Magical Mendoza Part 1 A place worthy of the alliteration (twice over)

Ahhhh Magical Mendoza. It really is the most beautiful place. So much so that it's going to take two posts to cover it! Usually I try to limit myself to 25 photos per post and I figure out which pictures I'm going to include before I start writing. Today I've gone through my photos to select those worthy of the blog and it came to 69... I've managed to get it down to 57 but as I doubt my network connection would cope uploading a blog post with that many photos in I've decided to do two posts instead. To be fair, by the time I leave tomorrow I'll have been here eight days but being honest, the vast majority are from my first few days here!

I arrived on Saturday evening from Córdoba having taken the 12 hour day bus so that I could check out some of the scenery. The landscapes were far more green than I was expecting... 

But there wasn't a huge amount of variation other than over time we got a small mountain range around San Luis

And the trees and farms gave way to scrub and vines!

These were the first I spotted at around 6.15pm! Before I came away I was in the car with Mum and Dad and we drove by a field that Mum commented on how big it was. Compared to here it was a postage stamp! I timed the drive past one of the fields we went by; buses are speed limited to 90km/hr here and it still took 1 min 40 secs to get from one end of the field to the other!

Many of the road bridges are painted in this part of Argentina which makes them much prettier to look at too!

Anyway, I arrived safely at the hostel and then popped to the supermarket for my first bottle of Malbec!

It cost 90 pesos (around £3.50) and was delicious!

The next morning I woke up, had my breakfast, and realised I was in plenty of time to do the walking tour of Mendoza and so I made my way up to Plaza Pellegrini which is just around the corner from my hostel and the meeting point for the tour.

One of the first things that strikes you about Mendoza is how green it is. On the tour, which was fantastic, we learnt that there are no native trees in Mendoza, it's actually desert land and so every tree that you see has been brought in and planted. Trust me, when you see how green this place is that was no mean feat!! However, because it's desert, a system was needed to water the trees and so running alongside the road are these street canals which keep the trees alive.

It's an ingenious system and one not found anywhere else in Argentina. Mendoza also has very wide roads and a number of squares, or Plazas as they're called out here. In 1861 Mendoza was flattened by an earthquake and when it was rebuilt, no buildings were allowed to be higher than 2 storeys and the wide roads and plazas were introduced to provide refuge sites for people escaping the falling buildings. Over time, as technology has allowed for safer construction of tall buildings in earthquake zones, there are starting to be taller buildings, but the vast majority are on two levels.

We stopped off in Plaza España which has these beautiful tiled seats and a monument to the Spanish contribution to Argentina's history.

Between that and the 'cleaning up' of the country's history in the many plaques dedicated to telling Argentina's story, I'm fast coming to learn about how to interpret statues and drawings out here! The floor also had lovely small picture tiles in between the larger ones.

Another parrot Shalini?!

This is one of the buildings that we saw on the tour, which I thought was really pretty so have included for you too!

It was formerly a bank but is now one of the cultural buildings in the city.

On the walking tour I was really lucky to meet Kira. Sometimes in life you meet someone you just click with. I'm lucky that it's happened for me a few times on my trips with people such as Nat and Pat in Africa, and Kaye in Australia and now Kira in Mendoza. For lunch that day, Kira and I, plus Katy from Aberdeen went to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch, Govinda, where I had a massive plate of veggies for the first time since I arrived!!

OMG, they were delicious! After that, Katy left us and Kira and I walked up to the Cerra de la Gloria, a monument on the highest peak in Mendoza

Where we had the most amazing views out over the city!

Unfortunately whilst there we managed to sit in an ants nest and so I got bitten to death which wasn't so pleasant!! On our walk back down and into Mendoza we came across lots of people out sitting drinking mate and having picnics around the entrance to the park.

It looked like such a lovely thing to do it made me yearn for picnics in the parks back home. However, this didn't last long as from there we went and had a couple of beers and chatted for ages before heading back to our respective hostels, ready for the wine tasting we planned for Monday!

Now don't be too shocked but my wine tour involved me not only getting on, but also riding a bike!

We took the bus to Maipu where we picked up our bikes and took a gentle cycle down to Mevi, the first winery of the day.

The view from the balcony where we were doing the tasting was stunning...

And every so often the clouds cleared to show us the snow capped mountains too!

Here we tried six wines (three varietals, three reservas) along with a couple of empanadas so that it wouldn't be too much carnage throughout the day!

The white wine was a torrentes which I genuinely don't ever remember drinking before but I do know that I'll be drinking again! It was delicious. As was the rose which was a big fruity wine and yet somehow not sweet so really suited me!

From there we headed to Tempus Alba...

Where Kira found a bottle of wine to suit her thirst...

Just kidding (sorry Kira!) and we tried a further six varietals here too! 

Again, beautiful views over the vines...

Having taken our time over these two wineries, it was now just after 3.30pm and we decided that we would try to get to the Museo de Vino by 4pm, which wouldn't have been too much of a problem was it not for the fact that it was 6 km away!

With a slight detour (as I couldn't read the map!) we made it there by 4.15pm, missed the tour we were aiming for and so had to do a self-guided tour of the museum. Unsurprisingly we were slightly hot by the time we arrived...

However, the museum was really interesting with the equipment used in earlier times to make wine

And what was great here is that you had to pay 200 pesos to get in but then you got that back against tastings and purchases so between us we got 3 bottles of wine without paying another peso!

When we returned the bikes, the rental place had a happy hour in their wine bar which was attached to the rental place so we had a few glasses of free wine along with some more empanadas...

...To mop it up! (It would have been rude not to). We also realised that we'd not had photos outside the museum and so did the next best thing and took pictures with the bag!

After our day of wine, we headed back into town and out for some more food! This time lomos, at Torito.

It's kind of a steak sandwich with cheese, egg (in the form of an omelette) and salsa. It was absolutely delicious! And so ends the first post for Mendoza. Come back for post two where we head into the Andes and take in some stunning scenery!