It was a real fight trying to get out of Peru, in the end the cheapest option was to take 3 flights over 17 hours: Cusco-Lima, Lima-Santiago and Santiago-Mendoza. Although we have found flying to be the quickest and most comfortable method of transportation, it was certainly not the case on this occasion. Already exhausted from our trekking (especially after the long final day at Machu Picchu and our sleepless night of catching flights) we were seriously unimpressed when we arrived at Mendoza airport to find that we could only take the bus if we had the correct change, which we didn´t and none of the vendors in the airport seemed willing to part with any, so we were forced to fork out over 5 times the price for a taxi into town. When we finally arrived at our hostel around noon we only lasted a couple of hours before we crashed, deciding to take a nap. This ´nap´ finished at 9am the following morning!

We decided to come to Mendoza primarily to take a wine tour as this is Argentina´s wine country, famous for its Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon. We got ourselves booked onto a half day tour that afternoon visiting the ultra modern Vistandes winery, the surprisingly good olive oil factory Pasrai, and finally one of the oldest wineries in the area Familia Cecchin which only produces delicious organic wine, tasting 3 wines in each. Perhaps we had been spoiled by wine tasting previously in New Zealand where in an afternoon tour we took in 5 or 6 wineries, tasting 5 wines in each.

Mondoza itself didn´t have too much going on and we really only had 2 days here before moving on to Bariloche. There were no real sights to speak of other than the massive Parque General San Martin, where we spent our second day walking around taking in the lake, we also wandered around some of the cities pretty squares; Plaza Independencia with its grand fountains and the smaller Plaza Espana.