Argentina - Mendoza y Bariloche

Mendoza

Monday 1st Feb - Monday 8th Feb

After taking a 7 hour bus ride from Santiago which included a border control stop, we arrived in Mendoza, Argentina. Mendoza is famous for it's wine regions, and more specifically for it's Malbec wines. We decided to spend a week here and use it as a base to do a few winery tours and see the area. Our first night we stayed in a hostel and went out for Mexican - the food was great! The next day we decided to try and rent an apartment seeing as we were there for a week, and found one that was reasonably priced right in the centre of town. It was pretty basic but had a fridge and stove etc, not to mention a TV with about 60 channels - yay!

Our first couple days in the apartment we just wandered around town and did a bit of relaxing. We went to one pub for lunch one day which had the best 'lomitos' ever - massive steak sandwiches. They love their meat in Argentina....apparently they eat about 70 kgs of red meat a year per person, which is about 30kgs more than Oz and 50kgs more than the UK! We've had to have a few days break from it actually as we're pretty sick of steaks. Although we have had a couple of really nice steak meals....the food and wine is quite cheap.

On the Thursday we caught a bus to the wine region called Maipu and hired bikes for the day. There are several wineries in the area which you can ride to and do tours and tastings for a small fee. It cost us about $5 USD to hire bikes and then we managed to fit in 3 wineries. They don't let you cut to the chase and go straight to the tastings, so you end up spending about an hour at each place doing the tour and then tastings. The riding in between was about 20 minutes between each place too - the crappy bikes doubled with bumpy roads and 35 degree weather made it a bit strenuous by the end! It was about a 15km round trip I think. The wineries we went to were really nice though, and we enjoyed a nice lunch at one of them....great scenery as you have the vineyards in front of you and the Andes in the background.

After doing the Maipu region on the cheap, we decided to do a proper tour of the further away region called Lujan de Cujo. We booked through a place called Trout & Wine and got picked up in the morning in a minibus - in total there were 5 of us doing the tour; us, a British couple, and a Swiss guy. The tour guide was American and talked about the wine region etc on the way there. As we'd paid a bit more for this tour we got to try all the premium range wines at the wineries which was great. We visited two wineries where we did tours and tastings (both quite fancy), and then we stopped at another place for a 5 course lunch. The food was really good and each course was paired with a different wine. After that it was off to the final winery to top up....

We got dropped off back at ours and had a siesta (all the shops etc shut from about 1pm to 5pm then reopen until about 9pm in Argentina), then went out to meet up with the British couple who were on our tour. We went down to the area with all the bars and restaurants and enjoyed a few (very strong) cocktails....

The next day was a pretty slow one as a result, then on Sunday we walked to the big park and had a picnic. It was between 35 - 40 degrees for most of the week, but quite dry heat so we didn't find it as hot as Rio. Still pretty hot after London though!

We enjoyed having a few rest days while we were in Mendoza....after moving around every few days and having to shove everything back in our packs, it was a nice change to spend a week in one place. On the Monday we flew from Mendoza to Buenos Aires, then from Buenos Aires to Bariloche.

Bariloche, Argentina

Monday 8 Feb - Saturday 13 Feb 2010

Bariloche is in the Andes in Patagonia, which is the Southern part of Argentina and Chile that gets a lot of snow in winter. Bariloche is a ski town in winter, but in summer it gets a lot of trekkers and backpackers who come to see the glaciers etc and do general adventure type stuff. The town is set on the massive lake Nahuel Huapi with the Andes in the background - pretty! We stayed in a hostel called Patanuk which was right on the lake. Again we seemed to have chosen the party hostel, as it has an adjoining bar on it which got quite roudy during the week.

Our first night there we took advantage of happy hour prices and had a couple of beers before heading out for some ordinary Mexican food. The Tuesday was Clint's birthday, so we'd planned on heading up to the 'Cerre Catedral' (Cathedral Mountain) which was just out of town, so that Clint could go mountain biking. When we woke up in the morning though it was blowing 50kmph winds and was freezing, so we decided it wasn't the best day for it! In the end we just wandered around the town and had a big brekky (Clint had a crazy egg fry up thing that was kind of like an omelette but with french fries in it....). We were booked into a fancy restaurant for 9pm (early dinner by Argentinian standards - noone goes out to eat here until around 10 or even 11pm) so I tried to starve myself for the rest of the day as I knew we had a 7 course degustation coming!

The restaurant was really nice - quite small with only about 6 tables and great service. The food itself was great....quick run down of what courses I can recall. First course was a trio of appetisers .....a pea and chorizo soup (so tasty), a small piece of beef in horseradish, and then some sort of meat on a cracker (fancier than I made it sound!). Then it was a mozzarella and some sort of pesto in layers of crackers. Then an amazing risotto course with truffle type mushrooms (morrels?). This was followed by a yummy seafood stew, and then a course of meat which was a small beef steak type thing and black pudding with veg. Finally was dessert which was a rasberry thing (of course i didn't eat much of that one!), and then petit fours with tea. Each course had different wine accompanying it too. We were pretty stuffed by the end! Funny thing was that we tried to pay with our Visa cards at the end and the system was down, and we didn't have enough cash. They were so trusting though - they're just like "Oh you're staying at Patanuk right? That's cool, we'll just come by and pick the cash up from there on Friday". Quite funny. The chef came out at the end of the meal too and we enjoyed a glass of red with him before we left - an Irish guy.

