Road trip to Mendoza, Argentina

Our third group of visitors, Chris and Sarah from Pemberton, BC, arrived for a visit a couple weeks after Jeremy's parents left. After spending the first weekend touring around to our favourite haunts near Santiago, we decided to spend the second weekend together by taking a road trip to Mendoza, Argentina.

For the first time we left our kids with our wonderful nanny Angelica for the weekend. Angelica brought her son over for a sleepover and the three boys enjoyed a weekend filled with pizza parties, movies, bike riding and a trip to the airplane exhibit at a nearby park. Meanwhile, the four adults took an 8 hour road trip through the mountains to wine country in Mendoza, Argentina.

The journey to Mendoza was by far the most impressive part of the trip. There were harrowing upward climbs (33 zig zags, to be exact) before reaching the very disorganized Argentinian boarder, where we waited about 2 hours to enter the country. Once past the boarder the mountain pass opened up to impressive views on both sides and a giant cavern formed by an ancient river that once cut through the mountains. The largest mountain outside of the Himalayas, Aconcagua, is an impressive sight that lies directly on the boarder and is a popular trekking destination. We did some walking in the national park near Aconcagua on the way back and it was inspirational.

Mendoza is a small but pretty city surrounded by wineries that are famous for Argentinian malbec. After some searching and a few disappointments, we joined a last minute English tour at the Norton winery, which is the biggest winery in Mendoza. Incidentally the other four people on the tour were also Canadians and we had a wonderful time with them. Two middle aged ladies (sisters, on a "girls trip" to Argentina) were on their third tour of the day and spectacularly tipsy, which made the tour that much more amusing! The tour itself was impressive - we spent about 2 hours going through various parts of the facility and tasting wine at each stage of the process. The tour ended in the cellar where we saw the owner's personal collection of aged wines, some of which were 80-100 years old.

The food in Argentina is spectacular and we indulged in some great meals the two nights we stayed in Mendoza, as well as "a few" really great glasses of wine. I made the mistake of letting Jeremy and Chris take charge of selecting the hotel without supervision, which resulted in us staying in the Ritz (which was not at all ritzy like its name implied). This error necessitated us staying OUT of the hotel as much as possible, so we made sure we explored and took in the night life of Mendoza while there!!!

Overall, Mendoza is a wine lover's paradise and a definite must see, but driving there is certainly the best part! A side benefit is that it is much easier to import a case of malbec when you take your car instead of the plane :)