Turns out, though, that planning a day trip to wineries is a little harder than we thought. Mendoza’s wine regions stretch out over more than 350,000 acres and there are three separate regions within Mendoza. So, with just one day set aside for this, we quickly realized we couldn’t see it all. First, we had to pick a region (we went with Maipú) and then we had to choose a plan. We had the option of paying for a tour that picked up and dropped off at our hotel but, for a fraction of the cost, we could make our own private tour if we were a little more adventurous.

We found “Mr. Hugo’s” bike rental and decided to go that route as opposed to the all-inclusive (and much more expensive) bus tour. For a much, much, much more affordable cost, we could find our own way out to Maipú and we thought it’d be more fun to take the local bus anyway. We took a city bus for 8 pesos to Maipú. The trip is pretty short– only take about 40 minutes total from the city center:

The best news is that the bus drivers know exactly what’s up. They let us know exactly when we should get off the bus and then pointed us (and the two other English-speaking tourists on the crowded bus of locals) toward Mr. Hugo’s.

1- Mr. Hugo’s

Update: Mr. Hugo’s appears to have closed. Instead, try Maipú Bikes (Website / TripAdvisor) which has fantastic reviews and is just a few blocks up the road from the old Mr. Hugo’s.

Mr. Hugo himself welcomed us and we watched as a whole boatload of Americans chugged champagne from the bottle then finished with beer before riding off into the sunset 11 am sunshine. I think the 50 – 70-year-olds all took the all-inclusive & more expensive bus tour choice, so you’re mixed in more with the party crowd on the DIY bike tours. That was fine with us and really more of what we were after anyway, but just something to consider when deciding which route to choose.

We rented bikes for 70 pesos each (looks like it’s up to 100 pesos/bike now because of inflation… still, that’s roughly $5-$7 USD). Mr. Hugo gave us a small paper with a suggested route showing all the wineries around (the drawing isn’t to scale, so some wineries had more space between them than we thought).

We started biking around 12:30 pm and took a total of 4 hr 15 mins of which about 1 hr 15 mins was spent actually biking and the remaining 3 hours we enjoyed eating and drinking in the various wineries and the biergarten.

Here’s a map of some of the highlights:

2- Museo del Vino

Website / TripAdvisor

Our first stop was “Museo del Vino” which is very close to Mr. Hugo’s. Spanish tours are 70 pesos/person but English tours require a reservation (which we didn’t have) and were 100 pesos/group. The good news is that the actual museum is free and it has lots of cool artifacts and old machinery in the wine production department:

They have a nice tasting room and sell glasses for 38 – 328 pesos and tasting for 90 – 220 ARS.

3- Vinoteca La Botella

Website / TripAdvisor

Next, we biked to La Botella for a free tasting advertised on Mr. Hugo’s route. The free wine was obviously pretty bad and was just used to get you in the door, but then we also tried the tasting of three (better) wines for 20 pesos each.

From there, we biked down the main road looking for the Trapiche winery but it was very hard to find! At many times, the road doesn’t have a proper bike lane, but cars and trucks do seem very cognizant of cyclists and pedestrians and move way over, so we always felt pretty safe.

4- El Patio Cervecero Beer Garden

Website / TripAdvisor

Finally, we stumbled across the “Biergarten,” but don’t be dissuaded, as we almost were. It’s really just a cafe with pizzas, empanadas, 3 types of draft beer and wines by the glass. We weren’t really feeling a biergarten on our winery tour, but it had a cool, relaxed vibe and was a great stop for a cheap and quick lunch. The English-speaking staff and free wifi make it fantastic. (3x empanadas for 8 ARS each and 550 mL for 32 ARS. Glass of red for 25 ARS.)

Our weather couldn’t have been more perfect: the leaves were changing and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Perfect fall weather – crisp, not humid at all (and a nice reprieve from the weather back at home with humidity ramping up for our springtime).

We also noticed that there were plenty of others who had rented bikes and were following the same route as us, but we think in peak tourist season, this place would be crawling and quite possibly over-crowded.

5- Trapiche

Website / TripAdvisor

On our ride back to Mr. Hugo’s, we finally found Trapiche! We rode into the perfectly manicured winery that was by far the largest and most well-maintained stop of our day. They waved us right in and actually offered us a free tasting and tours (I guess because it was nearing the end of the day?).

The tasting room overlooked the vineyard, so the view was the best we’d seen all day. Of course, the wine was delicious. This was probably our favorite stop of the day because of the view and the enormous facility.

