Mendoza

Christmas Day starts with a flight from Punta Arenas to Santiago. Not surprising the city of Punta Arenas is very quiet today. We are both thankful the winds are light and turbulence is minimal. We make it early to Santiago and have a chance of catching an earlier flight to Mendoza. We race through the airport, first out of security, then back through security for international. Wait a second they want some piece of paper that they gave us when we arrived. Both Katherine and Chris have trashed this piece of paper. Switch to a different line, hurry up hurry up, two new pieces of paper. Through security and run, run, run to the gate, The plane is there and a women at the counter. Wait, wait, the plane is pulling away from the gate and we have missed the earlier flight option… 6 hours now to wait until our original flight.

Good news, we now have time to eat at both Ruby Tuesday and Johnny Rockets on Christmas (very limited Christmas Day airport restaurant options). We finally arrive in Mendoza at 10pm. The cab drivers inform us of the “fare of the night” otherwise known as an inflated fare. Only a two dollar USD increase so we pay the fare and go to our accomodation. The new Argentinan President was elected less than a month ago and the currency has deflated greater than 30%. We stay close to the city center in a woman’s house name Rosa. She is 65 and has a guest house out the back. It is quite quaint and perfect for us. We decide to walk around with Chris looking for a famous glass of Malbec Vino and Katherine an Agua con gas or sparkling water. The city is quite lively with a number of restaurants open given it is approaching midnight and Christmas. The temperature is a perfect 75 degrees so it doesn’t feel like Christmas. We end up just buying a bottle of water and heading back to the room. The infamous Malbec will have to wait for another day.

The next day we set off for a biking winery tour. 70% of Argentina’s winery region is in Mendoza. We catch a bus 20 minutes to a town called Maipu. Once there we get our bikes from a company called Mr. Hugo’s. It is a family run business out of his house which now has a 100 bikes. He provides a map and optional helmets upon request.

Katherine’s parents recently did a bike ride of the El Camino trail in Spain. These shirts are from that ride with the yellow arrow pointing the way. Katherine and Chris decided to do the El Vino trail instead : )

It is a very warm day near 100 degrees. We stop at 4-5 wineries and have lunch at this beautiful winery. The view is to die for and a perfect spot for us. We notice South American’s take their holidays and their Sundays (more to come) very seriously. Over half of the wineries were closed because it was the day after Christmas. Although Katherine and Chris were sad to miss the wineries, no work on holidays is definitely a concept we can get behind.

That night we “splurged” and went out to a fancy steak dinner. Total bill with tip was $45. Chris had the fillet and Katherine homemade pasta. We started with Empanadas and a bottle of wine. Sorry no picture but you got to go to the wine cellar to pick your bottle of wine. We arrived at dinner at 9:30 and didn’t leave till after midnight. Let’s just say there is no hurry in this country. Mendoza is famous for the night life which starts even later. We decided to get an ice cream cone and call it a night.

The next day was Sunday and we have devoted it to exploring the city. It started with the well known cafe con leche and a crossiant. Next we walked to the famous park/lake. It felt like Wash park (popular Denver park) and we truly felt like we fit in. There were so many active people. We also stumbled across the Mendoza athletic club doing a tango class. If only pictures had sound. You could hear the music for miles.

Tango class, it is packed!

On the way back we walked around town. We then headed towards the market which was closed. On Sunday’s after 2pm the city shuts down. It was literally a ghost town. We ended up exploring some of the beautiful parks. We headed to dinner about 7. Katherine told Chris just to be patient but he didn’t believe anything would open. We settled on a burger joint at 8:30. We ate dinner on the street and could see restaurants starting to set up at 8:30 or 9pm. The transformation of the city was literally amazing; we were shocked. However, with a flight in the morning we decided to call it a night.

One ice cream is never enough… this is #3 of the trip.