Buenos Aires and Mendoza in one week: how to split the days

Key Takeaways

• Three nights in Buenos Aires, two in Mendoza, one back in Buenos Aires for the flight home. Seven nights, one internal flight, no wasted day.
• Fly at midday. A dawn flight costs you the winery morning and an evening flight costs you the city evening.
• Two wineries a day with lunch at one of them. Four in two days is the honest maximum and three is the better trip.
• Luján de Cuyo is the short drive and the Uco Valley is the long one. Pick one; doing both in two days is a day in a car.

Why Buenos Aires and Mendoza in one week works

Most one-week Argentina itineraries try for three destinations and deliver two, because internal flights eat mornings. Two cities and one flight is the version that holds.

It also gives you contrast, which is the actual argument. Buenos Aires is dense, late and loud. Mendoza is a grid of low streets under the Andes where dinner is early because the day started in a vineyard. Going from one to the other in ninety minutes is the trip.

The Buenos Aires and Mendoza package runs a longer version of the same shape if you have nine days rather than seven.

Buenos Aires and Mendoza in one week: the 3 plus 2 split

Days 1 to 3, Buenos Aires. Follow the 3 days in Buenos Aires itinerary: centre and San Telmo, then La Boca and Recoleta, then Palermo. One neighbourhood a day, walking distance, tango on the first night.

Day 4, fly. Aeroparque to Mendoza, midday. You land in time for lunch and an afternoon in the city, which is all the city needs.

Day 5, the wine day. One valley, two bodegas, a long lunch at the second. This is the day people remember.

Day 6, the mountains or a second valley. The high road towards Aconcagua, or another two bodegas if wine is the point.

Day 7, back. Morning flight to Buenos Aires, last night there, home the next day. Do not book the international flight for the same evening as the internal one.

Which Mendoza valley to pick

This is the only real decision in the itinerary, and nobody tells you it is one.

Luján de Cuyo is the near option, half an hour or so from the city, and it is where the old Malbec vines are. It works as a half day, which means it fits on the afternoon you land.

The Uco Valley is 80 km south of the city on RN 40, with more than thirty bodegas open to visitors. It is higher, newer, and the architecture is as much of the visit as the wine. It is also a full day: an hour and a half each way.

Maipú is the closest and the cheapest, bikeable from the edge of town, and the one to choose if the trip is short on both time and money.

Two days lets you do one of the three properly and one badly, or one of the three properly and spend the other day in the mountains. The second is the better week. Our Mendoza place guide breaks the valleys down further.

Flights: the times that do not waste a day

There are several daily departures between Aeroparque and Mendoza and the flight is under two hours. The trap is not the flight, it is the time.

• Before 08:00. You leave the hotel at five and arrive too early to check in. You lose a morning either way.
• Midday. Lunch in the air, afternoon on the ground. This is the one.
• After 18:00. You arrive at a closed city and eat at the hotel.

Aeroparque, not Ezeiza, for the internal leg. It is inside the city, within 25 minutes of most hotels, and it is where the Mendoza flights go from.

Ezeiza is 32 km out in the other direction, which is where your international flight lands and leaves. Book the hotel knowing which of the two each leg uses, because the difference is an hour of taxi twice.

What a winery day actually costs

A guided winery day with a driver, two tastings and lunch is the standard shape, and lunch at a bodega is a proper meal rather than a sandwich.

The decanting wine day in Mendoza is US$160 per person, the Malbec tour US$136, and the olive oil and wine day US$99 for the shorter version.

Do not drive yourself. Tasting is the point of the day and Argentine drink-driving limits are strict.

When to go, and the one week to decide about

Mendoza is dry, sunny and high, so the seasons are gentler than Patagonia’s. March and April are harvest and the vines are turning. October to December is green and warm. July is cold at night and quiet in the bodegas, which some people prefer.

There is one week to make a decision about. The Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia, the national harvest festival, fills the first week of March with parades, a crowning and a city with no hotel rooms in it. It is the best week to be in Mendoza and the worst week to arrive without a booking.

Taking the wine home

The good bodegas will ship, and for a case that is the answer. For a bottle or four in your bag, there is an allowance and it is more generous than people assume.

Arriving passengers get a duty-free allowance of US$300 on new goods, plus another US$300 spent in the arrivals duty-free shop, and a family travelling together can pool it. That is the Argentine side.

Your own country’s limit is the one that will actually stop you: most allow one or two litres of wine duty free and charge above that. Check yours before you buy the sixth bottle, and remember that checked bags get thrown.

Wrap bottles in the middle of the case, in clothes, standing up. A bodega will usually give you a moulded box if you ask at the till.

When to add a third city

If the week becomes ten days, the third leg picks itself by what you liked. Wine and mountains points to Bariloche. Wine and city points to Salta, which is the other Argentine wine region and a completely different landscape. Iguazu is the outlier: it is a jungle trip stapled to a wine trip, and it works, but it needs two full days of its own.