BOTTOM LINE: Overall, our bus trip to Maipú and the DIY winery tours using Mr. Hugo’s bikes was just what we were after– we didn’t want to blow the bank on a day of the fanciest wineries but just wanted to get the experience. Although the bike trail is usually along main roads and you’re biking with traffic, we still had a great time and were thrilled to have great weather to enjoy the day.

The post Cycling Winery Tour – Mendoza, Argentina first appeared on Weekend Blitz.

Here’s a map of the route that has a lot of the highlights you’ll want to check out as well as practical info, such as the bus station, airport, grocery stores (to stock up on cheap Mendoza wine!), etc:

Stay

We stayed at the Park Hyatt Mendoza and would highly recommend it. It is in the perfect location and quite luxurious. Find our full review here: Park Hyatt Mendoza Review – Mendoza, Argentina.

1- Plaza Independencia

Start your day at off at Plaza Independencia, the true center of the town. Here, you’ll find plenty of locals, anyone from school kids playing to couples basking in the sun to retirees just hanging out to pass the time. On the weekends and some evenings, you’ll find local vendors selling art and trinkets.

Some kids that insisted on being in the photo

2- Peatonal Sarmiento

From the central square, head east towards the city’s pedestrian mall. Here, you’ll find tons of restaurants with plenty of outdoor seating. Although we found them to feel a bit touristy and expensive, it might just be worth it if the weather is nice to post up and people watch along the lively walkway. Along with restaurants, there are also cute coffee shops and boutique stores, so it’s well-worth a walk.

You might even see an impromptu tango dance!

3- Pasaje San Martin

Make sure not to leave the area without popping into the Pasaje San Martin and the historic shopping gallery’s exquisite stained glass skylight.

4- Plaza Espana & Plaza Italia

After a coffee and snack (we’re partial to alfajores), make your way towards two of Mendoza’s other large squares. While there’s not all that much to see here, it’s just nice to have a seat and take in the city and begin to appreciate how much area has been set aside for parks, squares and green space in this city that hugs the Andes.

Mendoza’s downtown is interesting in that it has one large square in the middle (Plaza Independencia) and 4 other squares spaced equally apart in 4 corners:

The 4 squares were designed to pay tribute to the founders of the city and create a natural retreat for its residents.

Plaza Italia is a memorial to the Italian families who resettled in Mendoza’s Cuyo neighborhood. One of the park’s landmarks is a statue of Romulus and Remus being suckled by the Roman wolf– a well-known myth in Italian culture pertaining to the founding of Rome. Additionally, the fountain is embellished with Italian-style stones and offer a perfect place to enjoy the weather and passerbys.

Plaza Italia

Plaza España, another one of the squares, has a statue portraying two ladies: the older, more experienced one representing Spain and the younger, more lively woman representing Argentina.

Plaza España

5- Avenida Arístides Villanueva

As you begin to head west towards the Parque General San Martin, you’ll walk right along Mendoza’s nightlife hotspot. Simply called Arístides for short, this street is lined with bars, pubs and restaurants that are packed on the weekends with locals and tourists alike.

The Arístides neighborhood has no shortage of quirky painted buildings and graffiti

6- General San Martín Park

Following Avenida Arístides westward dumps you straight into the General San Martín Park. While the park is host to a zoo and football (soccer) stadium, this is really just an excellent place to relax and kill some time in the afternoon. Make sure to check out the few statues (there are apparently over 34 covering the grounds!) and cafés housed in the park.

Entrance gates of General San Martín Park

If you’re up for a walk, be sure to scale Cerro de la Gloria (Glory Hill), a small hill that will give you a good vantage point of the whole city. It also hosts one of the bigger and more impressive monuments in the park: the memorial monument to the Army of the Andes.

Memorial Monument to the Army of the Andes

La Fuente de los Continentes (La Fontaine de L’Observatoire)

 7- Mercado Central

Once you’ve seen enough greenery, head straight down Avenida Emilio Civit from the park gates back towards the city. Once you take a left on Avenida Belgrano, you’ll be walking along Mendoza’s one and only tram line.

Before long, you’ll reach the Mercado Central. This old-fashioned market is still a beehive of locals that have stopped in to stock up on meats, cheese, produce and fruit.

Mercado Central: also the premiere place for all your chicken feet and neck needs

There’s also a sizable (and quite cheap!) food court that we ate at a few times. We snagged a few empanadas from Harry’s Fast Foods, one of the vendors for about $0.50 each.

8- Avenida Las Heras

After a small snack in Mercado Central, spend the rest of the day walking up and down Avenida Las Heras.

