Ups and downs

From Foz do Iguaçu we took the local bus to Puerto Iguazu, the argentinian town next to the falls. At the brazilian border we had to leave the bus and look for an office to get our passport stamped, the bus meanwhile took off and we had to wait 40 mins for the next to arrive. At the argentinian border the bus waited because everyone had to get off and and go through the control.

In Puerto Iguazu we went shopping for food after we paid our tickets to Córdoba, our next destination. We also noticed that this town would've been much nicer to spend our days than it's brazilian twin...

Puerto Iguazu

Córdoba - we followed the tip of a local guy who said it's a nice city - was just a disappointement. It's the second biggest city of argentina after Buenos Aires but it seemed much bigger and much more noisy than BA. The traffic was immense and it never stopped, nor got less busy, the drivers much more aggresive, a dangerous place for pedestrians as we had to experience, a few centimeters away from a car that didn't stop just because of us... Some okay museums and parks, but we didn't think it was enough to keep us entertained for very long, so after a few nights we decided to keep going.

Córdoba

So we looked forward to one of our top places on our journey, Mendoza. Or the capital of wine as some adverts said. Promising! Also a big plus seemed to be our double room for 12€ in a hotel! What a disappointment again! Our room was ok for the price but the hotel itself was so bad, bad service, bad breakfast, parties in the lobby, parties in front of our door, the whole collection of aircons outside our window, all in all a nightmare! We are so used to hostels that we weren't even thinking about the fact that hotels lack the chance for cooking, so even if the room itself is cheap, we had to eat out every day. Lucky for us, Mendoza is full of very good restaurants with inventive menus and good wine and the prices weren't too bad either.

Mendoza view from the Cerro de la Gloria, Park

 

Because we came so far south, the weather was a bit too cold for wine tours on a bike. And all the wineyards are actually not in Mendoza but in places around it. After 3hrs of looking for a bus ticket, which can only be purchased in kiosks, which were closed due to public holiday, we gave our plan up to visit Bodegas. We had been reading about a place called Cafayate, which is another wine center of Argentina. Cafayate has some amazing nature around it and the town itself has only a population of 12,000. It is also far north towards Salta, so instead of staying in Mendoza any longer, we decided to take a bus to Cafayate.