Day 38 - To Mendoza

Up early to check out and over to the air park (it's the air park for the downtown port and the airport for the international port north of BA) for our 9:00 flight. Once there we discovered I'd made the reservation for a 9 PM flight! We were able to get a new reservation, in Business class, for later in the morning and waited for that.

We had a good flight to Mendoza, cruusing over heavily farmed plains. Our hotel (Villaggio) is a small boutique one in the center of town. We walked around the central square and a pedestrian street.

Mendoza is a large city (130,000 in the city proper and 1.7 million in the greater metro area). It's 650 miles from BA but only 150 miles from Santiago, Chile, across the Andes. It is the commercial hub of the wine growing region but doesn't seem crowded or busy. Wine is THE business here with 90% of all Argentine wines produced in the area. They also grow olives and produce olive oil and bottle the mountain water for sale throughout the country.

At a shop on the pedestrian mall I finally found a leather belt I liked. At the hotel we arranged tours for Wednesday and Thursday then went around the corner for a great Italian dinner (with wine, of course).Read more