Rose Garden Promenade along the edge of Lago del Parque General San Martin
Mendoza
Time spent: 28 days; 4 Oct 2026 - 1 Nov 2025
Elevation: 2,447 ft (745m)
Currency: Argentine Peso
Lodging Cost: $18.04 per night; Airbnb
Arriving in Mendoza
This was my favorite stop in Argentina, I liked it even better than Buenos Aires.
Now, I'm not saying "If you are taking a vacation to Argentina, this is a better choice than Buenos Aires". I'd probably still recommend that to a tourist, but this is such a nice relaxing town. Everywhere is shaded, it isn't bumper to bumper traffic and car horns, very walkable wide sidewalks. It is really just has the vibe I am looking for.
Oh and wine flows like a river here. The area is packed with wineries, here they are called bodegas, and Mendoza covers most of Argentina's wine needs.
Author's note: I try to list all costs on this site in both local currency and US dollars. Because Argentina has experienced hyperinflation over the last few years, these numbers may not accurately reflect current costs at the time of reading.
Sunrise as my bus was making its way into town
The drainage in the town always made me nervous.
The city was just so pleasant to walk around in. So many trees had it very well shaded.
Parks Around Mendoza
Now, I cannot say this place is the hotbed of museums and history that you saw in Buenos Aires, though there are a few good ones. But it is really the beautiful parks that set Mendoza apart from other towns I have been to.
Let us start from smallest to largest.
The first spot worth checking out is Plaza Pedro Castillo, which sits inside the Area Fundacional park circuit. It is a cute area to take a load off, but the open plaza itself isn't really the main attraction, it is what sits right next to it.
First, you have the ruins of an old Jesuit church. There are guides who can take you through, but I would not bother paying for them. Entrance to the ruins is free, and there are plenty of informational signs posted around (they are all in Spanish, but Google Translate with your phone camera is your friend).
Then, right on the square, there is a museum that covers Mendoza's history and the event that created these ruins in the first place: the 1861 earthquake. Unfortunately, that bit of info is secondhand from Google. I really wanted to check the museum out and tried twice, but their operating hours seem to be "whenever the hell we want." I showed up on two separate days during their posted open hours, only to find the doors locked.
Even if you cannot get inside the museum, the history hanging over this spot is pretty heavy. In 1861, a devastating earthquake hit Mendoza around midnight, killing roughly 10,000 people, half the town's population, while most were asleep indoors. The destruction was so completely catastrophic that city leaders basically said "fuck it, leave this rubble where it is and rebuild the town a little southwest." The city has since grown to swallow the area back up, leaving those Jesuit church ruins as the only real visible reminder of that decision.
Ruinas Jesuiticas de San Franciso
Inside the ruins they have built modern supports to keep the remaining structures intact
Some artwork with pillars and a bunch of faces on it around the museum that never let me in
Lago de Parque Central. I really just kind of walked around here on my lunch break but I wish I came out more at night. I later heard there was often events going on.
Parque Central
This one is a bit larger than Plaza Pedro Castillo. It is a great spot for exercise, they have free outdoor workout equipment in one section, and the whole perimeter is pretty much one long jogging path. If you are the type of person who only runs when being chased, that is cool too. Plenty of people are just out walking their dogs or, since this is Argentina, chilling on benches with their yerba mate.
Another really cool feature in this park is a giant sundial. It actually works, but it suffers from a minor flaw: human time. I was confused at first because the minutes looked correct, but the hour was completely off. I thought maybe Argentina used some form of Daylight Savings Time, but that's not it. The clock was off by an hour because sundials run on "solar time," where the sun is directly overhead at noon. But when an entire country, especially one as large as Argentina, wants to stay on the same timezone, clocks end up shifted away from true solar time.
I took this at 9:38 but it was still between 8 and 9
There is a fountain that looks like it is filled with red wine, which is a clever bit of marketing for the town's brand.
This is my favorite area of town. I mean, it is the city center, so it is really everyone's favorite part of town, but I just loved the grid layout and uniformity of the area.
Plaza Independencia is a massive park that takes up four full city blocks. If you hop diagonally from any one of its four corners, you hit another smaller park that takes up a single block and is exactly one-quarter the size of the main square.
Even though the layout is gorgeous, it served a very practical purpose. When the town was rebuilt, these plazas were set up so that if a major earthquake ever happened again, you were never more than a couple of blocks away from an open park. Even the thick trees lining the streets were planted intentionally to act as a shield against falling debris from surrounding buildings.
Plaza Independencia is where all of the action happens. There are four pedestrian streets that branch out from the square, blocked off to cars, and at night and on weekends, the whole park comes alive. I saw live concerts here, and I was even around for Halloween, I was pretty surprised by how many people I saw dressed up.
The four plazas around Plaza Independencia are Plaza Chile, Plaza San Martin, Plaza Espana, and Plaza Italia. Each has an artistic centerpiece representing its namesake. Plaza Espana (left) and Plaza Italia (right) are shown above.
Parque General San Martin
Ok, this bad boy is huge. It is bigger than Central Park in New York City, and if you are looking at the official borders of Mendoza, this park occupies about 25% of the entire town. At roughly 900 acres, it sits right up against the base of the Andes, offering some incredible mountain views.
Towards the front of the park, there is a large artificial lake that stretches about a kilometer long. I thought it was pretty neat because it has cool fountains spraying arches of water across the surface. You can kayak on the lake, there is a large sports club right on the water with a dock, though I am not sure how membership works or if you can just rent one for the day. It looked expensive, so I did not bother asking and just enjoyed the walk.
This is also one of the cleanest towns I saw in Latin America
My only real regret is that I farted around in Mendoza and waited too long to see this part. My apartment was pretty close to Parque Central, so it was a bit of a walk to get out here. I kept putting it off until my last weekend in town, and then the weather had other plans for me.
Towards the west end of the park, there were what looked to be some great hiking trails. The day was gorgeous when I first arrived, but some dark clouds rolled in around midday, so I had to bail.
The rose garden was impressive. I went pretty much the whole length of the pond
While there is plenty of shade, don't count on every path being as well covered as this
How to get to Santiago from Mendoza
Wherever you are going from here, you should not have much of an issue. The country is pretty modern, so any internet-connected device can get you a flight or a bus.
If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend taking a bus from here to Santiago. It is an awesome ride with incredible views. I took a shitload of pictures right from my seat on the bus, and they came out surprisingly well (I shared some of those on my Santiago page).
There is one key tip I want to share about that ride, though: wear pants. It was summer in Argentina when I left, and pretty warm in town, but the border crossing into Chile sits high up in the Andes. When you get off the bus to go through immigration, the temperature plunges. It dropped from about 80°F (26°C) down to 50°F (10°C). It was nothing particularly brutal, but I definitely wish I had known about it before I wore shorts.
Final Thoughts on Mendoza
I loved this place. It was easily my favorite spot in Argentina. I liked it more than Buenos Aires, though most people probably would not go that far.
I could definitely see myself coming back here. Instead of planning a massive route just by looking at a map and saying, "I want to cross the continent on a bus," I would like to return to this region and maybe add places like Salta or Rosario. I would like to say "maybe even Tierra del Fuego" one day, but I know I am way too warm-blooded for that.
I saw this sign almost every day. It was not until my last night in town that I finally managed to swing by and get a picture of it lit up.