2 Mar 2010 05:56Mendoza, Argentina
After a 6h bus ride from Santiago crossing the Andes, we arrived in Mendoza, just 12h before the tragic earthquake in Chile.
The city is a popular stopover before climbing Aconcagua peak in the Andes and the capital of the wine country in Argentina: over 1000 vineyards around the city produce a very high rated Malbec wine.
The city itself is small (around 100k people living there) and has nothing special: everything is centered around Plaza Independencia where the main restaurants and coffee shops are located (Av. Sarmiento and Paseo Sarmiento).
Things to do
Try the wine… lots of it :) With over 1000 bedegas (wineries) around the city you have plenty of choices. There are many tour operators that will take you on a day trip to several wineries for wine tasting and lunch.
We booked a full day tour to Uco Valley from Ampora Wine Tours for US$ 150 / person. We visited 3 vineyards: Andeluna (rather small, producing only 500.000 litres of wine every year), Salentein (quite big, the first vineyard to establish in Uco Valley, producing about 15 mil. litres every year) and Altus where we had lunch in their bistro.
During our tour we learned about the wine making process, how the low end and high end wines are made, we visited the cellars and tasted between 3 and 5 wines produced at the vineyard.
Stephen (which we met during the tour) made some great photos compared with the crappy ones made by my iPhone which are on Flickr.