I Took An Old-Person Bus Tour: Mendoza

This weekend Amanda, Emily, and I went to Mendoza for 3 days. Mendoza is a western province of Argentina in the Central Andes. It's where the majority of Argentinean wine is produced...almost the whole province is either vineyards or mountains.

The first afternoon we toured 2 different 'bodegas' or wineries/vineyards and an olive oil farm/factory. The first one, San Humberto was medium-sized, and the second one was called Familia Caccari or something like that, and was smaller and all organically grown. The wine tours were actually kind of boring, but if you're going to Mendoza you kind of have to tour wineries, or else your trip wouldn't really be complete. I did learn some things about wine: grapes grow best in dry weather (it's very dry in Mendoza), wine is aged in barrels of specific types of wood to affect taste, when you taste wine you should only hold the glass by the stem (to not affect temperature), and there are 2 different smells from wine (primary smell is the original unshaken scent, comes from the grapes, and the secondary smell is the smell after you swirl it a little, and that comes from the production process).

The second day we went west of the city to go white water rafting on the Rio Mendoza, which was really fun! I'd never been rafting before, so it was something new and fun to do. The rapids weren't that big, it was Class III and IV rapids, because the water level was low, but it was still really really fun. That afternoon they had a rappel set up, so we got to do a rappel, and then we went with a guide on a hike that afternoon.

Then on Sunday, we had signed up with our hostel for a day trip called "High Andes Adventure", which took you out to the Chilean border to see all the important sites in the mountains (Puente de la Inca, Aconcagua (highest peak in Western Hemisphere), and some little towns along the way). Anyway, by the title of the excursion, we were expecting some sort of exciting tour, likely some hiking, 'que sé yo!'. Well, we were very wrong .... it turned out to literally be an old person bus tour. Haha. Funny to think about in retrospect, but it was a pretty boring tour! We DID get to see the exciting parts of the Andes, but then again, it was from the inside of a bus filled with 50+ year olds! The most entertaining part of the trip was watching the interaction of the guide-woman, the driver, and the photographer. They were each quite strange, and didn't get along that well, haha. We did get some awesome pictures though, and I'll post them once my friends post theirs .... (no camera...)