Wine Country

Over the last few days we have been exploring Mendoza, Argentina, a city in the west of the country, famous for its vineyards and close proximity to the Andes. It was a very untraditional place to spend the Christmas holiday since the weather has been about 90 degrees and the most common practice on Christmas eve is shooting off fireworks! Nevertheless, we made friends with some great people in our hostel and enjoyed the holiday playing cards and eating hotdogs.

Mendoza is a beautiful city with wide avenues, distinctive plazas, and a cosmopolitan atmosphere. We didn´t get to appreciate the latter until we ditched our lame hostel for a loft apartment in the best part of town. There are also a lot of adventure activities offered here. The most popular activity is definitely touring the vineyards, which we did by bicycle in a town called Maipú. It was not an easy ride, but very rewarding when we arrived at the different places and got to learn about the origins of the facilities and the whole wine making process. We spent other days touring the gigantic park and dining in fine restaurants far pricier than our backpackers´ budget should allow. Today we signed up for a white water rafting excursion in the nearby Andes mountains. Phil commandeered the raft so that none of the rapids could flip our raft! I was very glad they chose Phil to be in front since the other guys on our boat seemed a bit unaccustomed to physical activity. Anyways, take a look at some of the amazing pictures that we took over the weekend. Unfortunately, we were unable to take our camera along for the rafting since it was too EXTREME!

Mendoza photos