Written by mccown @ Weekend Blitz
While in Argentina’s wine country, we wanted to be sure to see some vineyards and see the outskirts of Mendoza… plus try some local wines. Mendoza’s wine regions account for about 70% of all the wine produced in Argentina, so visiting some wineries and tasting some Malbec is a must while staying in Mendoza.
Turns out, though, that planning a day trip to wineries is a little harder than we thought. Mendoza’s wine regions stretch out over more than 350,000 acres and there are three separate regions within Mendoza. So, with just one day set aside for this, we quickly realized we couldn’t see it all. First, we had to pick a region (we went with Maipú) and then we had to choose a plan. We had the option of paying for a tour that picked up and dropped off at our hotel but, for a fraction of the cost, we could make our own private tour if we were a little more adventurous.
We found “Mr. Hugo’s” bike rental and decided to go that route as opposed to the all-inclusive (and much more expensive) bus tour. For a much, much, much more affordable cost, we could find our own way out to Maipú and we thought it’d be more fun to take the local bus anyway. We took a city bus for 8 pesos to Maipú. The trip is pretty short– only take about 40 minutes total from the city center:
The best news is that the bus drivers know exactly what’s up. They let us know exactly when we should get off the bus and then pointed us (and the two other English-speaking tourists on the crowded bus of locals) toward Mr. Hugo’s.
1- Mr. Hugo’s
Update: Mr. Hugo’s appears to have closed. Instead, try Maipú Bikes (Website / TripAdvisor) which has fantastic reviews and is just a few blocks up the road from the old Mr. Hugo’s.
Mr. Hugo himself welcomed us and we watched as a whole boatload of Americans chugged champagne from the bottle then finished with beer before riding off into the sunset 11 am sunshine. I think the 50 – 70-year-olds all took the all-inclusive & more expensive bus tour choice, so you’re mixed in more with the party crowd on the DIY bike tours. That was fine with us and really more of what we were after anyway, but just something to consider when deciding which route to choose.
We rented bikes for 70 pesos each (looks like it’s up to 100 pesos/bike now because of inflation… still, that’s roughly $5-$7 USD). Mr. Hugo gave us a small paper with a suggested route showing all the wineries around (the drawing isn’t to scale, so some wineries had more space between them than we thought).
We started biking around 12:30 pm and took a total of 4 hr 15 mins of which about 1 hr 15 mins was spent actually biking and the remaining 3 hours we enjoyed eating and drinking in the various wineries and the biergarten.
Here’s a map of some of the […]
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