You come to Mendoza to do many things, but first on any list is going to be a wine tour. About 40 minutes south of the city is a place called Maipu where there is a cluster of ten or so wineries, a beer garden, a chocolate and absinthe factory (a weird combination - I wonder do they mix the two?) and an olive oil producer.

We were a little late starting our tour which meant we had to restrict our choice of places to visit. There was a bunch of us from the hostel and we picked up a couple more on the bus so we had a good group on our cycle.

First stop - Mr Hugos, a well recommended bike rental place that also pours plenty of free wine before we started.

Maipu is a flat area, perfect for lazy cycling. When you hear about people cycling around the wineries you get the image of wonderful tree lined country roads - take away the word "country" and that's what Maipu is like. The roads are tree lined, but you're sharing them with cars and trucks which takes away the charm. The really scenic stuff is when you get inside the wineries and get to look out on the acres of vineyards.

We got our maps and bikes and headed first for the Beer Garden to line our stomachs with pizza and empanadas. And some stout.

The second biggest tip we had been given, after Mr Hugos, was to start from the furthest away winery and work your way back. That way, as you get drunker, you have to cycle less.

Our first winery was called Familia Di Tommaso, a fourth generation Italian family winery and one of Argentina's oldest wineries, where we got a tour of the wine making process followed by the important part, the tasting.

The making part is interesting too though. Firstly, these guys only make Malbec, the Mendoza speciality. After the grapes are picked and the wine is fermented and bottled, it is aged for 6 months in large, cool brick vessels. The original Di Tommaso vessels are constructed from European materials and are historically protected, so not actually used anymore.

The Di Tommaso wines also include two oak aged varieties. Before the 6 month bottle ageing, French oak barrels are used to age the wine for either 6 months or a year. Over here that means they get a "Roble" (oak) label on the bottle. They had a really good year in 2007 and decided to age 1,400 bottles for a year and a half - it's their premium wine and there are only a few hundred bottles left.

We got to taste one of each: the young; 6 month oak aged; 1 year oak aged; and a dessert wine, which is a family recipe. But not the expensive one, which was $140 to buy. That's about €27, which is still massively cheap for what it is. A regular Malbec, such as Trapiche, sells in supermarkets for about $20 - about €3.50.

We hopped back on our bikes and headed to Tempus Alba winery, where we took a free, self-guided tour and then sat on the roof patio overlooking the vineyard. With such a big group we were able to order a few bottles for a handful of pesos each and get a taste of their range of wines, not just Malbec either.

It was getting late in the day and we knew that all the wineries closed at 6, but we suspected that if we got in before 6 they were hardly going to kick us out. We were proved right when we arrived at Mevi winery at about 5:40. This winery offered no tour which meant we could get right down to business on another rooftop patio overlooking the vineyard. We weren't asked to leave until 7.

This sounds worse that it was, because there must be dozens of drunk tourists cycling at this time everyday, but there were police waiting for us when we left. They escorted us back to Mr Hugos where we were promptly served more free wine - not of the same standard that we'd been drinking all day, but no one complained (or probably even noticed).

That evening, back at the hostel, with our blue teeth, we tucked into another barbecue. Conversely, the crap hostel we left a few days ago had a class barbecue, and the good hostel we were now in had a crap barbecue.

Yesterday, Sean and I took in a high mountain tour, which is a bus trip driving west from Mendoza towards Chile to take in the sights of the Andes. It was a leisurely, enjoyable and quiet day. We got more San Martin history from our guide and got to see Cerro Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain in the western hemisphere at 6962m high. We learned there is another Christ the Redeemer, not the Rio one. It exists high up in the Andes, on the border between Argentina and Chile and symbolises the peace between the two countries. Unfortunately we didn't get to see it.

We also got to see the Puente del Inca, or Incan Bridge, which is a natural stone bridge. The bridge's base is stained yellow from the sulphurous thermal springs on the other side, which tells you a little about why it's called "Incan" - the Incans were the first to use the hot spring water for bathing. I had to remind myself of Hilbert's (our Guide on the Inca Trail) lessons - the Incans were spread over Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina. Unfortunately, we couldn't access the springs as the bridge is protected which means we couldn't cross it!

When we got back to the hostel our Maipu group was already started on a few bottles of Mendoza's finest. It didn't much (or anything at all really) for us to join them.