One day as a tourist not mounting the bike – so started early with a trek in the Park General San Martin to reach the peak where a monument for the army of the Andes war(s) was placed – Monumento al Ejército de Los Andes, Cerro de La Gloria. From the peak the entire Mendoza city can be viewed.
The trek was not too difficult – but anyhow from my B&B and return it turned out to be 23.000 steps – glad I took this in the morning so the heat wasn’t going to kill me like the arrival day almost did.
Checked into the city center for a quick lunch and getting some water before joining the 6 hour wine tasting trip that I booked. Mostly brasilians but also an argentinian couple and a young (out of highschool) danish couple – all pale and after only one week happy to meet another dane.
Three “bodegas” or wineyards (Vistandes, Viña el Cerno and Florio) and an olive oil farm (Pasrai) was on the afternoon program. Good local guides – you could sense that this off-season (harvest in march) wineyard visits was big business. At least three or four tour busses was at each site and the shops did sell boxes and bottles of wine.
Argentina has to import all barrels as the local wood quality is poor
Ok – out of appr 15 different wines tasted only one or two would be of my future interest. Mostly very sweet wines was produced (also the red ones) and that did surprice a lot of us. Most used grape was the Malbec followed by a few imported spanish variants. And do note that Southamerica actually started producing wine in around 1560 as the spanish brought this tradition along their quests as a requirement from the church. Another fun-fact is that yearly Mendoza only get’s 250mm rain – so how do they manage creating so much quality wine. From the early days canals from the mountains has been established feeding melting water from snow and glaciers to the city and surrounding fields. And even today the flow is obvious in the many canals everywhere in Mendoza – amazing achievement.
Military parades or training sessions for their orchestras seem to be a very frequent evening event – not just in Mendoza, but also other evenings in both Chile and Bolivia I have experienced this. 3-4 hours of mostly the same tune to make you fall asleep quicker.
Final statement on Mendoza – if you are around, then do spend at least 4-5 days here. So much more to see and explore, so only spending 2 nights is almost an insult to the city.
Evening ended with yet another great dinner with Annemieke, Jeroen and Eric that I met up in Santa María – and walking back (topping with 34.000 steps this day) to the B&B the locals had a dance at one of the squarres – of course the Argentinian Tango – a short video is also posted on FB.
