Mar 13 - Mendoza to Valparaiso

Today we move on from Mendoza (probably just as well for our livers…) and say our final farewell to Argentina. 

Back to Chile for our next stop in Valparaiso. This time no buses ! 

We flew from Mendoza for a flight with a stunning view of the Andes and landed back in Santiago airport for a 2 hour transfer through the vineyards of Chile to the port of Valparaiso the second largest city in Chile.

Valparaiso has a upper and lower part. The lower part is flat and is home to the Port, the naval headquarters for Chile and the main local (porteno) shopping street. The upper part is a series of 45 hills connected to the lower part by a series of staircases and funiculars.

Lower Valparaiso

We are staying on Cerro (hill) Alegre and access the lower part by a funicular. The architecture is really unusual, lots of wooden houses brightly painted and again, masses of street art and graffiti.

We went for a wander round the lower part, the main square and the main street which was called………….yes, Prat street….

Next to us the Cerro Conception is fully of quirky art, street art, craft shops, street music and a really alternative vibe.

We started the evening off by trying a bottle of the fizz Mandy and Paul had bought at the Salentien vineyard…………very nice too and then went for a wander in the narrow streets and alleys of Cerro Conception before a nice dinner in one of the oldest houses with a view of the port and the lights on the other hills.

Valparaiso is looking like an interesting couple of days !!

Mar 12 Mendoza

Today we are heading down to the Uco Valley about 80km from where we are staying. This valley is becoming known for some of the best Malbec’s and other reds and has a mix of large and small wineries.

Our first stop today was one of the larger wineries called Salentien where we had a tasting and then lunch. It was a beautiful location with snowy Andean peaks behind the rows of vines. It was a warm sunny day and lovely to wander around the vineyard.

Andes as a backdrop

Salentien Winery

Malbec grapes ready to pick

The tasting was slightly bigger than usual, which at 12 midday was to prove a challenge ! 

We had a mix of really good reds with some excellent premium wines but the tasting glasses were huge ! 

Big Decisions

Big Glasses !!

Needless to say we polished off the lot  which then resulted in Paul developing a new phenomenon called the Malbec smile …………

The Malbec Smile.........

thinking we’d better soak up some alcohol we then headed in for lunch which was lovely and again with that great backdrop of the vines and the Andes.

On our way out we bought a couple of nice bottles but by this time  we had completely missed our second appointment and were just in time for our third which was at another very small local winery La Azul.

When we arrived the locals were just finishing a long boozy Sunday lunch and heading home. They had several rustic tables outside and the whole atmosphere was lovely. Very local, very relaxed.

We had a look round the tiny winery and tasted some of their different stage production wines.

The Lesson

The Tasting

All very nice……….. Steve by now was losing the will to live..

Please can I go home now...

Janette then spotted the takeaway service...

On the way back, Janette and Mandy snoozed while Paul tried to stay alert and navigate. Poor Steve !!

That evening Mandy and Paul broke out the party wine on their balcony, the sparkling red they had bought which got the evening off to a flying start. (as if we hadn’t had enough today already..)

Lets get the party started !

We then headed off to a local Parrilla for dinner, where they cook all their meats on the big asado grills outdoors. We had a mixed Parrilla and this had some great flavours, garlicky sausages, soft black puddings, pork and beef ribs and then just when we thought we were done, they bowled up with a tray of steak !  All this for £12 each…………

Now this is what we call a BBQ....

As we were walking on our way home at midnight, we went through a little square to find the locals of all ages, old to young, dancing formally in the centre of the square. Most unexpected but very nice to see !! 

Mar 11 Mendoza

Much restored after a good night sleep, we arranged a hire car and planned our Mendoza wine route. Steve had very kindly offered to be our teetotal driver for these couple of days as long as a beer was provided in the evening !

We are staying in Luyan de Cuyo an area about 30 minutes from Mendoza city which has many small local wineries (a lot of the major wineries here that export large volumes are French and Spanish owned), so we started off within walking distance of our hotel in a little bodega called Pulmary.

It was abandoned in the early 1920’s when Argentinian wine consumption plummeted as drinking trends moved to soft drinks and less alcohol. The family bought it 12 years ago and restored it and 2012 was their first year available and ready for the market.

Let me In !!

This time of year is a busy one as they are harvesting and fermenting, so the small winery was in full production mode when we arrived, so it was fun to see the whole thing live.

Bottling & Barrelling in Process

Ageing in oak in the callar

Sampling from the barrel

Mandy and Paul bought one of the last few bottles of a sparkling red (a mere 16% alcohol) with a great Marilyn Monroe designer label which the winemaker signed for them. Party party !!

From there we went on to Clos de Chacras, another Argentinian wine maker. The original winery was set up by one of the original settlers here but again went out of production in the early 1920’s. His granddaughter then bought the winery back about 20 years ago and started again replanting the vines and producing wine.

In the main cellar, they had the chair used by the original winemaker along with a book of the original yields and sales from the original winery from the late 1800’s.

