Mendoza

Mendoza is a sizeable city that resembles an oasis in a desert. Wide avenues of trees downtown provide shelter from the incessant sun, fed by a complex system of irrigation channels tapping Andean snowmelt from the River Mendoza. The guidebooks say that these acequias burble down every street - but although there was definitely some burbling, too often the channels get clogged by rubbish.

(It's the same story in many parts of South America - we have lost count of the times we have said to each other "oh, this place is beautiful, it's just a shame there's so much litter everywhere!")

Having not decided until late to come to Mendoza, we couldn't find anywhere to stay on our first night on town through the normal hostel-booking websites. However we had picked up a flyer for the Hostel Parque Central in Valparaiso and upon calling them discovered that there was room at the inn. However the room turned out to be little more than an open-topped cupboard with no lock on the door, no lockers, and no air-con (an important consideration in Mendoza!). However all this would have been bearable if the young owners of the hostel hadn't decided to throw a party that night - given that our cupboard had no roof and so was open to all the noise emanating up the staircase - there was little option to grin and bear it. We woke up early and left.

Accommodation was still proving hard to find on that Friday morning but we scored an amazing victory by finding an 'apart hotel' run by one of the hostels - so achieving a perfect balance of space, privacy, cleanliness, and amazingly, cheapness. We had a patio, a kitchen, a bedroom, and bathroom (space for four people in truth) for 100 Argentine pesos, whereas the dump we stayed in the night before had cost us 60 pesos. Given the relative luxury, it was easy to decide to stay one day longer than planned, until the morning of our flight onwards to Auckland.



We spent quite a lot of time in Mendoza doing not much, relaxing at the 'apart'. However we did manage to visit three different wineries, two of them via bicycle, and go on a four-hour horse ride in the Andean foothills. From two of the wineries we bought bottles, and spent enjoyable evenings supping them back at the 'apart' and showing off our new-found knowledge of wine-tasting to each other. The horse ride was followed by a real Argentine asado back at the rudimentary stables prepared by the young Argentine guys who had led the horse trek, who apropos of nothing produced a guitar from somewhere and started to regale us with traditional folk songs.

All in all we thought this was a good way to round off our last full day in South America, and as we were driven back into town we eagerly anticipated crossing back to Santiago the next morning and flying on to Auckland.