Mendoza to Santiago through the Andes

 For a number of weeks before I arrived in Mendoza, I kept on hearing that the pass between Argentina and Chile near Mendoza through the Andes was closed because of snow. Luckily about 2 weeks before I arrived, the backpacker network seemed to indicate that the pass was open again although it may be closed for a day or two here and there. 

So I took a chance and booked a bus ticket. The pass was open! I managed to get a seat right at the front of the bus for the views through the Andes. It was stunning. My seat was before the front bus wheel. The pass had about 32 U shaped corners winding like a snake through the snow down a steep slope. Each time we turned, I basically went over the mountain edge and held my breath!




 

 The border was interesting too. We got led through it by our bus driver (who couldn’t speak English). After the International tunnel, the valley opened out to a warehouse structure in the middle of a snowy valley which was in the middle of nowhere. Our passports went through the appropriate checks and our baggage was scanned for fruit and veggies. The boarder into Chile is notoriously strict. So I declared a couple of items like tea and salt and spices. The guy checking my bags was rather excited to practice his broken English.

 The mountains were stark with snow and rock garnishing the steep slopes and every now and again a view stretching down a valley. There were still a number of ski slopes functioning which was good fun watching.
 

My favourite ski slope was after the boarder where a skier was coming slalom down a slope with a dog careening down in a cloud of snow after its owner. The slope went over the road supported by a tunnel and when the bus came out I spotted dog and owner on one of those tiny 2 man T bar ski-lifts heading back up the slope.

The 6 hour journey went really fast and was wonderful.

At the border - brrrr!

Welcome to Chile

The pass and S-bends

Ski slopes over tunnels

S-bends going down the valley - wow!

Views of the roads

Mendoza - Melbec wine, bicycles and horse riding

5 star bus ride

 The 5 star bus from Buenos Aires through to Mendoza was great. Again this was over a 10 hour trip. A flat bed seat combined with surprisingly decent food and offers of red wine and even top-ups. Yum. But probably the most memorable part of the bus ride was playing Bingo in Spanish on the bus! They ran a proper little bingo game. I couldn’t quite believe it. Hence to say that I finally learnt my Spanish numbers by bingo practice! I have to say I thought this was rather funny. Everyone getting so excited about bingo on a bus.

Having fun on the bus with Ece

I took a front seat on the bus for the view and space. Not that there was a view for long before it got dark. But opposite me in the front happened to be a lady I’d briefly met at the hostel. Ece (pronounced to my untrained ear as AJ) was from Turkey, living in London. She was so full of life and laughter. We got on immediately. She had also researched Mendoza a bit and found out about some of the wine farms in the area and how to visit them – local bus and then bicycle! She was much more prepared than I was, so I ended up joining her in her well organised plans. Although I was a bit apprehensive about the bicycle part, especially when mixed with wine.

Coco rent-a-bike

 We dropped our bags at our respective places of staying (hotel for Ece and backpackers for me) and met up to put Ece’s plan into action. We caught a local bus to the Maipú valley. I must admit that for a fancy wine area I did expect a little more. We ended up getting dropped off next to what I would call a shack. Walking along a wide tar road with bicycle lanes each side, the houses looked as if they could have been better kept. I’m sure that a number of families lived in each of those houses and relied on tourists to get by. It certainly was not peak season while we were there, being the middle of winter.

Hiring bikes

Just a few houses down from where we had been dropped was Coco rent a bike (which is very proudly in the Lonely Planet). This is a bike hire run by a local family with a really local feel to it. Finally, after inspecting the bikes to make sure that there were no punctures and that the bikes actually had reasonable breaks, we set off. We ended up cycling around 12- 15 km in total and visited about 4 different wine farms and an ultra sweet chocolate and liquor farm. We had a really good fun day. 

Some of the wine farms to visit

Mendoza area is obviously famous for its wines. But it seems that the valley we were in specialised in red wines, especially a type called “Melbec” with a bit of “Cab Sav” thrown in. The Cab Sav we tried was far too young and rather grim in my opinion. Call me a spoilt South African. But the Melbec was gorgeous! To my completely untrained pallet, this red wine has a very distinctive taste. I think it has a really rich taste of fruit. I really liked the long matured Melbec that had a bit of time in an oak barrel. There was one really complex Melbec that we tasted that had won a variety of awards. It was definitely best as a stand-alone wine as it had too many complex yummy flavours to really go with anything.

 

Riding along the tree covered avenue

Ece and I

So, a bit more detail about the actual ride… The wide road with bicycle lanes went around a couple of round-abouts (circles for those with no South African lingo) and gave me the perfect opportunity to quickly re-learn how to ride without any major catastrophes. The road then narrowed to a tiny tar road with trucks passing us and then deteriorated to a bit of gravel road and crossed a train line and ended up in a rather dodgy looking part of town(at this stage we thought we were completely lost on a straight road and we hadn’t touched any wine yet!). Ece’s Spanish helped to ensure that we hadn’t inadvertently turned off the straight road we were supposed to be following. 

A lovely lunch!

After a large detour due to road works, the road much to our relief, upgraded back to tar with a gorgeous tree canopy. Or you could imagine that it would be gorgeous in summer. But winter the surrounds were dry and bare. It might not have been quite the safest road ever (trucks and no bicycles lane) but there were a couple of people with bicycles braving the roads and all waving at each other.

Ece and I did the wine tasting in 2 of the 4 farms visited and also tried out the chocolate and liquors. Obviously they have a Dulce de Leche flavoured liquor! We made it safely back to the local bus and to Mendoza. I was grateful for the fact that neither of us went overboard with the wine or it could have been a really interesting ride back! My only complaint was that after dirt road and that many km cycling, I couldn’t really sit down properly for about 2 days!

