Mendoza and Bodega Buddies

We continue our voyage further north into the wine region of Mendoza. Gonna be some good times, but got some you know what to hit up first 🙂

Copahue: the perfect town for a horror movie

We leave Lanin and do a very long day with a very side track to a high recommendation of a thermal path.

We start with a crazy mountain pass street in ripio road format in terrible condition, but it was still quite beautiful but no picture would do it any good. However, we ran into some old friends:

Every single goat stopped in front of Hubi either to pee on our tires, have a ram fight in front of us for our entertainment, and one goat… had a staring competition with Hubi. It’s stared the headlights down for at least 5 minutes, even after all the other goats were long gone and humping elsewhere. I started flashing my brights and honking, he refused to lose.

After a lovely stretch of pavement and a terrible 250km side tour of ripio road, we get to Copahue. We are the water smoking and steaming. The town was old, but not pretty old. Metal square building old, tiles… creepy. We go in the Therme where we found out they treat it like a hospital. Filled with older people, all filling out forms waiting to go in private rooms and probably get gassed for what I know. The place was built in the 60s and nothing done since. Somewhat white tiled walls that are now covered in scratches and falling apart. Tiny room after tiny room with a window you can’t look through and you only hear disturbing noises on the other side. The smell. After a quick info session, we begin the wait for admission. The entire time looking around at all the zombies and the smell of the place. An admin chick would talk to someone for about 30 minutes, fill out endless paperwork, my guess is the legal approval of anesthesia, and then the person would go pay, while the chick would do more paperwork. After at least an hour of this, they called out number 1. We were number 38. Maybe another 30 minutes went by and they were on 5. While I hated going so far out of the way to get here, I am happy I left alive.

Obviously I have no pictures. Who takes pictures inside a therme? Look, naked old wrinkly people. Is that a waterfall?

Made it to the next town with the reserve fuel light very angry with me, but got a campsite, chilled with some Swiss people all night as the locals in the municipal camping do what they do on Saturday nights. You have to see it to believe it.

Las Payunial

We leave Chos Malal with a bit of curiosity in what is next as we try to go to Las Payunial. This place has more volcanos than anywhere else, but apparently 4×4 is required. I honestly can’t even Find the entrance on the map. We take a chance, after 100km of Route 40 ripio, we drive in the park.

Only a welcome sign, no ranger station or nothing. Inside, a maze of streets with oil pumps and confusion, only our Navi claims to have an idea. After some 30km with only 7 to go, we finally hit a ditch we can’t cross and have to head back. We didn’t even reach the entrance to the volcanoes.

Atuel Canyon

A river/lake with a big ole dam making a very impressive canyon. We wild camped at the bottom with signs everywhere threatening of drowning if the dam opens. It ain’t gonna open.

Mendoza!

We were very happy to find a nice campsite out of the city with a pool. After the ciesta we went back in the city to tcb, the guy at the tourist info said it was even better we had a car, could hit up even more bodegas he kept recommending. After telling him I don’t want to drive after a dozen wine tastings he laughed me off, “they don’t control here.” I got stopped twice at 5 patrols on my way in.

Next morning did an organized tour with a bus that went to an olive oil plant, then two more bodegas. Was nice but more push and sell you stuff places. Obviously they were free tours connected with the travel groups to make people buy wine. All good.

Next day did our own tour. At our first stop, Bodega Lopez, we made some Bodega buddies we spent the rest of the day with. An Irish couple and a German girl. First, there was this American brat that during the tasting made two comments when asked about the smell: “smells like grapes” no shit and “smells like fresh tennis balls.” I had to ask what fresh tennis balls smell like.

Hit up two more bodegas, Argentia and Giol. Giol was sad cause they went out of business and now it’s just a museum. Would be great to get this thing going again.

Ischigualasto

So if you find one dinasour fossil, you get to declare yourself the best place in the world. Actually think they found a bunch here, but regardless of the petrified bones, the scenery was amazing.

The entire tour was cool cause we were a 4 hour drive yourself in a convoy with a ranger tour. Learned that dinosaur fossils are the same as petrified wood. So now we got petrified bones. Also since the entire place was about how many million of years old so and so is, some little girl asked about more or less creation vs evolution. Unfortunately the ranger had a neutrally prepared answer. They also had a museum there with a fossil (so they say) on display

Cayafate

After some petrified bones, we began what became a very long voyage north to Cayafate, another wine town. An absolutely amazing drive north through a beautiful mixture of red and green mountains.

Had a stop at our first Inca ruins on the way.

More insane beautiful countryside and some fantastic river crossings in Hubi brought us eventually to Cayafate. We hit up 3 bodegas, these ones real cheap, 50 pesos for 6 tastings, allllllll good. The third was actually the best, good enough I bought a bottle from them.

Up next, insane northwest Argentina, more insane landscapes, and onward to Bolivia!