The streets are lined with stores selling just about anything and everything, but we suggest checking out the leather goods if you’re in the market for a nice jacket or boots. We decided not to buy a leather jacket because we thought we may find a cheaper selection in Buenos Aires, but immediately regretted our decision: this street in Mendoza offers a better and cheaper selection, so be sure to buy here if you’re at all in the market!

And, lest we forget, don’t skip out on having an espresso and alfajor at every café along your stop, especially here (we recommend Havana’s)!

9- Dinner at Ocho Cepas

For an out-of-this-world dinner experience, head to Ocho Cepas (just a block or two from the Park Hyatt Mendoza). Before arriving in Argentina, we read that, while there’s plenty of cattle in the country, almost no restaurant knows how to cook a good steak; they seem to always overcook it. However, we did not find this to be the case at Ocho Cepas and enjoyed some delicious steaks that were cooked absolutely perfectly.

The post Self-Guided Walking Tour: Mendoza, Argentina first appeared on Weekend Blitz.

The 5-star hotel is a bit smaller than several other Park Hyatts, but it’s perfect for a small city like Mendoza. I really love how Park Hyatts stay true to the culture and history of the city and especially loved the restored 19th-century Spanish colonial façade.

The hotel lobby is grand and full of marble, with large, floor-to-ceiling windows and a beautiful dining room.

Main Lobby

We were shown to our room and felt like we were staying in a palace. Since Jeffrey used one of his Hyatt Diamond Suite Upgrade Awards, we had been upgraded to a suite, so we had SO MUCH ROOM! The room and the hotel were very nice, but arguably not as fancy as, say, the Park Hyatt Vendôme in Paris.

I always love the tasty welcome treats at the Park Hyatt- and the Park Hyatt Mendoza left a treat for us each night of our stay instead of just the first night! #winning

Living area of our suite

More of the living room

Bedroom

Views of the city

Bathroom

We had breakfast each morning at the M Bistro, the hotel’s dining room, where breakfast is included for Hyatt Diamond members.

Breakfast/dining room

The only choice was the buffet, which included made-to-order eggs — all we need for a filling and delicious breakfast. They also had a great selection of pastries, bacon, sausage, cold cut meats, cheeses, and even a smoked salmon bar (with capers, cream cheese, egg whites, lemon slices, etc.). The fresh-squeezed fruit juices were also a treat for us  — whenever fresh-squeezed carrot juice is available, Jeffrey drinks about 5 glasses.

Breakfast buffet

More breakfast options – free breakfast is probably the very best perk of being a Diamond member!

The best part is that breakfast is served until 11am, so sometimes we’d show up right at the tail-end for an early lunch — perfect for saving a bit of time and money.

View of the hotel from Plaza dela Independencia

The hotel’s location was perfect for a few nights’ stay in Mendoza – it’s just across the street from a beautiful park – the Plaza de la Independencia – and within walking distance to many delicious restaurants and shopping. The Plaza de la Independencia has plenty of green space, fountains and a few museums – it’s a great place for people watching and orienting yourself with a new city, as locals are strolling through and enjoying life with their friends and families, too.

The post Park Hyatt Mendoza Review – Mendoza, Argentina first appeared on Weekend Blitz.

I was (secretly) dreading our day-long bus trip. What if it snowed and we couldn’t cross? And, more importantly, what if the roads were so bumpy and curvy that even I got car sick… and then had to stay on the bus for 5 more hours? Yikes. Luckily, none of my fears came to fruition and we arrived in Argentina unscathed and happy.

Window where we purchased our bus tickets

If you’re interested in more detail on how/where to book a bus ticket in Santiago, check out this post: How to: Booking a Bus Ticket from Santiago to Mendoza.

Gearing up for our ride

Boarding/The Seats

We departed the bus terminal a few minutes after 10 am and were on our way. The nice, more expensive seats are on the first floor of the bus (about 10 seats), then the cheaper seats are on the top floor. Fancy, plush leather seats were on the bottom floor – I mean these seats looked like Lazy Boy chairs were just wheeled into the bus and bolted down. Nothing to complain about there… but we opted to save $12 each and ride up top in the cheaper seats.

Here’s a copy of the seating chart. We recommend upstairs!

So, not knowing what to expect, we climbed the stairs to the top floor and found cloth seats that definitely weren’t as big or as nice as downstairs, but did just fine. Even the cheaper seats are much nicer than seats on charter buses in the US. These seats lean back to about a 45 degree angle – not so bad. Neither floor was anywhere near full – out of the 46 seats on the top floor of the bus, only about 14 people were riding. I’m not sure if that is because it wasn’t peak tourist season or because the buses run so frequently. Either way, Jeffrey and I could spread out, so we each took a row.

