ba/mendoza bus, rental car
 

my husband and i are planning on taking the overnight bus to/from buenos aires/mendoza. can we book online (seems confusing), or is it better to book at a ticket office once there? which bus station is closest to paloma soho (where we will be staying)? also, if we are staying in chacras de coria outside of mendoza, does it make sense to rent a car to tour vineyards/get to hiking areas? any help/advice is much appreciated! thanks!!

cnealis29:

This will answer PART of your question:

http://www.fodors.com/community/sout...cash-pesos.cfm

Most buses leave from the area called Retiro. Be careful with your belongings.

Have a great time in our country.

thanks!! (i meant: soho palermo!!)

I knew that, cnealis29! LOL!!!

In fact, the area is known as Palermo Soho.

On to look at your next question.

Have a great time in our country.

I don't know about the hiking areas but I would say a tour of the vineyards was the way to go. We booked ours through the Hostal we stayed at - hostal Lao. It was ok but the best thing about it was the inclusive lunch which was excellent. The vineyards themselves were just ok. For some reason the ones we visited seemed reluctant to offer any of their good wines for tasting and some were really not good. We saw many people spitting some out within a millisecond! As far as I could tell, unlike many other parts of the world where tasting are free and producers think of them as a shop window, those in Argentina all seemd to charge. Finding some of them could also be a challenge. An alternative to renting a car would be to hire a taxi driver for a day or two to take you around which would probably cost the same as renting but you would need to pre arrange vists to the vineyards in advance.