Mendoza, Argentina

Although our 10-hour overnight bus from Cordoba was the shortest of our busrides to date, it was by far the toughest due to an unannounced transfer by our bus company to another which was not very pleasant (beware of Mercobus). We were pretty tired when we arrived in Mendoza at 6AM, however, received a warm welcome at our hostel (Hostel Lao $200ARP/n -dbl) and were invited to crash on the lounge couches until our room was available. We slept a couple of hours and then walked around the city we'd been most looking forward to in Argentina.

Mendoza is a medium sized city (~100,000 people) which was leveled by an earthquake in the 1800s and subsequently rebuilt with extra-wide streets in a modern grid arrangement. It is also home to Malbec wine which is a delicious red wine similar to Pinot Noir, but one which delivers a ferocious hangover if drunk in excess, which we have a habit of doing.

On our second day in Mendoza we did a cycling tour through Chacras de Coria which is one of the wine regions surrounding Mendoza. Baccus tours rented us a mountain bike and pre-arranged visits to four wineries (or bodegas as they call them) for a measly $35 ARP/pp. We got a little lost on the public bus ride to Chacras, got told off by the second bus driver as we didn't have coins to pay the second fare, and put the whole tough commute behind us with our first wine tasting at 11AM. We befriended a French couple on the tour who were doing a similar trip in South America but who were then going to NZ, SE Asia and India on an 11-month holiday. I almost punched them both in the mouth. The last winery we went to, Pulmary, was by far the best because 1) we were hammered at this stage of the tour, and 2) because the winemaker poured our first glass out of the massive concrete vat that contains his 2011 Malbec and pulled our second and third glasses out of oak casks that contained his 2009 Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon Reserves. It was a pretty unique experience which was made even sweeter when the drunk French girl crashed her bike into a stationary fire hose cabinet on the 4-minute ride back to the rental place. No injuries except to her pride which had been frequently vocalised throughout the day when she reminded each winemaker that they should thank the French for inventing winemaking technique.

We nursed our rotten Malbec hangovers the following day and booked a hike in the Andes for our second to last day in Mendoza.

The hike was a guided 8k trek to the Cerros Arenales peak in the Central Andes. It was relatively short hike starting at 2500m (8300ft) ascending to 3500m (11,500ft). It was freezing and snowing on the mountain and in the first 10 minutes of the hike, Charlotte, having not grown up around ice or snow, took a step onto a partially frozen stream and fell hard onto her side and wrist. She was a little dazed by the fall and began sliding down the ice towards a 3m bank that would have dropped her into a cold, shallow pool of water. I quickly changed into my Captain America outfit, grabbed her jacket and pulled her off the ice, and even changed her underwear before she realised she had crapped her pants. Her hip was grazed from the fall and she had injured her wrist but insisted on carrying on with the hike. We continued up the mountain ang got within 100m of the peak before turning back because the wind was too strong.

We were going to take a bus the next day to the coastal Chilean city of Valparaiso, however, a winter storm had rolled over the Andes (probably the one we'd seen on the mountain) and had closed the pass/international tunnel. So instead we had to detour the next part of our trip to the northern Argentinian city of Salta with the intention of crossing the Andes into Chile a bit further north. We lounged around the hostel on our last afternoon and boarded our 18-hour overnight bus to Salta later that evening.