City of Mendoza

Yesterday we had planned on visiting several parks throughout Mendoza, Argentina.  However, in the morning, we dropped off our laundry and found out that there was a "paro" or strike for all long distance omnibuses throughout Argentina.  This was concerning because we were booked on one of those buses at 7:30 p.m. from Mendoza to Buenos Aires.

The night before we had been out looking for a place to eat and were able to snap a couple of pictures of the beautiful fountains at Plaza Independencia near our hotel.

Throughout the day there are also street vendors in this park.  I tried to take a picture of the vendors, but one of them took that opportunity to offer me some marijuana.  I politely declined...

Inside of Plaza Independencia there is also this huge sign that reminds you that, in fact, you are in the Ciudad de Mendoza.

The day of the strike we still wandered around and were able to visit a couple of parks between checking the newspapers and e-mailing the travel agent.

This is a gazebo in Plaza Bellegrini that I am sure looks better in the summer time.  This isn't a great picture, but it looked like a cozy place to sit.

Fountain in Plaza Espana

We referred to Plaza Espana as "Tile Park" because there was so much detailed tile work.

This is one of the only public water fountains I have seen during my stay in Argentina.

We ended up getting a little lost en route back to the hotel to check for updates on the travel situation and stumbled upon another park, but I can't remember the name.

Unknown statue is unknown park... I don't get lost very often and was frustrated.

As we walked around the city we saw the intricate canal system.  Our tour guide told us during our mountain tour that the runoff from the Andes fuels the entire aquatic system of Mendoza.

This is one of the canals.  These lined the roads, parks and sidewalks.  In the summer apparently they flow with the water from the melting snow.

Long story short... we ended up making our bus and it left on time for Buenos Aires, which was quite a surprise to everyone.  We took a CATA Internacional bus back to Buenos Aires - which I plan to review in my next blog.

Ciao,

Tim

Andes Mountains

We booked another tour during our stay in Mendoza through Say Hueque travel agency.  I wouldn't recommend them, and I will talk about that more in a later blog.  We ended up having a great time taking pictures of all the beautiful scenery.

Our first stop was at the dam, the city of Mendoza utilizes a lot of the melted snow from the Andes Mountains.  It collects in the dam pictured below and then is distributed to the various canals.

As we drove to our next stop we had some pretty great views from the windows of the bus.  The bus was a bit uncomfortable, but the tour guide Claudia from Huentata was fantastic.  She was bilingual and explained everything in fantastic detail.  It made the full day tour fly by.

View from the bus window.

Our next stop was at this historic bridge above.  To be completely honest the tour started at 7:30 a.m. and I think I dozed off a bit in the explanation so suffice it to say that it is an old bridge and was pretty cool.  While we were at this sight we also were able to watch two condors fly around one of the mountains for about 10 minutes.

To give you perspective, if you enlarge this picture you should be able to see the houses in the bottom left-hand corner of this photograph.

At this stop we got to watch one of the boys that was on our trip experience snow for the first time.  He was pretty energetic and him and I became friends throughout the day.  In the back and to the right in the photograph above you can see Mount Aconcagua.  Also during this stop Jason was able to get the tour guide to talk about the rugby team who crash landed in the Andes and resorted to cannibalism.  She said we weren't too far from the sight of the crash and that one of the members of the team still makes a trek each year to the spot of the crash.

We then made a quick stop at this Incan bridge.  This is a natural made bridge and apparently a hotel decided to develop on this land.   Not pictured above is the huge mountain that stands behind this bridge and then what used to be the hotel.  Some years ago there was a massive avalanche and hotel was destroyed and 7 people were killed.  After another avalanche in 2005 it was completely fenced off and trespassing is discouraged.

We had a very late lunch and then had to make a stop so some people could return some of their rented snow equipment and then headed back to the city as night began to fall.  I got this last picture on our way out...

Ciao,

Tim

Mendoza Wine Tours

We arrived in Mendoza on a fantastic bus from Andesmar that I will do a full review of later.  It is a pretty city and a lot more clean than Buenos Aires.

We checked into our hotel and had some lunch and then it was off to tour some wineries.

The first winery that we visited was Dante Robino.  It was the more modern, industrial and higher capacity of the two that we visited.  The picture below is how they used to store the wine in barrels, but now that has been turned into this museum portion.

The picture above is the private tasting room of the family that owns the winery.  They keep 300 bottles of each type of wine on hand, I guess in case of a wine emergency.

The second bodega that we toured was much smaller than the first.  It is pictured above and you can see that building on the right looks a bit older than Dante Robino.  This winery is the Cavas de Don Arturo.  Notice there is no link... this is small enough to forego a website altogether.

This winery was much more personal than the first winery and the tour guide, Denise, was much more proficient at English.

At this winery they still complete a lot of the process manually.  This is where the grapes stripped of the leaves and stems before they are crushed and sent to the other building through underground pipes for further processing.

At this winery we ended up purchasing two bottles of Syrah Roble Premium and two bottles of Malbec Roble Premium.  We also bought grape oil, a byproduct they sell.  All of this for about $65 USD, which I thought was quite a deal.

After the winery tours we went to tour an olive oil and food dehydration processing plant named Pasrai.  It was pretty interesting to learn all of the rules behind making extra virgin olive oil.

We took a picture of all of the products they make from olives:  soap, lotion, body oil and other things.

We ended up having a tasting at this place also and big surprise ended up buying some cheap things there also.  We got a three pack of garlic infused olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette,  and balsamic infused olive oil, a dried tomato and olive oil paste and a green olive paste for around $25 USD.

It was an interesting day filled with a lot of tasting.  We met some nice people from the states that were on vacation and it turns out that one of them was actually in Argentina studying to be a Spanish teacher also.

Ciao,

Tim