A planned two day visit to Tupungato, Argentina turned into a weeklong stay. One of my friends from my days working in Glacier National Park has some extended family that left the US to move to Argentina. They settled in a town about an hour away from Mendoza, Argentina in the heart of wine country. The Smiths were nice enough to invite me into their home and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with them.
They have a very nice home situated a little outside of town with amazing views of 20,000 foot tall (plus) mountains all across the western horizon. Their neighbors are all wineries, all of which are very beautiful (there is something about rows and rows of grape vines beneath the majestic Andes mountains that I can´t quite express with words). I was there just a couple weeks before grape harvest was to begin so the vines all had large bunches of grapes on them, something I had never seen before.
Anyways, I did surprisingly little in my week in Tupungato. I went hiking twice in the Andes. The first time we were just exploring, following a dirt road that went up into the mountains. We followed it until reaching a small Argentine border post (located about 60 km from the Chilean border). At that point we started to head back down towards Tupungato but decided to follow a trail that we had found earlier that looked as if it would lead to a waterfall we could see in the distance. We started walking until we came to a part where the trial basically disappeared. To the left was a stream and to the right was a very steep and rocky slope. We opted for the steep slope (and the next day would find out we should have gone to the left along the creek) but shortly turned back due to lack of proper footwear (wearing sandals). The next day, we returned determined to get to the waterfall, however when we arrived decided that we knew a shortcut. Bad mistake as this left us climbing along a ridge with a very steep dropoff on one side. Luckily we all made it down to the original trail and eventually made it to the beautiful waterfall. Fun day.
Another afternoon I skipped my daily siesta to visit one of the local wineries, Andeluna Cellars. A very beautiful winery looking out towards the Andes mountains and very good wine. Unfortunately an arrogant American wine maker from Napa who was also on the tour slightly detracted from my experience, however we were able to deal with it and enjoyed sampling the various wines and learning about the wine making process. On the other side of the equation, our tour guide was friends with the family I was staying with and gave us some special attention once the other Americans had left and in the end made the tour very enjoyable.
Unfortunately, my week long stay had to end as I needed to continue my travel south. I really miss Tupungato, it is a great town with great people and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Hopefully I´ll be able to stop there again on my way to Buenos Aires a little later in my trip.
And to the Smith family (or Los Esmits as they are called in Tupungato), thank you very much for everything, I really appreciated the lodging, the amazing meals and the wine.
Me with Patrick and Patricia (two of the four members of my host family in Tupungato) at Andeluna.
Cerro Castillo in Chile.
Parque Nacional Lanín near San Martin de los Andes, Argentina.
