Our ski trip to Las Leñas

For our last adventure in Argentina, we traveled west to ski at Las Leñas. In the Andes, across from Portillo in Chile, it's supposed to be the best ski resort in Argentina.

The resort offers only extremely expensive lodging, so we stayed in Malargue, about an hour's drive from the mountain. To get there, we took a 16-hour overnight sleeper bus from Buenos Aires to San Rafael (like the one we took to Mendoza in May, and a fraction of the cost of flying), and a second bus to Malargue. The buses were stopped several times by the police: at 1a.m. we had to disembark in the middle of nowhere and run all our luggage through a mobile X-Ray machine. We had learned the lesson from the Mendoza buses and opted to skip their awful food, bringing our own instead. Entertainment on the buses consisted of bad movies dubbed in Spanish, played on screens and over the loudspeakers; we brought Steph's laptop and (trying to block out the loudspeakers) passed the waking time by watching Deadwood, reading Kindle books, and listening to podcasts.

When we looked for lodging, we found only two locations in Malargue with an online presence. One was an apartment-style place that didn't answer its phone and replied to every email with a 10-page form letter. (Once in Malargue we realized it was also very far out of the town, not feasible to stay at without a car.) The other place, which we chose instead, was the Microtel, part of a big chain that seemed to be a better option. Interestingly, there were a dozen or more other motels in town, but none exist online: I guess some people still use brick-and-mortar travel agencies to vacation.

We arrived in Malargue mid-afternoon on Saturday, and everything was closed for siesta, even the supermarket. So we ate ice cream for lunch. We rented ski equipment, then ate dinner at the hotel's restaurant, which had a very creative menu but only mediocre food.

Sunday morning, we took a shuttle van to the mountain. The weather was sunny and not too cold, but the mountain and resort themselves, from the beginning, were disappointing. First, it wasn't nearly as big or as unique as I imagined the Andes would be. (The pretty pictures are of the mountains around the slopes, not where you actually ski, and putting aside that the base elevation is extremely high, the mountains aren't that high even by New England standards.) There was no lodge, only cafes and private clubs, so we had to put on our gear outside. No free coin-operated lockers either, only expensive ones. There wasn't much snow.

(Read more here on why we think Las Leñas is overrated.)

Despite all that, skiing the first day was very nice. Steph's an advanced skier, and it didn't take long to learn that rental skies have no edges, so she skied more conservatively after wiping out on a turn. I'm an intermediate skier, used to turning more by skidding than by edging, so I worked on my technique. In the afternoon we took the Marte, a steep lift up to the mountain's highest point (with the mountain's only advanced trails) and did a few runs on that. There were dangerous beginners everywhere, all decked out in fancy gear but not knowing what they were doing, making a lot of the runs very dangerous. There were as many snowboarders as skiers, and they especially hard to predict, making very wide and erratic zigzags. One guy crashed into Steph coming off a slope onto a lift line. The lifts were all very slow, but at least the lines were short.

An hour back to Malargue, then dinner at a restaurant called Bodegón de Maria, with very good homemade ravioli, and early sleep.

Aside: Argentine food is way too heavy on ham and cheese. At the mountain cafes, pretty much every sandwich was some variation of ham and cheese. At the restaurant, even the lasagna had ham and cheese. I realized on this trip that as much I like Buenos Aires' best restaurants, I really won't miss Argentine cuisine.

Up the Marte

Monday was cloudy and cold. The slow ascent up the Marte was too cold and windy to be worth the runs. We had brought our own lunch, but without a lodge, we had to eat outside on a bench. Afterwards we were freezing so we went inside the cafe for a hot chocolate. As we sat there, Steph realized she had left her helmet, filled with a bunch of gear, on the bench. We went outside and it was gone. Someone had stolen her helmet, goggles, gloves, and balaclava! We kept trying the lost & found, and looking for skiers wearing her helmet, but it was gone.

We managed to reshuffle our gear and keep skiing. But by this point we were both feeling sick: Steph had been fighting a cold for a week, I had managed to hold it off but my immune system gave in. The slopes by this point were all ice. We went in early, and killed time before the shuttle with another overpriced hot chocolate. Back in town, we had the buffet dinner at the hotel, which was worse than the on-menu items, and were glad the day was over.

