Magnificent Mendoza has 48,000 trees lining its streets, an oasis of green at the foot of the Andes. The region is responsible for 85% of Argentina’s wine production, and we’re determined to experience as much of it as we can.

Magnificent Mendoza

Mendoza is probably the place in Argentina most familiar to us, and even then we only really know it as the home of Malbec wines. There’s so much to learn and get to know in this huge country, We’re starting with a week in the ‘Garden City’ of Mendoza with our friends Jas and Chantal.

 Modern Mendoza was born in 1861, when an earthquake flattened the town, killed half of the 10,000 residents and left piles of rubble where the buildings used to be. Rather than trying to deal with the piles of rubble, they simply moved the centre of town over to the west a little and started rebuilding. Recognizing this probably wouldn’t be the last earthquake, city planners made two key decisions which shaped the.. er… shape of the town.

First, they made the streets and avenues super wide, so that future rubble piles wouldn’t block the roads. And secondly, they created big ‘evacuation points’ large enough to house all of its citizens. Today these are the beautiful plazas and parks that are scattered through the city. And they used the canal irrigation system developed by the indigenous people to divert the mountain water and started planting street trees – a lot of trees. At last count (yep, they counted them in 2011), there are more than 48,000 trees lining every avenida, calle, and carrera. Hence Mendoza’s moniker of the ‘Ciudad Jardin’, or Garden City. Everywhere you look there are trees, which becomes important when the temperature is in the high 30’s. La sombra (shade) becomes something you actively seek out. (‘Sombra’ is another one of our favourite Spanish words. A sombrero, as everyone knows, is the hat that Speedy Gonzales wears, which provides him lots of sombra (shade)).

Where every street is a tree-lined street.

So many parks, so many fountains!

Embrace the Sloth: Long Lunches and Lazy Planning

Travelling with Jas and Chantal, we’re reminded how different a 2-week vacation is from a 6-month break. With six months up our sleeve, we’re happy to do ‘nothing’ for a day or two – recharge our batteries, plan our next leg, get caught up on our blog. But when you only have two weeks away, naturally you want to fit in as much as you can. Add in Jas’ propensity to fit 5 activities in where a normal person would do 2 or 3, and you have the makings of a hectic schedule and/or heart attack. So early on, we collectively decided on a travel philosophy for our time together, which we christened ‘Embrace The Sloth™’. Quality over quantity. Do one thing really well rather than four things half-heartedly. For example, that one thing might be ‘go to lunch’. That’s your day… Get up, have breakfast, go to lunch. Drink wine. Darkness falls. Come home. Embrace the sloth.

One advantage of this philosophy is that it’s very much in line with the culture of Mendoza, and Latin America in general. Life here is allowed to move at a more leisurely pace, and to fight against it is an uphill and often futile battle. Wine tasting is a great example. Where in previous wine regions we would be tempted to visit three or four (or more) wineries in a day, here the norm is one… Maybe two. But what a visit it will be!

In an effort to slow down our metabolisms to successfully Embrace the Sloth, we made our way out to Maipu for lunch at the Bodega Lopez, where we experienced our first Argentinian Steak. A Fred Flintstone-sized slab of beef, with a beautiful bottle (or three) of Mendozian wine does wonders to slow things down.

Not an optical illusion 

Continuing with the Sloth Embracing, the next day we rented bikes and rode around Lujan de Cuyo, a wine region to the south of Mendoza city. The first winery we went to, Viamonte, was a small winery set in an enchanting garden with sweeping views of the vineyards with the mountains in the distance and an equally charming sommelier leading us through their range of wines. A true Sloth would have stayed here for the afternoon, wandering across the grass to their restaurant. Alas, we had already made reservations at Bodega La Garde, which has an award-winning restaurant that we couldn’t pass up (although we were Ridiculously Late for our reservation). A somewhat hectic ride over to the restaurant was followed by a slow, phenomenal lunch under the trees in the terrace.

Lunch at La Bodega Garde

We rounded out the afternoon with a visit to the A La Antigua chocolate shop, where the hostess met us an the door and quickly bustled around to set everything out to taste, which included not only not only chocolate to taste but a dozen different types of jams and spreads, and another dozen liqueurs including an ill-advised Absinthe.

We needed these like we needed a hole in the head

Like a Mirage in the Desert

Those of you who read our Spain blog know that we became a little bit obsessed with the Spanish obsession with Vermut (vermouth). So when we saw that the closest bar to our Airbnb was call La Central Vermuteria, well, you can rest assured that we took a break from the wines now and then to indulge in a vermut or quattro.

Four vermuts, por favor!

Err… make that five?

There’s also a healthy(?) craft beer scene happening here (possibly like everywhere else), taking advantage of that clean clear Andes water. A beer truck appeared as like a mirage in the desert, after we had schlepped way too far on our way back from a short stroll up the Cerro de la Gloria hill in Parque San Martin. (Note to alternate-reality self: Take the Hop On-Hop Off bus to get to and from the hill next time. No Uber will pick you up because the trip’s too short). Parque San Martin is a huge urban park, even larger than we realised as we walked the length of it in the full summer heat. After 30 minutes or so, the dusty hill and roadway gave way to a more traditional grassy and tree lined European-style park, and being Sunday many families were there relaxing on the lawns under the trees. As with many parks in Mendoza there’s also a large fountain, and as luck would have it a food truck selling delicious crepes, another selling the Argentinian chocolate treat alfajores and yet another with that mirage of craft beer.