Wine tasting

Back in the hostel, I discovered that a couple of other people that had done the bicycle wine tour ended up with various scratches, bruises and grazes from their exploits that they had no clue how they had got. Very mysterious! Rather grateful that I was not one of them.

One of the wine farms

Blossoms

Olives

 

Parking bicycles

Ece and I spent the evening exploring Mendoza and finding something to eat. Thanks Ece – really enjoyed touring with you!

Ece left the next day and I spent some time relaxing in the first proper sunny weather I had seen in about a month! Oh how I had missed it. It must have been around 24 degrees with all the locals strolling around in long sleeves and jackets (it being their winter). I think I got more stares for wondering around in a spaghetti-strap top than for being blond!

 Through the hostel’s recommendation, I found one of the best restaurants in town, Anna’s Bistro. This was stunning and surprisingly vaguely in my budget. The setting was a relaxed garden setting with sun streaming on you if you so wished. And the waiters and waitresses understood a bit of my English / sign-language. So I really enjoyed a couple of lazy afternoons over a glass of Melbec, a good book and yummy food. I ended up introducing a couple of people to the culinary adventure too.

Pudding and coffee

Yummy Anna's Bistro

Me and my horse

I couldn’t be in Mendoza without trying the horse riding! Though the hostel advice I went with a company that was a little out of town “in the Andes”. It wasn’t quite in the Andes. Reality put it more in the low rolling rocky, dusty foot-hills with views of the Andes at certain points along the trail. I had imagined these famous mountains being similar to the Alps in Europe and was quite surprised to see just how different they are. 

They are huge and snow-capped and the surrounds are dry and dusty. Distances are huge as well. The mountains hardly have any vegetation on them, a very different sight to the bright green of Europe. The Andes is the longest mountain range in the world and I would encounter it a couple of times again. I think that they are harsher than Europe and life is certainly less cushy around them than in Europe. I think that they have a far more “wild” quality to them. Lonely, haunting and beautiful.

Riding with the Andes as a backdrop

My guide - Argentinian cowboy

I am not a horse rider by any means and I was rather perturbed to learn that the man taking us riding could speak no English! He looked like a proper Argentinian cowboy with spurs on his riding boots, a lasso on his saddle and the cowboy hat to go with. Anyways, with two French girls there in the morning session I decided to try it anyways. It was really great fun although I was a little disappointed that the Andes weren’t closer and that the guide didn’t speak my language. I was told that it would be bi-lingual, but like so much in South America this is not really the case! You just need to shrug and enjoy it anyway.

Lunch of steak, salad, bread and Melbec

Lunch was an interesting event. Turned out that I was the only person that had paid for lunch with the horse riding place. So, in a barn like structure I was alone and placed in front of a large wood fire while my steak cooked quietly on the side. The fire was rather welcome cos it was cold being winter! There was salad and white bread and Melbec on top of the steak. I wasn’t too sure how this worked, but the cowboy came in and poured me wine and then pulled out his knife from the holster I had not noticed on his belt and cut a strip off the steak and placed it on a board near me. Every now and again during the meal he would sneak in and see my progress and fill up the wine and cut another strip off the streak that was on a warmer by the fire. 

Riding back to the stables

 The French girls had gone off to find an open restaurant, failed and came to hang around my barn. I felt rather awkward eating in front of them when they couldn’t find food! So I offered some of my huge meal. They had a fair amount of the bread which I hadn’t touched. The people feeding me must have thought that I was hugely greedy when most of the food secretly disappeared! Oh well, so much for good impressions. But I seriously couldn’t finish what they had served me.

The tiny person riding a huge horse

The afternoon session, the French girls had moved on to do something else in the area and I went out horse riding again. It was only me and my silent guide. We went down the dirt roads of the town and past a house when he called to a little boy running through the backyard. About 5 minutes later I looked behind me to find this little boy of probably between 4-5 years old trotting to catch up with us on a full sized horse! He was so cute. Through sign language and common sense I found out that the little boy was my guide’s son. I can so see this horse riding thing being something passed down from father to son!

Riding along a trail

This tiny person on a horse as massive as mine had far more horse skills than I had. The biggest problem the boy had was trying to pull the horse up from trying to eat or drink on the path. We would cross a stream and stop while the boy pulled for all his might on the reins to try make his huge steed lift his head and actually go forward.

Riding past the village

Our horses splashing along a stream for a km, high reeds either side of the path, the tiny boy and his huge horse in front of me and trotting with the Andes in the distance. A quiet sunny winter dry day. Idyllic. Definitely the highlight for me was the afternoon ride! All the time with a view of the Andes in the distance.

 From my experience of my ability to sit down, I can say bicycles are officially worse than horses!

Following a stream

View on way back to Mendoza

 Mendoza is a great place to stop if you’re back-packing. You can easily do it in less time that I spent there. But I was grateful for the break. I ended up extending my time there to enjoy the weather and also cos I then met a fellow South African traveller, Dina. Dina was the first South African traveller I’d met in months and it was great fun after so long to have someone who understood a few of the SA nuances.

Mendoza main square at night

The hostel (which had inviting hammocks in the garden) ended up doing a barbeque on my final night there with free Melbec to go with. Food and wine were really good, especially a home-made humus dip thing. I also finally got brave enough to try a little black pudding sausage. Not the English version, but the slightly squishier Argentinean version. It was surprisingly tasty, but I couldn’t really get it out of my head what it was that I was eating! So a taste was plenty! Grimbles! If you don’t know – Google it!

Finally the next day I left for my long awaited trip to Santiago through the Andes.

candy store

Local park

Another local park

Dina and I

Barbeque - one of four tables

Stables