Mendoza was one of the most pleasant places on my journey. Although the city itself does not have that many tourist attractions, when I visited it was springtime, perhaps the most gracious time. Mendoza reminded me of Turin and of Gran Canaria, two of my favourite places in the world, with its certain alegría, temperance of climate, character and lifestyle. I will later write a post about food and coffee of South America, where Mendoza will play an important role too.

My acquaintance with it started from a bike tour all around the city on the very first day, including Parque San Martín, a huge green space in the West of the city. It has man-made ponds, tennis courts (which made me feel a terrible itch to play) as well as a stadium, named of course after Argentinean Malvinas.

The view of the Andes from the park:

Continue reading Mendoza 5: The city →

The first thing everybody says in Argentina when you mention Mendoza is wine. Already 100 years ago there was a large production of wine here, but quality wine production started here only recently – perhaps 20-30 years ago. Today however Argentinean wine is a worthy competitor for Chilean and other “new world” wines. Mendoza is at the centre of it all, responsible for 2/3 of Argentinean wine production. The region is particularly suited to wine production, as it has a predictable dry climate without the surprises that can ruin a harvest, such as a sudden rain right before harvesting. In Mendoza, an arid semi-desert at the foot of the Andes, such an occurrence is out of the question.

Tour operators in Mendoza offer all variety of bodega tours (bodega = winery), but when I heard that a self-guided tour is possible using a bike, my mind was set. You arrive to Maipú area by bus and then rent a bike there. I got to Maipú only around 1 pm, so I expected that I would not be able to see all that much. But active biking got me to three bodegas and one olive farm, which yielded tasting 14 wines. The bike was not going all that straight by the end of the day!

Urquiza street – the main street in the wine region of Maipú. On a self-guided tour you bike a lot on this street. At times the tourist police joins you and follows you for a while, to avoid unpleasant surprises! I thought this was a fairytale, but two French girls I met at Di Tommaso winery confirmed that police had indeed followed them – which they found rather unsettling!

Continue reading Mendoza 4: Self-guided wine bike tour →

The most literally breathtaking experience in Mendoza was ziplining. I had already planned to do ziplining at the end of my Death Road bike ride, but at that time an injury prevented me from doing, and I was pretty bitter about it. Latin America though doesn’t lack in ziplining offer, and the one in Mendoza was particularly thrilling – the experience includes 6 actual cables with a total length of a couple of km. This is the view of the valley over which two longest cables were drawn. You can just make out the cable:

Continue reading Mendoza 3: Ziplining →

My second new experience in Mendoza was cabalgata, which in Spanish refers to a horse riding outing.

Strictly speaking, for me this was not a horse riding debut. In 2009 I was travelling around China. In Jiayuguan, the last fortress of the Great Chinese wall, I got out of the fortress gates that opened to the immense Gobi desert. Behind the gates there was a group of locals offering to every traveller to ride a camel or a horse. I had no such plans, but a skilful salesman managed to persuade me in language of gestures no less to mount a horse. This was a beautifully absurd experience, because he just gave me the reins and said: Go! And the horse went! Full speed into the desert. So I had to find ways to communicate with it already on the go. At some point I realised that holding back the reins actually does affect its behaviour, and so we returned to the gates without a hitch, well just a tad anxious perhaps.

It was all more civilised in Mendoza. I bought all my tours from the same company, so again we were taken to Potrerillos and then further to El Salto area, the village of La Cardita. There in a farm a rather taciturn local named Pablo put each of us on a horse and off we went into the mountains.

The view of the Andes from the Mendoza-Potrerillos road:

Continue reading Mendoza 2: Cabalgata →

You can arrive in Mendoza from Buenos Aires by plane or by a comfortable night bus, a cheaper alternative which I chose. It so happened that I arrived there early in the morning, without a hotel reservation and not knowing anything about it, except for a printed out Lonely Planet chapter that I had not even read.

And Mendoza turned out to be one of my favourite places on the whole trip. Everything was easy there, all went well, people were gentle and hospitable, the weather was wonderful, the food delicious. There I easily and pleasantly managed to cross out a number of positions from my “to do” list. This post is about the first one – rafting.

Continue reading Mendoza 1: Rafting →

Second part of my Buenos Aires impressions, consisting of places I visited and saw while walking on the city’s streets and filling in the sightseeing checklist.

Obelisco
One of the main symbols of Buenos Aires is the Obelisco, situated in the middle of the Avenida de 9 Julio. I wonder what’s with this obsession with erecting phallic symbols in the middle of every large world city? This avenue is the broadest in Latin America, the fact that makes Argentineans very proud. 10 lanes.

Continue reading Buenos Aires, part 2 →

I spent two weeks in Buenos Aires. These two weeks surged past me like the wind, at times the cold kind that makes you shiver, at times warm, as if hugging you. Buenos Aires is not the kind of city where you would carry a huge camera with you all the time. That’s why its story is by necessity eclectic, with photos made by Canon 5D Mark II, by iPhone, and sometimes without any photos all. Who photographs in a nightclub anyway.

My relationship with Buenos Aires
I have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with Buenos Aires. I so desperately wanted to fall in love with it that it probably had no other choice but to disappoint me. Like a spoilt beautiful boy, at times it seemed quite indifferent to me and even gave me some tough love. But at other times it gave me totally absolutely incredibly amazing presents.
Buenos Aires is a myth and a reality that came up as a conversation topic with many people. In some way it was a key city of my Latin American trip. Travelling in God-forsaken corners of Peru and Bolivia, I always felt that at the end of the day my ultimate destination was located due South East. Madonna’s refrain from the famous musical was playing in my ears: I wanna be a part of B.A. Buenos Aires, Big Apple!

Many of my correspondents were quite negative about it. I often read blogs to get inspired before going to some place, as it gives a different flavour to it compared to what you get out of guidebooks. For example the blog of Jeremy Halligar, a black gay man from New York, told the story of how he fell in love with BA, sold his New York flat and bought an apartment here, but eventually came to hate it. My boss who has been all around the world was describing porteños as hysterical, just like Italians from whom they are descended. An American solo traveller Jacob, who I met in Peru, was telling how unsafe and insecure he felt in Buenos Aires in contrast to the rest of Argentina.

In some way they were all right.

But for every hater, there was a lover.

In BA I met a gay American lawyer from New York who abandoned his crazy career a couple of years ago, moved to BA and never looked back, teaching English and other things. On another blog that much inspired me, http://www.bootsnall.com/, I read how the couple thought that spending a longer while in a place was the best decision they took on their year-long RTW trip. And their best month was the one they spent in BA renting a flat. I did exactly that.

Here are some eclectic impressions from BA, Buenos Aires, Big Apple
Continue reading My Buenos Aires, part 1 →

On the evening of the same day of visiting the Brazilian Iguaçu falls, I moved over the border to Argentina. A bus takes there, leaves you at the border to go through immigration, but issues a special ticket. With this ticket you board the next bus. The next morning I went to the National park on the Argentine side.

This is how the Devil’s Throat looks out of Argentina:

Continue reading Iguazu falls: Argentinean side →