infamous trips around South America, chronicled in his ‘Motorcycle Diaries’. The museum was actually visited by his revolutionary ally and friend Fidel Castro, with a whole room dedicated to photographing the appointment.

Since we arrived in South America we’ve mainly been in cities, so we’re looking forward to heading up to Northern Argentina into the countryside to get a taste for something different. And we don’t even mind the overnight journey, guess which bus we’ve booked?