Adventures in South America

Mendoza - Day Two

Today is our second day in Mendoza. Mendoza is a beautiful city with a dry, desert climate. Similar to Las Vegas, Mendoza is an artificial oasis, with a complicated irrigation system where water is pumped into the city several times a week. If you visit Mendoza, you will notice that you will have to be careful crossing from the sidewalks to the grass; there are trenches that run along side the sidewalk that are about a foot deep where water collects. The water is provided curtousy of the spring water that is collected from the melting snowcaps of the Andes. Without this important irrigation system, Mendoza would not be the thriving city that it is today.

Mendoza's claim to fame is that it is Argentina's wine region, producing mostly "vinos tintos" (red wines) like Malbec (the grape that Argentina is most well known for), Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignons. The region is pretty extensive with the closest vineyards to the city about 15 km from the center of town. We arrived yesterday morning, dropped off our bags at Hotel Cervantes (a clean hotel with small rooms) and explored the town.

Yesterday we came across a great touring agency called Indiana Adventuras. We were looking to arrange a bike tour of the vineyards - we knew we did not want to sit on a tour bus and travel to two or three bodegas with a big group, we wanted to be free to explore. Since neither of us drive standard transmission, renting a car is out of the question here. A nice Mendocino guy by the name of Sergio runs the agency. We spent quite a bit of time talking to him as he has travelled extensively through Costa Rica, Brasil, Peru, Panama, the west coast of the US and Florida. We were hungry so Seth and I decided to grab lunch at a restaurant called Azafran and then return to rent the bikes. The food at Azafran was ok, the service was very slow. I think we would have been more impressed with the meal if it would not have taken so long. Plus they had the WORST coffee we have had in Argentina. We ordered a cortado, which is an espresso with a drop of milk in it... it tasted like watered down coffee - really unusual for here. Azafran is supposed to be a good restaurant, I suppose we just had a bad experience.

After lunch we rented the bikes. As it was late in the day we spent the afternoon exploring Mendoza's city park, Parque San Martin. The park is beautiful, very green with artificial lakes and a zoo. One of the reasons the park was designed was to create more humidity in the city and improve the air quality.

For dinner that evening we ate at the Grand Park Hyatt's very fancy Bistro M. As the Vendimia festival is going on they had a special 4 course meal with a wine paired with each course for $95 Pesos. Very expensive for Argentina prices (about $35 US) but worth it. In case anyone is interested, here is what we had along with the wine pairings:

Veal meat empanadas from our wood burning oven with Northern Sauce (a delicious room temp fresh tomato basil type salsa), paired with OBRA PRIMA ROSE wine

Green salad with black olives, toast with melted goat cheese on top, and red grape vinaigrette, paired with TERZA VOLTA MALBEC

Rib veal roast with humita criolla (a type of creamed corn, very popular here) and Malbec Sauce, paired with LUIGI BOSCA MALBEC DOC

Caramel Flan, Chocolate Alfajor (a type of Arg cookie) and Dulce de leche ice cream paired with SELECCION ALTAS CUMBRES

All in all a very, very memorable meal well worth the price.


This morning we woke up, grabbed a quick breakfast of medialunas (Sweet croissants), espresso, oj and water and headed out to the Vineyards on bike. What a ride... we were riding parallel to a highway called ¨Route 7" and it was a long, hot ride. After a few wrong turns and a couple of hours later, we finally covered the 15 km necessary to get to the wine area. We stopped for lunch at a cute family run restaurant called Casa de Campo. The menu was pretty limited, some finger food (ham, olives, etc), two main lunch courses, and of course a small but good wine list. Seth and I opted for empanadas to start, and i ordered the chicken main course (a stew of chicken breast in white wine, potatoes and peppers) and seth had the beef rump roast (in red wine with potatoes, peppers). The food was really good, but the main attraction was the bottle of sweet white wine the owner recommended. We only had time to visit one Bodega; La Rural. In comparison to the wine country of California, the parts of the wine region we visited here are not as picturesque. But we can not make a fair judgement; we did not get to visit much of the region (without a car this is difficult to do!) We were tired and hot by the end of the day and did not have the energy to make the ride bike. We ended up calling a "taxi-flet" to bring us and bikes back. This basically consisted of a somewhat time worn pick up truck, well worth the 20 pesos it cost us!

posted by Kathy T @ 6:38 PM