Argentina: Mendoza

Life is not about the destination; it’s the journey that matters.

After traveling for nine months to hundreds of different destinations, I definitely find this saying holds true. And not only is it about the journey, it’s also about the people you meet along the way who shape that journey. People often ask, “What’s your favorite place you’ve been so far?” This is such a tough question to answer because there’s so much that goes into loving a place. Often times, I find that my favorite places are tied directly to the connections we make with people. The experiences shared with others, the conversation, the laughs and jokes along the way, and cultural exchanges. Mendoza has been one of our favorite places on the trip, in large part because of the people we met and the experiences we had.

We arrived in Mendoza feeling drained and exhausted. After spending two weeks in Buenos Aires we jumped on a 12-hour bus to Argentina’s second biggest city, Cordoba. We spent a couple days exploring Cordoba’s mix of old and new; it’s beautiful 17th-century Jesuit ruins and colonial architecture, mixed with its young and lively student vibe. It was a nice city, but the hostel we stayed in was really loud and difficult to sleep in, and we just didn’t have that great of an experience there. After two days we jumped on another 12-hour bus at 6am to get to Mendoza.  When we arrived we were sick of city life and just wanted to go back to the mountains.

Though Mendoza is also a pretty big city, when we walked into Hostel Lao (where we’d be staying) I could just tell that it would be different than our frustrating experience in Cordoba. We were greeted with a warm welcome and shown all around the place. It was a large house that had been converted into a hostel, with a really laid back vibe and lots of common space to hangout. We saw on the wall that Hostel Lao was rated as ‘The Best Place to Stay in South America’ and quickly saw why. There was a nice kitchen, a courtyard you could relax in, and our room was in an old pool house on the other side of the courtyard, making it nice and quiet. They had a book listing all the activities you could do at a budget price, and helped us set everything up. We immediately felt at home, and the vibe of the place seemed to carry over with all the people staying there. Everyone was so friendly and we made friends fast. In fact a few minutes after we checked in, we were greeted by some friendly Australians that asked if we wanted to have a glass of wine with them.

Mendoza is known for their world-class wines, most notably being from the rich and dark Malbec grape. The Malbec grape began in France and was a common blending grape in Bordeaux, but never surfaced as a top French variety. Today Argentina produces 75% of all the Malbec grapes in the world, and it reinvigorated this grape as one of the top 18 noble grapes. Josh and I were really excited to visit this region because Malbec is our favorite kind of wine. We absolutely love it and couldn’t wait to try it in its native habitat. So naturally, on our first full day in the city we headed out on a wine tour.

 What an awesome day it was! Our hostel hooked us up with a great day tour that took us around the region to four different wineries, ending at a Bodega with a huge lunch platter. There were seven of us in total, three others from our hostel and two Polish guys from a different hostel. We were all from different places: Australia, UK, Poland but we clicked really well. We had so much fun tasting the different wines at each vineyard and things got really silly.

We got an official tour at two of the places and learned about how they make their wines. Each vineyard was really different. The first one was more boutique, with the best Malbec wine we’d had to date. The second place was a really large vineyard with more mass produced wines.

The tour was really well done and had a museum of old wine crushing machinery they used to use. By the time we got to the third one we were all feeling pretty buzzed (we started tasting wine at 9am!) and it was a really funny experience. The wines were Italian and predominantly sweet wines, so very different from the first two. We were all raving about all of them, but I’m not sure how good they actually were!

After the tasting, we all went home and took a nap, then regrouped for a night out. We played some cards at the hostel for a few hours, and then went out for a bit in Mendoza. It was such a fun night, and such a great time meeting new friends!

The next day Josh and I just relaxed at the hostel for a while catching up on things, then found a really nice big park where we went for a long run. Our friends were all leaving and we were sad to see them go! We really wanted to keep hanging out, but such is travel life. Hopefully we will all meet again in the future. At breakfast we met some new friends, an American couple from San Francisco Sarah and Bobby, who were also a lot of fun. We decided to go on a biking wine tour the next day together, in a town nearby Mendoza called Lujan de Cuyo.

The biking tour was the best! The four of us took a bus to the tiny town, and picked up our bikes at a little bike shop. They mapped out which vineyards we’d goto, and showed us how to bike to each place. It was such a nice day, and really fun biking to each of the places on our own. We ran really behind schedule and got a little lost at times, but it was so fun, and there was no one at any of the vineyards we went to. It felt like we had the places all to ourselves. One of the vineyards was this sweet older guy who only spoke in Spanish. It was good practice for Josh and I but luckily Bobby spoke fluent Spanish to help us out when we got lost. The wines were great, and the day was perfect!

Our last day in Mendoza was pure bliss. We decided to go to the Cacheuta Thermal Pools and it was soooo worth it! We got pampered for the day and had the BEST meal I’ve eaten in South America to date. Cacheuta is a Hotel and Spa about an hour from Mendoza, overlooking the Mendoza River downstream from the Andes Mountains. It is tucked away inside a red rock canyon, filled with several different outdoor thermal pools and an indoor solarium that is all connected by swimming.

The pools are made using natural thermal waters, and range in temperature from 73-105 degrees. They also have a mud bath area you can take the mud to moisturize your skin, and a sauna to open your pores. We spent all morning going in and out of each of the pools.

They totally downplayed lunch, telling us we’d have a BBQ with salad. It was absolutely massive, and had the best cuts of meat we’ve ever seen, along with about 200 different sides to go with it. It felt like a Thanksgiving meal, and we were sitting in our bathing suit and robes as we ate. It was incredible, but it made it hard to want to get back in the pools!

We loved Mendoza. The scenery was amazing, the food and wines delicious, the hostel was perfect, the tours were adventurous, and above all the people we met were fantastic. We really didn’t want to leave this place. But, like all good things it had to come to an end. We will always remember our time there and smile.