Tuesday was our last skiing day. With our spares, we substituted most of Steph's stolen gear enough to ski, but she still didn't have goggles, and we traded off my mittens to go over our liner gloves. The sky was gray and the trails were still frozen. To avoid the boring and cold chair lifts, we did runs off the faster pulley lifts. We braved the Marte and it wasn't so bad. Halfway down one run, we went in for a hot chocolate, and it started to snow. Pretty soon it was nearly a blizzard, with snow falling sideways. But finally the trails had powder again! So we did the Marte a few more times, not able to see the ground (especially Steph with only glasses), navigating by the trail markers. (That we could do this is a testament to the mountain's lack of expert trails.) Despite the weather, we managed to get in a bunch of good runs by the end of the day.

On the shuttle back, a bunch of Argentines who had never seen snow before were enthralled. One woman took dozens of photos out the van's front windshield of nothing but snow and slush on the road. The driver and passengers offered us maté (in which everyone traditionally shares the same straw), we declined so as not to share our germs and they probably thought we were snobby foreigners. I was feeling really sick by this point and took a long nap when we returned. We had dinner again at Bodegón but it wasn't as good as the previous time. We went to sleep early, woke up late on Wednesday, and it was a beautiful sunny day. No doubt the mountain was now covered in fresh powder, but we got on a 16-hour bus instead, back to Buenos Aires.

- Ben

Las Leñas: an overrated ski resort

Note to friends/family: If you want to read about our trip specifically, skip to the next post. 

We knew since we arrived in Argentina that we didn't want to leave without skiing the Andes. When we started researching for our trip, we were seduced by the descriptions of Las Leñas with its light fluffy powder and rugged terrain. Skiworld calls it "the South American resort to visit."

I didn't find Las Leñas to be a world-class ski resort, but instead an overpriced and overrated mountain, with horribly slow lifts, not enough trails, and little challenging terrain unless you go off-piste. With a few exceptions that I'll get into below, I would encourage travelers looking for a South American ski vacation to go elsewhere.

My complaints break down into two main categories: the quality of the skiing and the quality of the services.

Skiing: A beginner-intermediate mountain

Here's a trail map to make it easier to follow my description of the available skiing. (Click to see a larger version.)

The mountain is divided into two main areas, which I'll refer to as the "base" and the "Marte trails" (accessible via the Marte lift, in the upper left quadrant of the map).

Most skiers stay on the trails in the base area, which is served by several chair lifts and several pulley lifts. At first glance, the base area seems to offer a number of trails for skiers of all levels. There are the green trails for beginners, some blues, and even a fair number of "reds", equivalent to single black diamonds in the U.S. The problem is this: the greens are entirely flat, meant only for those just learning to ski; the blues aren't real runs for the most part, simply connecting trails between different parts of the mountain; the reds don't even offer much in the way of difficulty and are overcrowded because of the lack of other trails. The vertical in this part of the mountain is only about 300 meters, the runs are short, and the chair lifts very long. The single-person pulley lifts are actually the fastest lifts on the whole mountain. When we were there, the general skill level of most of the skiers/boarders wasn't that good, meaning this area was crowded, boring, and quickly got skied off.

The only on-piste trails worth skiing in my mind were those off the Marte (I'm an expert skier, but not one with much off-piste or powder experience, having grown up skiing in New England). The Marte lift is seriously steep, traversing several crevasses, and you ski down the backside of the mountain, rather than under the lift, making the runs much longer and more worthwhile. When the sun is out and the snow is good, the Marte runs are thoroughly enjoyable (though again, not overly challenging — Ben is an intermediate skier and could handle them easily). But there are still several problems. First, there are only a few trails off the Marte, not enough to keep you busy for a whole week, or even several days. Second, getting to the top of the mountain involves taking three lifts (Venus, Neptune, and the Marte), which takes up 40 minutes total. That's a long time sitting on very slow lifts, especially when it's cold. Finally, the sun doesn't reach that area of the mountain until the afternoon. When we were there, the snow was too hard and icy in the morning until the sun hit it, essentially negating the value of this part of the mountain for the first half of the day.

Caveat: The mountain was seriously lacking snow while we were there, meaning no one was skiing off-piste. If you are a good enough skier to go off-piste and there's plenty of snow, then many of my complaints won't apply. But the vast majority of the skiers/boarders there last week weren't good enough to venture off the marked trails, and so the availability of off-piste skiing wouldn't significantly change the experience.