Downstairs leather seats

Our seats upstairs– not bad at all!

Before we even got out of Santiago, I fell asleep. Luckily, I woke up as we were literally climbing right up the mountains. The Andes are a beautiful mountain range and the snow-capped majestic – and huge! – mountains are a sight to see themselves. Along the pretty, scenic ride through the mountains, we crossed lots of bridges, went through countless tunnels and we feel like we can successfully claim we’ve seen about every winding road in the Andes.

The Ride

Here’s a map of the route:

The 225 mile trip took a total of 7 hours, while it’s still better than the 8 hours that they advertise it as, the total moving time was only 5 hours.

Saying the roads were “windy” would be a bit of an understatement

Meal Service

About two hours into our journey, around 12:30pm, when we had plateaued and weren’t climbing as rigorously, ham and cheese sandwiches were passed out, and then some fizzy grapefruit-tasting drink. While it won’t win any awards for its tastiness, the sandwich was filling and by no means terrible. Jeffrey pointed out that the box the sandwich came in said the sandwich would be good through next week — a little disconcerting when it has cheese and mayonnaise on it… If you truly don’t want to eat the ham and cheese sandwich that is passed out on the bus, just hold your horses a few more minutes until you get to immigration control – there are three “restaurants” there that will serve you sandwiches for about $5 USD each.

Here come our ham sandwiches

Yummy… mayo that stays good for a whole week!

Dessert consisted of coffee and an alfajor:

Yumm….instant coffee….

It’s important to note that there’s not really any water onboard the bus. They have a free dispenser that has hot water and cold water but I wasn’t willing to risk drinking the cold water. Jeffrey did use the hot to make coffee but, we figured, if it was boiling then it’s probably fine to drink. So, make sure to bring at least a few bottles of water for the ride if you end up taking this trip. Also, a few snacks wouldn’t hurt either.

Border Crossing

When you get to immigration control, be prepared to stay a while. We were under the impression that we could walk around for a few minutes, go through a passport check and be on our way… In fact, our experience took, at least, two hours. It’s not bad (especially when the weather is great!), but just good to know what you’re in for (we left our backpacks and personal belongings on the bus thinking we’d just be off the bus for about 5 minutes).

Ready for the long wait

At the border – about to cross over into Argentina

When we asked the bus driver how long we’d be, his response was, “as long as we need to be.” But, then, he followed it up with, “Maybe an hour?” There were about 3 small little restaurant kiosks to grab a sandwich, beer, water or coffee… interestingly, all places advertised that they accept Argentinian pesos, Chilean pesos, Brazilian reales and US dollars. Because those ham sandwiches on the bus hadn’t really done it for us (and we were bored), we bought a “Chorida”–a chorizo sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes for appx $4 US.

Passport control and customs processing

Immigration control at the border- waiting to get our luggage back

Finally, after about 3 or 4 buses were processed we were up. Interestingly, since it is an official border crossing right on the border, we all lined up, were processed by Chilean passport control, our official “exit” from Chile and then lined up in front of the Argentinian agent to be processed into Argentina. I suppose that we were in neither country for a few minutes there while waiting to officially enter Argentina. Good thing the power didn’t go off at that precise moment. Once our passports had been processed, it was back to the bus to wait and have our bags checked by customs and immigration. The officials started unloading the “checked” luggage in the luggage stores beneath the bus. They ran everyone’s bag through the x-ray scanner and then selected, possibly randomly, about 3 bags to visually inspect. However, all 3 happened to belong to this Bolivian woman traveling with her two children. An agent then had us unzip backpacks, purses, etc. – anything we were carrying with us on the bus – for a very quick visual inspection. Not sure what he was looking for, if anything. Then finally, the green light! We all boarded the buses and hit the highway. In all, we were stopped for right at 2 hours:

Here’s a chart of our speed on the trip. We stopped at about 2.5 hours into the trip and resumed at 4.5 hours in.

We made it to Argentina!

Here are few more pictures of the part you’ll not want to miss–the scenery!

The ride passed quite quickly as we rolled into Mendoza about 7 hours after leaving Santiago.

All parked in Mendoza!

All in all, the trip from Santiago to Mendoza was quite painless– and much less so than what I was expecting. The views of the Andes as you approach them and then begin to climb them — it’s pretty incredible! The actual ride is very smooth and rocked me to sleep for the majority of the trip. And, although we had to wait at the border for roughly 2 hours to pass into Argentina, we were allowed to get off the bus and visit the cafes at the top of the mountain — walk around, etc., so it wasn’t miserable at all.

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