Again the winery was in full production and we watched them loading the grapes into the pressing machine. The place was full of bees, attracted by the sweetness of the picked Malbec grapes.

First pressing of malbec grapes

 We had a tasting and they had some really lovely Malbec and Cabernet Franc, both silver medal winners. They had a limited edition cellar door only Malbec, so Janette had to add that one to her collection !

Malbec grapes ready for picking

By this time Steve was beginning to feel decidely left out with only water & dry crackers !

From there, we headed over to Maipo, one of the main production areas in Chile. The difference was marked, large vine areas and much bigger production units. We headed into Maipo town for coffee and after a wander around decided to head to the wine museum which Paul had found on the map. After several back and forwards round the one way system we found the museum only to realise it was 7pm and of course it was closed !!  That’s a day wine tasting for you !!

Back in Luyan de Cuyo we honoured our promise by finding Steve a beer bar in the middle of wine land and so ended a happy Malbec day !

Beer At Last !

Mar 9 & 10 - Easter Island to Mendoza

Mar 9^{th -}Leaving Easter Island

Given this strange and unusual place, I guess we shouldn’t have been too surprised to find out that our transfer to the airport was to be with the honorary British Consul to Easter Island who turns out to be a Scottish travel manager called James !!

We had to have our picture with him of course, but he couldn’t fit us all into his official car (complete with pennant) so we had to go in his truck…….

The VIP Team with the Honorary British Consul
for Easter Island who also owns
 a travel company

He dropped us off at the tiny airport, waved us goodbye and went on his way. Things then unravelled pretty quickly ! 

Our travel luck had run out and our plane had fuselage damage on the inward flight. They had to repair the fuselage but then had to wait for Boeing engineers in the States to check & certify the plane as fit to fly (given that we were about to fly over 3,500kn of nothing but ocean we were quite happy to wait !) We finally got the green light at 7pm a 6 hour delay after sitting in a baking outdoor airport in 90% humidity.

We finally arrived back in Santiago and got to our hotel at 3am with a 7.15am departure for our public bus across the Andes to Mendoza in Argentina !!

Mar 10^th  Across the Andes

Setting in for what we were advised
was to be a 3-4 hour bus ride

Four very tired & grungy travellers got to the bus station for our journey after 4 hours sleep. The bus turned out to be much better than we had expected, a double decker, very comfortable with reclining seats. All good so far. 

Now all we had to do was stay awake to see the scenery…..little chance of that with a nice warm comfortable bus when we had had 3 hours sleep. Mandy then suggested the Meerkat solution where one of us stood watch & woke the others up if the scenery was good which worked pretty well.

Glaciers on the top of the Andes

It was a pretty trip through the Andes with a stretch of pretty good consecutive hair-pin bends- 25 to be exact ………..and then some very high peaks and glaciers.

Bend 27 - going dizzy

The trip went well until we reached the Chilean/Argentinian land border in the middle of the Andes which was then everything went pear shaped.

The Bribe

We had been warned the customs check could take a couple of hours and they did random checks on some buses and cars. Due to the currency issues in Argentina, many people go across to Santiago in Chile by bus to do shopping.
Also, it is customary to pay a charge also known as a bribe to get bags reloaded on the bus

We pulled into the border area and sat in a long queue of cars and buses for a couple of hours before it was our turn to go through. We all had to get off the bus for border passport checks which took an hour but went pretty smoothly and we got back on the the bus expecting to get on our way.

Two Argentinian traders having around
100 purses and hand bags confiscated

They pulled our bus out into a special customs lane and we were all told to get off the bus with all our hand luggage for a full customs check. They unloaded all the luggage and the customs team then came down the line. 

They took one look at us and said we could get back on the bus leaving all the local people to be searched. The customs guy then came on the bus to apologise & explain that there are lots of people smuggling goods to sell back into Argentina.

They had obviously had a tip off and searched the bags of two women who proceeded to unpack about a hundred handbags & purses from their luggage !!!  We were sharing a bus with handbag smugglers…

The Argentinian Police checking papers

Another two hours later, they repacked all the other luggage back onto the bus and we finally got under way. Great we thought…….Mendoza here we come !  10 minutes later we came to a Carabinieri station and guess what……..they got on & checked all our papers again…….!!!

By this time we were losing the will to live regardless of how stunning the scenery was for the last 2-3 hours of the drive. We finally arrived in Mendoza 10 hours after leaving Santiago for what should have been a 4-6 hour journey including customs.

Fortunately our hotel in Luyan de Cuyo a small wine area in the Mendoza region was lovely and we finally got settled in with a glass of Malbec & some dinner. 

That was probably the longest day we had had, at least it was punctuated with some drama.

The last part of the route into Mendoza
was beautiful and the Geology colourful

The Vinyards of Mendoza - Home of Malbec
high on Janettes' priority list

 es

There are not many boarders take 3 hours plus to get over

There obviously was a train line across at one point
but seismic activity had had its way