Services: Unwelcoming to day-trippers

My complaint here basically boils down to this: there is no lodge or other corresponding services for day-trippers.

Las Leñas largely caters to guests who stay on the mountain, usually via their "skiweek" packages, which start at US$2200 per person for the week (that doesn't include lunch, lessons, rental equipment, or transport to the mountain). This was outrageously expensive for us, so we chose to stay in Malargüe, about an hour away. There were hundreds of other day-trippers like us, arriving via bus or car, and skiing at a cost of US$75 for a single-day lift ticket.

But despite the fact that Las Leñas welcomes these day-trippers and takes their money, it provides none of the basic services offered by every other ski resort I've ever visited. When we arrived the first morning, we kept asking, "Where is the lodge?". Except we didn't know how to say this in Spanish so we tried to explain what we were looking for: "A place to sit down without having to buy food, take on and off your gear, use the bathroom, and store your belongings." Instead, we were directed to outside bathrooms, a restaurant, and a locker-room that charged US$15 per day, and was the only available place to store your belongings (bringing the total cost of a one-day lift ticket to US$90). Las Leñas has no base area for its day-trippers — it provides them with no comfortable space to put on their gear and no place to sit down for a break without paying for food. It is, overall, inhospitable and unwelcoming to those who don't have on-mountain accommodation.

Again, if you are staying on the mountain, this complaint won't apply (except beware, the restaurants are expensive and the food is terrible). And if Las Leñas wanted to limit its guests to those staying on the mountain, it would be well within its rights to do so (which in turn might reduce the crowding on the mountain). But it doesn't do this. It encourages day-trippers and takes their money, giving them little in return.

I skied at Portillo six years back and came away loving skiing in the Andes. The snow was fantastic, the trails were steep, the services were luxurious. I could only hope for the same experience at Las Leñas and came away severely disappointed. Setting aside the off-piste options, it is at best a beginner-intermediate mountain desperately in need of infrastructure improvements. I would never return, and would encourage others to consider whether Las Leñas really deserves its reputation.

- Steph

One more stop: Skiing at Las Leñas

We only have two and a half weeks left in Argentina, but before we go, we have one last adventure in store — a ski trip to the Andes. We talked about going when we first arrived last September, but the mountains are deceptively far away. When winter came around again, we decided we couldn't miss the chance.

We're skiing at Las Leñas, one of the biggest resorts located 2,240 meters up in the mountains. We're staying 70 kilometers away in the town of Malargue because on-mountain lodging is outrageously expensive. We'll have a bit of a commute each day, but our accommodations look nice. The biggest downside is the 16-hour bus ride each way ...

Photos by vitch via flickr

- Steph

Mendoza: other than wine...

The highlight of our recent trip to Mendoza was definitely the wine tour, but we did other stuff there, too.

First we had to get there. Flights were very expensive, so we took a (slightly less expensive) bus. The bus is 14 hours each way, and comes in three classes. The most expensive class includes a curtain around each fully-reclining seat. The cheapest class is an ordinary tour bus. We took the overnight cama ejecutivo class in the middle. The seats came with pillows and blankets and went down enough to sleep, there was some (barely edible) food served, a movie, and wine. We didn't sleep as well as in a bed, but well enough to function upon arrival.

Mendoza is both a province (with all the vineyards, among other sites) and a city (the provincial capital). We stayed at a hostel in the city, with a private room but shared bathrooms. We arrived on Thursday morning and ate some brunch until our room was ready to check in. Then we walked to the center of town in search of an activity. Companies were offering wine tours, parasailing, skydiving, horseback riding, rafting; we decided to go rafting.

We reserved a spot on the afternoon group. A few hours and an 80-minute bus ride later, we were at a roadside kiosk. The rafting company's van picked us up there and drove us with a bunch of other people to their lodge. We got geared up - neoprene wet suit and booties, rain jacket, life jacket, helmet - and got on another van, also towing two rafts, to drive to the river.

