Mendoza (land of lovely wine) via Tucuman (land of not a lot)

---

It was time to move on again, clock is ticking unfortunately!! So we headed south to Tucuman which according to our great guide books sounded like a cute little colourful town where they still use horse and carts...what we exeperienced was more like a really neglected old soviet town, it would have been great in its day (many years ago) but nothing had been done to the place in years...so as soon as we arrived in the bus station we booked our tickets straight back out, five hours later, to Mendoza!!

MENDOZA
Phew - we finally made it after about 26 hours on the road since Salta, so we grabbed a coffee at the bus station and were pounced upon by Raul who had come looking for us on Laurens behalf from a hostel they were staying in. So united again with the addition of Colin, it was the four girls back together again from Rio, Iguaza, Buenos Aires, Cusco and La Paz!!

They took us to the ´all you can eat´ buffet - bad move for an already tired Sal and Shane, so all we could manage that night was the cinema to see the ultimate chick flick cheesy movie - Lyrics and Music...not the most highly recommended movie of all time but it wa sgood to watch something in english!!

We went biking to the wineries in th eregion on some dodgy bikes that we hired from a house that managed to undercut the good company and offer for half the price with 5 bottles of free red wine, but broken gears and dodgy brakes, but fun all the same hee!! There was the four of us plus Colin, Aner and Or and we managed to navigate our way to the Wine museum, Chocolateria, a winery that wouldnt let us in, a winery that was reservation only tours (so we sank two bottles of wine on their sun terrace - felt like we were in London but witha view of mountains) and onto another winery that we found eventually ( at which Aner managed to break his handlebars in half on teh way into). It was a long ride home, especially after the wine started to wear off, but was fun!!

I shopped quite abit, got drunk one night in the locals student bar and managed to make it to South America´s largest park - Parque San Martin, for about an hour before it got too cold!! Sal and Lauren went white water rafting and then it wa stime to move on, had enough of the city life and onto the next place - less citysh this time!!

---

Photos

taste the choccys
me n lauren

and some more wine
on the terrace just like a bar in london