Sisters Astray

Mendoza.  Wine country!  With the friendly people, tree-shaded streets, lovely plazas, huge park, and tons of vineyards 20 minutes away, Kim and I could totally live here.  There are over 1,200 wineries in the Mendoza region, all specializing in Malbec.  We were in heaven!

After our 23 hour bus ride, we arrived in Mendoza on November 1^st and checked in to our hostel, The Oasis.  This was another family-run, smaller hostel that offered amazing, cheap asados (BBQ’s) every other night with, hallelujah, unlimited wine!!!  Gaspar, the owner’s son, was not only our grill master, but a fantastic source of information for anything we wanted to do around town.  Not to mention, his English was perfect.  Yay for Kim!

Gaspar the Grill Master

Dinner at the Oasis

We took the first day to get settled in and then headed to El Parque General San Martin.  Along the way, we had lunch with May and checked out the main Plaza Independencia.  The park was the biggest park we’d ever seen. Izzy would have loved it!!!  Tons of trails, open green areas, and a really nice lake equipped with a backdrop of the mountains.  It reminded us a little of Town Lake because there were tons of runners and a few rowers getting their workout on.  We even stumbled upon an awesome outdoor group aerobics class!  Ha!  It took a lot for us to not join in.  It was great hearing all the Spanish commands and super loud techno music.  Awww, we miss you Gold’s Gym!

One of the trails in San Martin Park

May and me in the park

The following day, Gaspar hooked us up with Mr. Hugo, a old man that rents out bikes to get to and from of all the vineyards.  What a fantastic day!  One of my favorite of the trip so far.  How can you beat riding around on a beautiful day, surrounded by vineyards and ice-capped mountains, with a group of fellow travelers??  We stopped at 3 wineries and toured the facilities, tasted a few types of their wine, had lunch and shared a few bottles with our new friends.  And to top off that amazing day, after the wineries close at 5pm, we headed back to Mr. Hugo’s for unlimited free wine!!  He and his wife literally just keep filling up your cup the minute you turn your head. Around 8:30 pm, Mr. Hugo personally escorts the entire group of 50 people to the bus and hugs and kisses them goodbye.   Awesome. 

Cruisin' through the vineyards

Our biker gang at one of the wineries

Wine Tasting!

Classy

Us at Mr. Hugo's, where the wine flows like water

We spent the next day recovering and chilling at the hostel with our new friends.  The following day, we signed up for an all day trek in the mountains of Vallecitos.  We headed out around 8:30am, took a 2 hour drive into the mountains, and started my first trekking experience!  Kim did Machu Picchu in Peru a few years ago so this wasn’t her first rodeo;).  

It was 3 hours straight up for 3000 feet, that’s right….straight up.  No switchbacks for you experienced trekkers.  Luckily our guide, Rodrigo, walked extremely slow and kept the group on the same pace.  Oh, and we had a couple from Israel in their seventies in our group!  It was so inspiring to see them still keeping up at that age.  That’s going to be us.  For sure. 

It was 2 hours back down, which actually seemed a bit harder due to the pressure on the knees, but still amazing. E very time it gets a little tough, you just look around and it’s all worth it.  Check out these pictures…

My first trek!

Us on the mountain

On the way down

The following day, we rested our sore legs and butts, hung around and went to the park again for some frisbee action. We were supposed to leave the following day for Puerto Madryn for whale watching and penguins!!! However, we had a mishap with the bus company, Andesmar, and ended up letting our bus leave right in front of us. They failed to tell us that the bus’s final destination was a completely different city and it would say that city on the bus and not Puerto Madryn. They wouldn’t allow us to change our tickets, so we had to buy new tickets for the following day and are out $200. Screw them. If any of you plan to travel in Argentina, try to avoid Andesmar at all costs. On a side note, I was pretty impressed on how efficient I was at bitching people out in Spanish. Go me!

We headed back to the hostel and luckily they had two beds left for us to stay an extra night.   We also lucked out because they were having another BBQ that evening!  It was one of the best we had. Great company, some English and Norwegian drinking games, tons of wine….see, things do happen for a reason. Marianne and Carl, we’ll see you in Bariloche.  Mark, James and Dicken, we’ll see you in Manchester, Lisi and William in Austria and Doug from Canada will be in Hong Kong when we go!  Traveling is the best….now on to Puerto Mardryn!