A comedy of errors in Mendoza

If you're like me - a lover of good wine - it would be unthinkable to be in Argentina and not visit Mendoza, the centre of the country's wine-making industry. I went there on my trip two years ago and loved it. It's amazing to think wine can be grown there, considering its desert-like terrains. But it is, and it's good! This might have something to do with Mendoza's impressive irrigation system that runs in channels around most of the city, apparently a hand-me-down from the Incas. So, like my trip to Iguazu, I had no qualms in getting on the 13 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires.

Getting some exercise in the streets of Mendoza

Unfortunately, as suggested by this post's title, Mendoza round two did not score rave reviews. This was certainly no fault of the wine, but more the sequence of mishaps and annoyances that occurred over the five days we spent there. So let the rant begin.

First were the navigational issues we had leaving the bus terminal. I wont try and say that Bec and I are especially good with maps, but the streets' random changes in name did not help at all, nor did our hostel's false advertisement of being ten minutes from the bus terminal. Yeah, by cab maybe. Once at the hostel,  we were told the four-bed dorm we booked online  did not actually exist and instead we were put in an eight-bed one, with two measly and ineffective fans. Team this with the 40+ degree heat and, voila, we had a sauna...literally.

Unsurprisingly, we thought we'd try our luck with another hostel, one closer to the action on the social street of Villanueva. Here we were placed in a tiny six-bed dorm room which had no space to house all six people's backpacks. This was particularly hazardous when the two of us entered our room late one night in search of dry clothes, having come back from dinner and been unsuspectingly thrown into the hostel's scummy green pool by some drunken guests (and a hostel employee). I wont lie though, the shock it caused was funny at the time, but I still count this random and unprovoked act as another mishap to add to the list. Sure others wouldn't have found it quite as funny.

Finally there were the wine tours - or lack thereof. To save some dollars, we thought we'd do one tour ourselves and one through a hostel. The first hour of our self-navigated tour of Lujan de Cuyo was spent trying to find the public bus stop to get there. Turns out the girl at reception didn't know where it was, nor which number bus to take. After finally arriving, we found out that you actually need a car to visit this region, as the wineries are so far apart (probably something we should have looked into first). So our tour of the region turned into a cab ride to one winery and a long wait for the bus back to Mendoza.

Thinking organised tours might be the way to go, we attempted to book a bike riding one of Maipu through our second hostel. Unfortunately all tours were booked out until after we had planned to leave. Not a problem. We went to the hostel next door and booked a better tour, one the girl at reception said 'has everything': bike hire, an enormous asado lunch, three wineries, a distillery, visits to chocolate and olive oil factories, a swim in the 100,000L swimming pool. Was this too good to be true? Apparently so. Having fasted in anticipation of the asado, we arrived at 2pm for pick-up only to be regrettably informed by reception that three of the five people who had booked that day had cancelled, so the company had called the tour off.

Am I ranting? Ok, maybe a bit. There were some good points. The hostel quickly organised another tour that same afternoon, unfortunately this one had no lunch and no bikes. Although our empty tummies were rumbling and we got tired of hearing repeatedly the ins and outs of wine vats and fermentation, we finally got to taste some wines. The best was a shiraz harvested by a local family-run vinyard called Don Arturo. Bec and I bought two bottles. We also learned a thing or two about olive oil and tasted some good ones.

 

The gorgeous Don Arturo winery

All in all, we were there for the wine and drink it we did (even if it wasn't at the wineries). Over the following five days we had numerous boozy lunches and dinners and enjoyed sampling the local produce, the Malbec in particular. I guess the lesson was that you don't have to visit the touristy city of Mendoza to taste its fruits. Being in South America for another few months luckily means the good stuff is pretty much on tap.