Argentina - Wine is the new Water

Buenos Aires, Mendoza and Puerto Iguazu were our chosen spots in Argentina, we spent about 12 days between the three places and found varying experiences in all.

Our first stop was Peurto Iguazu, a long 26 hour journey from Rio finally placed us in the land of the falls, Iguazu deserves it's own blog, so we'll save this for another day.

We spent a week in Buenos Aires, it has the feel of a laid back, small city despite its large size. We had a lazy few days here, once we arrived we realised quickly there wasn’t masses to do, so we took it upon ourselves to relax. We did happen to find ourselves in the main shopping street on three out of our six days here, they even had a Zara! Aside from the window shopping, we ventured to the Recoleta Cemetery, ate some good food, wandered through the local Sunday market and spent time people watching in the Plaza de Mayo, a very chilled out atmosphere. We had a lot of home cooked meals in Buenos Aires, our Airbnb apartment meant we could make use of the small fresh markets dotted throughout the city.

Most of our great memories from Argentina are from Mendoza, mainly due to the consumption of wine, I hope that doesn’t leave a bad impression of us, but it is the home of Malbec. We only had three full days in Mendoza, but we made them count. Some friends we met in Cusco were here at the same time as us, and as a group we decided that being in Argentina, it was only fair to consume copious amounts of steak and red wine, not helped by the fact our company happen to be Irish, need i say more?

The best day had to be our wine tasting day. This started with a slight downer as the wine drunk the night before meant that the 7am alarm was just a tad too loud for Jo. Wine tasting on a wine hangover is not the best way to get the most out of the day, but hair of the dog and all that jazz. Safe to say my palette was not at its best (do I sound like a wine connoisseur yet?). Despite the self induced struggle, we powered through to rent bikes which we cycled up and down the main road in Maipu, stopping at three wineries on the way (Dominciana, Tempus Alba and Trapiche) for tours and tasting, oh so sophisticated, but maybe not oh so safe. Tipsy tourists cycling on main roads, I’m sure that wouldn’t go down well back home.

Short and sweet, maybe our memory of Argentina is clouded for some reason? When wine in cheaper than water, you know you're in the right place.

S&J