19 hours was our longest bus trip to date, but we didn’t mind – it was our first taste of Argentinian buses which were a complete luxury compared to the Bolivian ones! Leather seats, toilets, air con, movies, overhead lights, and even meals! We couldn’t believe what we had been missing out on! After that we actually started to look forward to long bus trips between cities – which is a necessity in Argentina given it’s vast distances.
On entering Mendoza on the bus we were surprised at it’s size – I don’t know why, but we expected it to be a lot smaller and older looking. However, it looked quite new, clean cut and Westernised.
Our hostel, ‘Chimbas’, was also a pleasant surprise since most hostels on all the usual sites got poor reviews, so we expected the standard to be quite low (it’s a destination more for wealthy Argentinians that backpackers).
We didn’t fall in love with Mendoza as we had expected to – even though we had great wine & steak there, a great hostel, enjoyed it’s massive and picturesque square, tree lined pruned streets, and beautiful huge park at the edge of town.
For us there was just something missing – it lacked character, or maybe it felt a little false as if created for a niche market around it’s natural and beautiful vineyards.
Of course we still did the vineyard tour – it’s a must if you’re visiting Mendoza, and Niall did some more rafting as it was rumoured to be more hardcore than Salta (it wasn’t!).
We left Mendoza with no regrets, but still feeling slightly let down as from home when planning this whole trip, Mendoza was one of the places we looked forward to the most.
Still - as always in our true travelling style, we lived it up; saw it all; and enjoyed every day we spent here and of course every steak and glass of wine!
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