The $US5 Wine Tour

Inspired by my Italy bike tour of the wine country I suggested we rent bikes when we got to Argentina´s wine town, Mendoza.  When I read the closest bodegas/wineries were 17km away I still thought -- no problem.

We arrived in Mendoza early in the morning on our overnight bus from Buenos Aires.  Finding the closest hostel to the bus station was booked, we found a cheap huespedes which, in my very bad Spanish, I translated as a bed and breakfast.  After seeing a door open to one of the rooms -- where an elderly lady was tucked in bed and someone was in the room caring for her -- we thought we had checked ourselves into an elderly hospice.  Our very friendly host arrived and showed us down the back of the building into another area looking more like a simple hotel. Whew!

After a quick bite for lunch we found ourselves some bikes to rent. $US5 bought us each an afternoon of biking and off we went. Anyone we spoke to about biking pointed us to the large park nearby, but one woman finally helped us map our way to a couple bodegas. 

I´m not sure how best to describe the journey. We weren´t on the rolling hills of Tuscany. Nor the small long roads of Napa. At one point we were on a highway cycling with cars whisking by at top speed.  Next we were riding over bumpy roads in a sleepy, slightly shady looking town.

We did get into one tasting.  We missed the second one by half and hour.  That must have been the half hour we spent trying to figure out where the heck we were on the tourist map.