Wobbling through the Vineyards

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Being a great lover of wine, I couldn't resist a trip to argentina's wine region, mendoza. Sunny all year round it provides a perfect climate for growing olives and making great wine. It's beautiful.

After a 19 hour swelteringly hot bus journey from Bariloche, we arrived and caught up with our crazy aussie friend Drew, who we seem to be following around south america. By pure chance (although he would say something different) we've followed him pretty much all the way from Buenos Aires and we ended up in his hostel, Break Point. We've starting spending longer in places, to give us a chance to really get to know a place and enjoy it. 3-5 nights in each place seems to be the perfect amount. When you're travelling for this long, if you travel too quickly it gets really tiring from the journeys and constant changes. Drew's travelling quicker than us, so literally as we arrived he headed off, but he left us with his sick fellow aussie who became our new roomie along with a french and swiss guy. Poor guy, being ill in a hostel is not fun, especially not in this partcularly one.

As our last stop in argentina, we felt like we should make the most of the amazing food while we still could. Chile and Bolivia aren't reknown for their cuisine. Our hostel was pretty grim (excluding the outdoor area) which meant that we wanted to get out and about all the time. Mendoza city has an impressive selection of restaurants, it seemed rude not to try them all out. Our taste buds have been in taste bud heaven. It's amazing how good food can make you so happy! We've been walking loads around the city and parks to try and work it all off. During the evenings we went to the trendy spots where all the locals go nad tried out all the cocktail lists. It's been great talking to the locals rather than our fellow travellers. The argentian people are so nice and loads of fun. We were up till 7am partying with them in true argentinian style.

Naturally like every other traveller we had to go and do the famous "Mr Hugo" wine tour through the vineyards in maipi. We had an amzing day, one of the best so far in fact. The weather has been perfect. Cycling through the vineyards and sampling all the delights along the way is a great way to spend a day. We made loads of new of friends and bumped into more people from our BA days. I had a bit of an accident to at the traffic lights. The roads were really uneven and I was stupidly trying to drink water while cycling and landed in heap. My left shoulder and stomach got the brunt of it. We had such a good time that we didn't manage to get round all the stops on the tour so we decided to go back for take 2 a couple of days later to try and learn more amount the wine. Day 2 was just as good but totally different. Far more civilised. It was great learning about all the wines. We were using all the lingo by the end of it. I think we may well have turned ourselves into wine snobs now. It's such a great way of life, maybe one day I'll retire on a vineyard in Italy!

Mendoza has been a great place to finish our tour of this fabulous country. We've been here nearly a month now and I've loved every minute of it. I would so, so, so recommend it to anyone. I really hope I get to come back one day!

Don't cry for me argentina the truth is I never left you.....!!!

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Photos

Sampling the olives
Should have known they'd be covered in chemicals!