We got to Mendoza bus terminal a little tired after our fun bus journey! We’d just managed to book a hostel in time, and so in our true saving money fashion, turned down all methods of transport and walked it. with our heavy bags. whilst very tired. We made it to our hostel, and didn’t exactly get a friendly greeting but hey ho too tired to care the place looked fine! Check in was at 12 so she told us somewhere we could store our bags and we sat down for a bit! An hour later we were told there was no room at the inn and we had to stay somewhere else! She didn’t even seem to care! So we ended up at another hostel a few blocks away that on first impressions was pretty bad but it’d do! Wasn’t so impressed!!
It’d got late and we were both starving so we went on the hunt for food!! We headed towards an amazing steak place, but after walking for aages out of town, past every closed shop (it was a sunday..) we turned back in the hunt for more accessible food! We passed our friends from the bus ordering steak with a bottle of wine…. yum…… and eventually found a restaurant that had a great menu of the day, basically with steak and potato, where wine cost as much as a sprite! We were very happy! The really nice waitress proceeded to give us bread, (included in the price – i checked!) starter, and dessert! For no extra! They must of liked us! Or we just looked very hungry and dirty haha! Well fed but knackered we made it to the bus terminal again after deciding when to head to Buenos Aires to book our bus tickets….
The next day we slept, mended James’ trousers, peeled lots of skin off Clare and then headed out to see the sights of the town! The town was quiet as we had pictured in our head for wine town but overall it was pretty good nice streets, parks and loads of places to eat. We headed out to the huge nature reserve place where we was hoping to get a good look of the Andes but we got tired and decided to just get a ice cream and sit in a field practicing our Spanish. We headed back was ask if we would like to have a BBQ at our hostel! Well of course we wasn’t about to turn down our first BBQ in Argentina and we was all ready so hungry and it was only 6pm so us thinking it would be soon we sat around… got more and more hungry thinking they must be starting it up soon but it got to about 9 then they said we should go up to the top balcony for food excited we went up to see that they was only just about to light the wood… We had forgotten that they eat late here haha anyway we was welcomed with drinks Fernet and coke and shared some beer with the locals and a game of Ping Pong. It was interesting as only one guy spoke a little English so there wasn’t much conversations going on but we was well involved in it all by 12 we was given a little taster of steak which was amazing (think we could have loved any kind of food by now tho)! Another 30 minutes past and the we set the tables up out side and finally got to eat!! It was amazing we had more than our fair share of steak and chorizios, full with the night now in full swing we had to go to bed seeing as we had to be up early to do our Mendoza wine tour!
We were picked up at 9 for our day tour. All started well visiting one of the smaller wineries where we got a full tour and explained everything that happens there from making the wine to having a walk around it all then of course some wine! Our guide explained really well how to taste the wine like a expert… very interesting seeing as we didn’t know any of this even after going to loads of wine places in New Zealand! With our new skills and wine before 11 we then headed to a wine museum where we was told not to drink there wine as it will likely make you ill… while walking around the place really smelt like fresh wine it was good, we then discovered its because they have the wine running around underneath in a kind of tank/tube system so the place smells like it does… maybe thats why it also must taste so bad?! Next up was Mendoza’s biggest winery Familia Zuccardi – this was so interesting we had a really different tour as this was at much bigger scale we got to taste grapes and see how champagne was made along with a few of there biggest wines. The wine tasting was brilliant we got to have a good taste of there exclusive wines and some that where unique to them. After we bought a big bottle of there pink champagne and then we were taken to their own 5* restaurant! To say the food was outstanding wouldn’t have done it justice! We had all the correct wines for starter – empanada’s and then off course, BBQ steak and chicken, with a really nice red wine we haven’t ever heard off and then when we couldn’t eat any more we had desert wine with a mango based dish and ice-cream. It was really all so good and not like them silly posh portions you get back home it was all fill yourself up with the best of everything! Stuffed we slept the whole way back to our hostel where we had to be woken up to get off the minibus! Now all we have to do is chill out til our bus to Buenos Aires. We’d had a really great day, although Mendoza itself didnt exactly live up to our expectations, (we’d just imagined it so differently! a lot smaller and quainter) the people we met and the day of wine tasting definitely did!
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