When we got back to Patanuk we discovered that Tuesday night is their biggest night! There was a live band playing in the bar (comprised of a few of the bartenders who seem to multiply every day and just hang out in the bar chatting most the time) and the place was so packed with locals we could barely get in to buy a drink. We went to bed around 2:30am and people were still streaming in. That night was one of the earplug nights....a neccessary tool for sleeping in noisy hostels!

The next day we had arranged a hire car to be dropped off to us at 10am. The night before during happy hour at the hostel, we got chatting to a couple of Scottish girls who overheard us arranging the car hire and seemed interested, so we invited them to tag along. So the four of us going going at 11ish and jammed our packs into the boot, as we'd decided to stay overnight in El Bolson....a nearby hippy town. First though we wanted to visit the 'black glacier' at Mount Tronador, so we made our way out of town (Clint drove this time - used his international permit to hire the car with no issues) and drove the 40 kms to the turn off. Well actually we drove past the turn off by about 10kms then went back. The rest of the way to the glacier (about 35kms) was on dirt roads....the good thing is that up until 2pm they only go the one way (in) then after 4pm it changes so you can only drive out. We made a few stops along the way for photos of the stunning scenery. We reached the glacier and had a bit of a walk around there....it's quite strange looking. A lot of the glacier has broken off into black pieces and is floating in this big pool of milky water. Some say it looks like a big bowl of cocoa pops....

After that we drove to the base of Tronador and did a short walk to a nearby river where a lot of people were drinking their 'mate' next to. Mate (pronounce Mah-tay) is an Argentinian tea that you drink out of a gourd using a metal straw. The families only have one mate sipper which they pass around and drink from. It's a very social thing and you see people drinking it everywhere.

We then drove back to Pampa Linda (the start of the one way road) and had a bite to eat (and the swarms of midgies had a bite to eat of us) while waiting for 4pm so we could head back. We drove the dirt road back to the main road then went the rest of the way to El Bolson. We hadn't booked any accommodation in El Bolson, so we went to the tourist office to find a map. After a bit of faffing around at the internet cafe etc with no luck in booking anything, the four of us went for a drive and stopped at one place that was on the map. Turns out it was kind of like a converted old folks home thing and we managed to get a quiet apartment for quite cheap - a nice change from noisy Patanuk. We wandered around the town a bit and then had a ordinary meal across the road from our place. They did play an awesome mix of 90's tunes, so we were all happy (although Clint didn't join in the singing for some reason...).

The next day we wandered around town and walked through some markets in the main square before deciding what to do for the day. We ended up driving and walking up to one of the lookouts over the valley, and then drove on to a waterfall where we had some lunch. We had to have the car back in Bariloche by 6pm so we decided to head back and maybe stop somewhere else along the way. Turns out though that we spent the next 45 minutes lost in the dirt backroads behind El Bolson....got to the point where we were worried we'd never make it out and we'd have to resort to the cannibalistic habits of the Argentinian football team when their plane went down in the Andes....

In the end we kept following the road and somehow ended up right back at the turn off to the waterfall where we'd started, then eventually made it back onto the main road. Hooray! No need to eat each other! We made it back to Bariloche around 6:30ish (of course the car lady didn't turn up until 8ish anyway....) and had a few happy hour beers before cooking a yum chicken curry for tea (break from steak). We then sat outside having a few drinks with the Scots who multiplied into about 8 of them, and hit the hay around 2am.

On Friday we decided to attempt the Cathedral Mountain excursion again so that Clint could go mountain biking. We were told where to catch the bus from, however we weren't told it comes only every hour and a half, so after waiting for it for over an hour we jumped in a cab. Turns out the bus came about 10 minutes later according to Amy and Elaine who ran into us up there. D'oh! The second annoying thing was that after Clint arranged his bike hire and purchased the cable car tickets etc, his chain snapped at the start of the first run down and his brakes didn't work properly! The hire place didn't have any others available so rather than risking injury by riding without brakes, Clint did the smart thing and got his money back. So he came up the top of the mountain in the cable car, and then second chairlift where I was. I caught the chairlift up by myself which was pretty hairy - freezing cold wind blowing through and sitting about 20 metres above very ouchy looking rocks. I was gripping the safety bar quite tight!

After checking out the views we caught the chairlift and cable car back down and caught the bus back to town. Our last night at Patanuk was a quiet one - some pasta and red wine, then an early night (well early by Argentinian standards - midnight...). Amy and Elaine gave us a few tips for Buenos Aires as they had just spent a week there, so our itinerary for the next week and a half is filling up!