The province around Mendoza is the most important wine region in Argentina. More than 50% of the 1.500 wine producers are located here. Mendoza is not far away from the Andes and the highest mountain: Mt. Acongaua, with 6.962m the highest in America and outside Asia.
Jan wanted to climb up but after Verena heard that it takes between 13 to 15 days, you really need good weather conditions, a lot of people get anoxia [altitude sickness] and about 100 people died during their hike since the last 50 years … well, Jan had to stay in Mendoza .
So we took the bus to the wineries and on the sunniest day since we left Patagonia we had some guided tours incl. tasting through all the vineyards located adjacent to Maipu, a little wine-village. In the famous vineyard of Trapiche, one of the oldest – existing since 125 years, we were told that they produce 25.000.000 liters of wine each year. 45% is drunken by the Argentineans, the rest goes to foreign countries, for example Germany. These south american alcoholics used to drink 92 liters wine each year pP! Now the average consume of wine is about 32 liters (and eat 75kg of meat) – well we got already that the Argentineans are a little bit crazy, but also they are really friendly. After the tasting in the 2nd winery we felt a little bit shaky but kept drinking. We met some guys from Australia/England/USA and stopped at a nice beer garden. We remembered the german saying: “beer after wine – that isn’t fine!” – but who cares?

The program in Bariloche, the Argentinean Switzerland, was “bike’n hike”. Verena was tough and struggled all the way up only sometimes pushed by Jans new invention – a bike-puller After a long day on the mountain bikes we didn’t feel like hiking on the 2^nd day. So we rented a car and drove from S.C. de Bariloche to San Martin de los Andes, a beautiful village in front of a cute lake and the beginning of huge mountain ranges. We invested 40 [damned] €uro to exchange our tickets to stay one more day in a wonderful appartment with a fire place and lake view.