Our raft had five people: the two of us, an Australian couple, and the raft guide. We basically just followed orders: "Forward!" "Backward!" "Stop!" Everyone paddled in unison and he steered. The water was mostly calm, so he pulled some silly stunts, getting the raft flooded, getting stuck on rocks. At one point we were stuck on a big rock, we tipped hard to the left, and the Australian guy fell out of the raft into the cold water. (Before we went rafting, I had to reassure Steph that it wasn't really going to be that rough, so I was very glad Steph, who was on the same side, didn't fall in, too.) Overall I thought it was pretty silly: I'd much rather steer my own boat, and get wet when it's actually rough, and avoid the big rocks that there's no reason to get stuck on. The Aussies seemed to be having a good time, at least. (We had to leave our cameras at the gear house, and they wanted to charge us 70 pesos for the photos their guy took, so we don't have any action shots.)

For dinner Thursday night, we went to a really good restaurant called Florentina. The menu was very creative, we were very hungry, and we weren't yet hung over from the wine-tour-to-be, so we enjoyed a good Torrontes (a white grape unique to Argentina).

Friday was the wine tour. 19 wines, almost a full glass of each. It took us a day and a half to get over the hangover, and I still need a few more days before I can drink another Malbec.

On Saturday, we took a city bus to the neighboring town of Maipu and rented bicycles. Maipu is home to a number of vineyards, including the huge Trapiche and a bunch of independent producers. We were still too wined-out from the previous day, so we mostly skipped the vineyards. A wine museum was filled with old wine-making instruments. A small chocolate and liquor maker had a good sampler platter, but was too expensive to buy more, and probably small because they weren't good enough to be bigger. The bike rental shop recommended the town "Beer Garden" for lunch, but it wasn't easy to find: one sign pointed in the wrong direction, another incorrectly said that we had reached the beer garden, when it was actually half a kilometer away. The town has a petty crime problem - we overheard one group of tourists reporting an attempted bag-snatching to a cop - and another cop stopped us from getting too lost finding the Beer Garden, probably thinking everyone was better off if the cycling tourists stuck to the main roads.

We finally found the Beer Garden, and their "artesanal" pizza and beer demonstrated the generally-true principle that "artesanal" means "not good enough to sell in bulk."

We went to one last vineyard before returning the bikes, and enjoyed (as much as we could given the overdose) another glass of small-batch Malbec. The lady working at the visitors' cabin was a teacher, and had a small laptop that the government issued to every student and teacher in the country. She was telling us how she liked learning new things about wine from the internet, especially YouTube. I had heard about the laptop-giveaway program before, and find it very impressive, so I need to read more about that and write about it later.

On Sunday morning, we rented a motorcycle from Mendoza Moto Adventura, a 250cc Honda Tornado dirt bike. It was a cold morning, with the sun not yet warming us up. The road out of the city was closed, so we improvised a detour. We got to a dirt path at one point, but seemed to be going in the right direction toward the road. Steph thought we should follow other cars but I thought, it's a dirt bike, we don't need to follow the cars... until we got to within a few meters of the road, with a big metal median blocking us. A bunch of bicyclists were lifting their bikes over the median mockingly.

Finally back on the road, we rode west toward the Andes mountains, through Potrerillos to Vallecito.  Past Potrerillos, the road was an unpaved switchback trail up a mountain. We bumped along around the tight curves for several kilometers. It wasn't clear where or how far the road went - were we supposed to keep going, or just go as long as we wanted and turn around? - so when we hit our halfway point (with a bus to catch in the evening), we just turned around. We had lunch at a wonderful ski lodge-style restaurant called La Charamusca (translates to The Ugly Hag), with empanadas, chicken stew, and hot chocolate.

A few hours later, we got back on another bus for another long, overnight bus ride back home.

- Ben

Mendoza: The most wonderful wine tour

The highlight of our trip to Mendoza was a full-day wine tour of the Luján de Cuyo region. We visited four wineries and tasted 19 (!) different wines. We also learned a lot about wine along the way.

ALTA VISTA

The first stop on our trip was the Alta Vista winery, owned by the French d'Aulan family and the biggest of the wineries we visited. It was founded in the late 1800s by a Spanish family and bought by the d'Aulans in 1997.

The winery processes grapes from three different vineyards across the country: one on the main estate, one in the higher-altitude Uco Valley about 75 kilometers south, and one up north in Cafayate, known for the uniquely Argentine Torrontes grape. Wines from the Luján de Cuyo region tend to be aromatic and fruity, whereas those from Uco Valley have a more mineral and earthy flavor.