On the top of the Cerro de la Gloria is the large monument to the Army of the Andes, commemorating the army, including many civilians, who crossed the Andes near here in 1817 and liberated Chile from the Spanish

If you’re starting to think that all we did in Mendoza was drink wine, beer, or vermouth,… you wouldn’t be far off. But we did a fair amount of walking around soaking in the parks and atmosphere as well. There’s a new fountain/sculpture based on Dante’s Inferno that was a sight to behold, as well as a fountain/lightshow at one of the parks one evening. Plenty of street performers as well.

We also took a day trip to hike up to the base camp of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in South America. It was a great day and deserves a blog post all of its own. (Your wish has been granted… blog post on its way)

And then of course there was cards at home to end things off most nights, giving us a second chance to try some of the great wines we’d bought during the day. (Funnily enough, no pictures of us in our PJ’s looking shattered each evening…)

Ciao Ciao Jas and Chantal, Hola Uco Valley

And so after a whirlwind 10 days of Embracing the Sloth with Jas and Chantal, we dropped them at the airport for their next stop of Buenos Aires, and we carried on south to the Uco Valley for a few days of (still more) wine tasting.

In a Nutshell: Changing Money and The Blue Dollar Rate 

Argentina has been in a state of inflation for many years now, and lately it’s grown to hyper-inflation, with a rate of 100% against the US dollar last year. We won’t go into the reasons that led to the country’s situation here, but the impact is being felt by ordinary Argentinians on a daily basis and tragically there are no easy answers. With the government’s refusal (thus far) to print higher denomination bank notes, changing even a modest amount of money to local currency makes you feel like you’re in a gangster movie. Which leads us to how to change money.

The Three Exchange Rates in Argentina

Here in Argentina, there are (at least) three different exchange rates.

There is the official government rate, which is the rate you get if you take money out of an ATM. At the time of us writing this blog post, that rate was 185 pesos per USD (and that rate will be out of date by the time we publish this post).

Then there is the ‘Tourist Rate’, which is about 50% better than the official rate. AS of late 2022, you get this rate by using your credit card at ‘most’ places. (But not if you use Apple Pay, weirdly – that will get you the official rate). This is a relatively new development. https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/tourists-argentina-set-benefit-exchange-rate-92681297

At the time of writing, the tourist rate was 270 pesos per USD.

Finally, there is the Blue Dollar rate. This is the not-officially-acknowledged rate that you can get by walking down just about any big street in a major city and listening for someone muttering ‘Cambio’ or ‘Change’. The Blue Dollar is sort of a don’t ask-don’t tell situation where the government doesn’t condone the practice, but doesn’t do anything to stop it either. The blue dollar rate is typically a little less than double the official exchange rate, depending on how well you bargain and if you’re using crisp new 100 USD bills (ideal) vs torn old 20 USD bills (worse).

There are multiple sites online that list the blue dollar rate, like this one https://bluedollar.net/. So if you’re not sure you’re getting a square deal, you just pull up the site and show it to them.

The first night we arrived in Mendoza, the rate was 350 pesos per USD. (Five days later, it was 370…)

Once you identify your money changer – in reality they’ll pretty much find you – you agree on the rate and the amount of USD you want to change. You’ll then retreat to their ‘office’ – say, the back of a convenience store, for example, where you’ll find a money counting machine and (if you’re really lucky) a guy wearing one of those green visors. Everything’s very friendly, routine and straightforward. If you’re nervous about dealing with an unknown person on the street, an easy way to find a cambio guy is to ask your Airbnb host. It seems that literally everyone knows someone who’s a cambio guy here.

The money changing is the easy part. It’s the money stashing that’s harder. Changing $400 USD nets you 140,000 pesos. The largest bill here is the 1,000 peso note, meaning you have to somehow stuff 140 bills into your pockets and stagger home.

Note that the only way you can get the blue rate is if you carry USD in to Argentina with you. If you use a bank machine to get money out, you will get the tourist rate (at best) or the official rate (at worst, plus whatever fees you have to pay).

What If I Don’t Have USD With Me?

If you don’t have USD on hand and/or need to get more money from home, you have two main options: use an ATM, or use Western Union.

We haven’t had any luck with ATMs here in Argentina. Very few of them seem to recognize, let alone accept, our bank cards or even our credit cards. So we haven’t been able to get any money out of them.

The best option that we’ve found is to use Western Union. You can either download the app or just go to the WU website for your home country. So if you’re Canadian, go to the Canadian Western Union site. Create a login, and then go through the process of sending money to ‘yourself’.

• Choose the amount in your local currency you want to send
• Choose the receiving country (Argentina)
• Put in the details of the person you are sending to (first, middle and last name, passport number). 

You will receive a code that you provide to the person who you’re sending the money to. If that’s you, well… job done! You can then go to any Western Union office in Argentina, give them that code and show them your ID, and (provided they have money that day…) they’ll give you the cash. 

The rate you get is the tourist rate, and there are no other fees. 

Just be aware that although there are lots and lots of WU outlets around, it’s not unusual for them to run out of money! So we’d suggest not trying to send a huge amount to yourself at one time, choose the largest WU in town, and get there first thing in the morning. 

In Summary

Practically speaking, carrying more than 30,000 pesos around on a daily basis is unwieldy, to say the least. Which means you’re constantly having to reload your wallet with cash from wherever you’ve stashed it, and try not to burst your wallet by overloading it with bills.

After doing the money-changing, money-stashing dance a few times, we’ve decided to rely primarily on credit cards and just take the hit on the exchange rate. We’re going to keep cash for places that don’t take card (e.g. taxis, smaller stores and restaurants, street kiosks etc). And when we need more, we’ll use Western Union to send ourselves a few hundred dollars at a time.