Mendoza

We´ve been in Mendoza for the last 5 days or so. Mendoza is a couple of hours flying time west of Buenos Aires, just before the foothills of the Andes begin to rise. It turned out to be a cracking town. Apparantly it was levelled by an earthquake in something like 1840, and was rebuilt with nice wide, tree lined, avenues and large squares, so it has nice spacious feel to it, especially after the hustle and bustle of Buenos Aires. It also has lots of things to do...

We went on a wine tour. We visited an old family run winery and by way of contrast, a very large, modern factory style winery. Both were very interesting, but we´d have to admit that we prefered the samples from the factory !

We took a minibus right up into the High Andes. We got about 30km away from the Chilean border and saw some absolutely spectacular scenery. We hiked up a small valley to get a view of Aconcagua. At just under 7000m, it´s the highest peak outside of the Himalayas. We had a perfect day for it. Have a look of the photo of Athena for proof, and if you want to know a bit more about it, the video below features me waffling on......

We spent the next day river rafting, hiking and abseiling. The rivers are relatively quite at the moment. They´re fuelled pretty much only by melt water, rather than rain and that doesn´t arrive until late spring. Either way, the trip down the river was great fun with loads of rapids to prat about in. Only one person fell out, despite our best efforts. Next up was a 1 1/2 hour hike around the local peaks ( see second bit of video ). The scenery reminded me alot of Nevada - very dry and scrubby with bizarre rock formations sprinkled liberally around, but it has the added bonus of the peaks of the High Andes for a backdrop. To finish off the day we abseilled back down to the road level. Great fun, once you´ve got the first 5m or so under your belt.

Anoncagua video ( turn sound on to enjoy hearing me waffle ) ...

Hiking video...