Men doze a lot here – Mendoza, Argentina

Just kidding! Men drink a lot of wine in Mendoza, Argentina 😉 Perhaps after they doze?

As soon as I decided on traveling to South America, I knew I would stop in Mendoza, Agrentina. Mendoza is a town located near the Andes with a population of only 115,000. Mendoza is the heart of Argentina’s wine region and is known for the variety of malbecs.

My boyfriend and I spent 4 nights in Mendoza. The first night we arrived late and made our way to Hostel Internacional Mendoza, which we picked based on the tours offered.

Day 1 we spent doing our Hostel Wine & Chocolate Tour. As we settled in for the day, we realized we were a little too late to be able to do our tour. We thought about renting bikes to visit various wineries, which is a very popular activity in Mendoza. Instead, we signed up for the Wine & Chocolate tour offered by our hostel, which included 2 winery tours & tastings, a chocolate tasting, and an olive oil tasting! At $24/person, we thought this was the perfect option to fulfil our need of doing something since the tour started at 2PM. That something is drinking wine of course.

Most wineries in Mendoza require reservations. We never quite figured out why. Before we took off on the tour, we spent time researching the wineries we wanted to visit on Day 2. We were planning to rent a car and drive ourslves down to the Valley de Uco. This is known to be the area with the best wineries and most similar to Napa Valley. I knew about this before but was unsuccessful since I received no responses.

With the help of a hostel employee, we made a reservation at O. Fourneir in the Valley de Uco. With the great idea from my boyfriend, we made a reservation at Andeluna via Facebook! They messaged back in a few minutes.

We spent Day 2 doing our own tour of Uco Valley; Day 3 at Dolium, a family winery; and Day 4 at Blumbey, an innovative winery.

Our last day in Mendoza was also spent enjoying our last Argentina steak meal and finalizing some of our upcoming reservations. We brought a bottle of wine to lunch since we had SO many and were preparing to fly to Santiago that evening. We purchased 9 bottles purchased over the course of 3 days. Okay, mainly my boyfriend purchased.

We tried to go shopping and were finally bothered by the Argentina siesta. All the shops were closed from about 1/1:30 – 5/5:30.

So the main attraction of my 3 month trip has come and gone. I’d say I’ll miss the wine, but we have a few bottles to get through now in Chile and a few more waiting for me back in San Francisco (thanks, Justin!)