Two fun facts we learned from our tour guide:

1. In Argentina it's actually illegal to add sugar during the wine-making process. Because the climate in Mendoza is so dry, the grapes naturally have a high sugar content, which leads to a higher alcohol content (usually between 13 and 14.5 percent).

2. Decades ago, the average Argentine drank about 140 bottles of wine per year, and that number is calculated by including all the babies and children in the population. Basically, one hundred years ago, Argentines drank a lot. And to keep up with all the demand, wineries focused on quantity over quality.


Now on to the wine tasting:

Torrontes Premium: The grapes for this wine are grown at 1700 meters at the vineyard in Cafayate. They are harvested at three different times and then blended together. The wine smells sweet, with notes of pear and peach, but is dry in the mouth. For that reason, the winery refers to it as a "mentirosa," or liar. It's good paired with spicy foods.

Bonarda Premium: The Bonarda grape is most commonly seen in blends, but in this case it's used as a varietal. Half of the grapes are aged in concrete tanks and half in oak barrels. It's light to the taste and pairs well with pasta and other Italian foods.

Malbec Single Vineyard 2007: Alta Vista has three levels of wine: Premium, the lowest level; Single Vineyard, the next level up; and Alto, the top of the line. This Malbec is produced in small quantities and isn't exported. The grapes are grown at the Temis Vineyard in Uco Valley and spend 1.5 years in oak barrels before being bottled. The wine's aging potential is 13 years. Our guide, who is a professionally-trained sommelier, said he thought it's one of the best-value wines on the market.

Alto 2007: The top of the line, this wine is 70 percent Malbec and 30 percent Cabernet Sauvignon. The grapes ferment for 40 days, then spend 1.5 years in oak and then 1.5 years in the bottle, where they need to be turned evenly everyday. The aging potential is 15-20 years and the wine retails for about 550 pesos ($125).

Temporal: An extra brut sparking wine that is 95 percent Pinot Noir and 5 percent Chardonnay. The wine spends only a couple of hours in contact with the grape skins, just enough to give it a pinkish coloring.

PULENTA ESTATE

Bodega Pulenta Estate was founded in 2002, by the sons of Antonio Pulenta, who for decades owned Bodegas Trapiche, the country's largest wine producer. Pulenta Estate has a much more modern feel than Alta Vista and a smaller level of production. Its main export markets are the US, UK and Brazil.

Both Alta Vista and Pulenta Estate ferment their wine in thick concrete tanks, which help keep the temperature constant. After fermentation, the wines are moved by gravity to oak barrels (the more expensive wines at least, the less expensive ones are often unoaked). Most of the oak barrels are French-made, and a small percentage are American. American oak has larger pores than French oak, which tends to lead to more intense flavors.

The wine tastings:

La Flor Sauvignon Blanc 2011: This is their bottom-level wine. It has a strong citrus flavor, and like the Torrontes at Alta Vista, its grapes are picked at three different points during the harvest season to obtain a balance between citrusy flavors and acidity.

Pulenta Estate Merlot 2007: This acidic wine is good with food, and particularly with creamy cheeses, like blue cheese. Pulenta Estate is their second-tier wine, above La Flor and below Gran Pulenta. It spends 12 months in second-use French oak barrels. The vineyards import the barrels from France for about 1500 euros apiece. The top-quality wines are placed in the new barrels, which can be reused in future years, usually for progressively lower quality wines. After the fourth use, the vineyards resell the barrels in their gift shops for about 150 pesos ($35). Ben wanted to bring one home, but at about 75 kilos, it would probably exceed the airline weight limits.

Pulenta Estate Malbec-Cabernet 2009: The Malbec-Cabernet is a common blend to find in Buenos Aires. The Malbec, which makes up 60 percent, is sweet while the Cabernet is spicy, giving it a nice balance and making it a good wine to pair with traditional Argentine foods.

Gran Pulenta Cabernet Franc: This is easily the most unusual wine we tasted on our trip. If you can find it in the U.S., it might be worth buying just for the experience of smelling and tasting it, because the main aroma is ... green bell peppers. Cabernet Franc is common in blends, but isn't usually used as a single varietal. It requires a lot of monitoring during the growing process and spends a long time in oak to soften the flavors.

