Mendoza

Up way to early and with a hangover which was not good. Especially as we were crossing at high altitude. On the bus as well as dying, I had a bad pressure pain in my head from the the altitude. The journey was absolutely fantastic passing through amazing deserts and the highest mountain in the southern and western hemisphere and the highest outside of Asia - Aconcauga. We found out five people had died recently climbing it due to extremely bad weather. Of course, Colin and I were going to climb it until we heard that.

It was bloody hot in Mendoza and it`s nice to still be in warm areas after the cold of the Andean countries and Patagonia. Our hostal was probably one of the nicest we`d stayed in and our room had a telly which Colin was very happy about considering we`d not even watched anything for six weeks or so. Colin didn`t want to leave. For the next couple of days we just relaxed and ate well apart from a horrible pizza. The Argentines couldn`t make a pizza to save their lives. Their idea of one, is to fry a pizza base, stick a load of old cheese on it and then cover the thing in the most hideous cheap ham possible. Naaasty!

As Mendoza is the centre of the wine industry in Argentina, we decided to take a wine tasting tour. It was pretty cheap and we weren`t expecting much from the vineyards themselves. The bus turned up and it seemed as if we were going on a Saga Holiday. There was one older gentleman who looked like Lurch from the Addams Family and a rather elderly lady (at least 80) who thought she looked good in a boob tube and hot pants. We named her Sylvia. This is just a sample of the people we shared the day with. Our first winery was ok, nothing special. Of course, the most important part was the wine tasting; it was great to sample different wines, one after the other and taste the differences between. Unfortunately the wine itself was not particularly great and resembled an aged and oaked, Sarsdons vinegar. Sylvia bought six bottles of the nasty stuff just for her breakfast.The next tour was to an Olive Oil factory. It was pretty boring as you can imagine but we had a lovely tour guide. We had one strange lady on the tour though: she constantly interrupted the whole time and would put her glasses on and go over everything with a fine tooth comb. The oil itself was pretty good and they laid out bread and sun-dried vegetables for us to try. Our final winery had nicer wine than the but less of it much to our dissapointment. Syliva bought another six cheap bottles for her lunch. After all this, we said a final good bye to Argentina with a nice dinner out and left the next morning back to Chile.