Welcome to Mendoza! I originally came here for one reason: to climb Aconcagua. Before arriving, I had somehow pictured Mendoza as a small mountain town sitting beneath the Andes. I couldn’t have been much more wrong.
Mendoza is a substantial city and one of Argentina’s best-known destinations in its own right. The surrounding region is famous for wine, while the nearby Andes offer skiing, hiking, mountaineering, and some of the most spectacular mountain scenery in South America.
The enormous building above was one of my first introductions to the city. Nearby I found this garden with Mendoza spelled out across the landscaping.
I visited Mendoza more than a decade ago, when I was still relatively new to photography. Unfortunately, that explains some of the awkward vertical photographs from this trip.
What surprised me most was how polished parts of the city felt. I had arrived expecting a rugged jumping-off point for the Andes and instead found theaters, upscale hotels, landscaped plazas, restaurants, and busy commercial streets.
Preparing for Aconcagua
At the time, climbing Aconcagua was going to be by far the hardest thing I had ever attempted. That made my first days in Mendoza feel a little different from a normal city visit. I knew that within days I’d be trading restaurants, showers, beds, and tree-lined streets for weeks of tents, cold, wind, and increasingly thin air.
Mendoza was also our last opportunity to stock up before heading into the mountains. It’s large enough that just about anything you might have forgotten can be found here, including plenty of outdoor and ski equipment.
Walking Around Mendoza
I’d visited Buenos Aires a few years earlier, and Mendoza gave me some of the same relaxed feeling I remembered from Argentina’s capital. People spent plenty of time outside, especially around the parks and plazas, and public affection certainly wasn’t uncommon.
This couple below was keeping things pretty tame for my camera, but spend enough time in one of Mendoza’s parks and you’ll probably find couples considerably less worried about who’s watching.
One failure of mine on this trip was not properly photographing Plaza Independencia. It’s one of the city’s main public spaces and was full of people relaxing around landscaped grounds, fountains, and monuments.
Mendoza hadn’t really been part of my travel plans beyond serving as the beginning and end of the Aconcagua expedition, so I didn’t explore it nearly as thoroughly as I would today. What I did see was enough to convince me that the city deserves a trip of its own.
And then there are the completely random photographs that survive from old trips. Here’s a nice single-family home in Mendoza…
Steak, Wine and Returning From Aconcagua
Of course, what makes Mendoza internationally famous isn’t mountaineering. It’s wine.
I have to admit that when I visited Mendoza I was still in my twenties and didn’t have nearly the appreciation for wine and fine dining that I would today. After spending about three weeks on Aconcagua, however, I suddenly had a much greater appreciation for anything that didn’t come out of a backpack.
When we returned to Mendoza after the expedition, we celebrated with dinner at a winery. It remains one of my favorite dining experiences from any trip.
The place looked almost like a castle. The restaurant was built from stone, with long candlelit tables and wine barrels stacked high around us. After weeks of living on a mountain, simply sitting inside somewhere warm with good food and wine already felt luxurious. Doing it in a place like that made the night unforgettable.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photographs of the winery. Apparently I was too busy enjoying myself. The steak above and wine below came from another restaurant in Mendoza, but they’ll have to represent the experience until I eventually make it back.
Leaving Mendoza for the Andes
Oddly enough, my days in Mendoza after Aconcagua are more memorable than the ones before it. Before the expedition, most of my attention was on the mountain and what was coming next. Afterward, Mendoza felt completely different. A normal bed, a shower, restaurants, cold drinks, and simply walking around a city suddenly felt like luxuries.
The photo above captures one of our expedition members as we were loading up to leave Mendoza for the Andes. At that point we had no idea exactly what the next few weeks were going to bring.