BODEGA CAELUM

The family-run Bodega Caelum was the newest winery we visited, with its first harvest completed in 2009. The family had previously used the land to grow pistachios and grapes, which it then sold to other wineries. In 2009, they decided to get involved in the wine-making part of the process. It's still a very small winery that's just starting to sell in Buenos Aires.

Caelum Rosado: A wine that's meant for easy drinking, it's a 50-50 blend of Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon. The juice spends only three hours in contact with the grape skins to give it a little bit of color. Good as an appetizer.

Caelum Chardonnay: This is an unoaked Chardonnay, which takes only six months to reach the bottling phase. The wine spends no time at all in oak, which gives it a more fruity flavor of banana, pear and citrus.

Caelum Reserva Cabernet 2009: This wine is from their first vintage. It ferments for 30 days, is decanted in stainless steel tanks (unlike the first two vineyards, Caelum uses only stainless steel, not cement) and spends 15 months in oak barrels. It has an intense, purplish color and firm tannins. Tannins are a chemical compound found in grape skins and seeds. The chemical makeup of the tannins changes during the wine-making process and the tannins contribute to the astringency and bitterness of red wines. The idea is that as a wine ages, the tannins mellow.

Caelum Dolce: Our favorite wine of the trip, and the only one we bought. It's a dessert Malbec and unlike any other wine I've ever had. It uses good quality acidic grapes, which are harvested and then left to dry for 25-30 days, before aging in oak barrels for 10 months. This dehydration process increases the sugar content and means that it take a lot more grapes to make even a small bottle of this sweet wine, as compared to a traditional dry wine. We can't wait to drink our bottle, but first we have to find a dessert that is worthy of going along with it.

RUCA MALEN

Our final stop, whose name means "House of the Young Lady," in the indigenous Mapuche language. We didn't learn much about the winemaking process at Ruca Malen, instead we enjoyed a five-course gourmet meal with wine pairings as we looked out over the vineyards.

Yauquén Chardonnary 2010: An intense, unoaked Chardonnay. Paired with quinoa, white beans and green apple salad.

Yauquén Malbec-Cabernet Sauvignon 2011: A 50-50 blend where the two varieties are elaborated separately. Thirty percent of the wines are aged in oak barrels for six months, then everything is blended together. A fresh, fruity wine with high acidity that's good for cleaning the palate. Paired with leek, onion and bacon soup.

Ruca Malen Cabernet Sauvignon 2008: Aged 12 months in oak barrels — 80 percent French and 20 percent American. This is an intense and juicy wine with sweet and elegant tannins. Paired with iron-burned tomato and goat cheese on a pumpkin terrine.

Ruca Malen Reserva de Bodega 2009: 40 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 28 percent Syrah, 22 percent Malbec and 10 percent Petit Verdot. The four wines are elaborated separately and aged 14 months in oak barrels. Then all the separate wines are tasted, combined into the final blend, bottled, and aged in the bottle for another year. Paired with a grilled beef tenderloin medallion with Malbec pomace butter.

Kinién Malbec 2008: Their best Malbec, aged 18 months in new oak barrels and then aged at least another 18 months in the bottle. Also paired with the beef tenderloin.

We had a fantastic day and can't say enough good things about the tour, which was run by Ampora Wine Tours. We signed up for the group tour, but got lucky and it was just the two of us, our guide and a driver. Our guide was a trained sommelier who spoke perfect English and we enjoyed private tours and tastings at each of the wineries. It's pricey, but well worth it, and a million times better than the self-guided tour we did the next day in Maipu. If you are ever in Mendoza, take their tour. You won't regret it (we owe our friends Sean and Katie a big thanks for recommending Ampora to us).

- Steph

Wine tour in Mendoza

Read a full account of our Mendoza wine tour here.

We just got back from a fantastic wine tour in the Lujan de Cuyo region of Mendoza. Ben estimates he drank 16 glasses of wine. We saw four different wineries and tasted about 18 wines (more notes about those once we get home). We bought a delicious sweet red that was unlike any wine we've had and enjoyed a very creative 5-course meal at the end overlooking the vineyards. Pretty awesome.

Tomorrow we bike to some more wineries, then we motorcycle up to the mountains on Sunday, then it's a 14-hour bus ride back to Buenos Aires.