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Published: August 14th 2006
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Our next stop in South America was Mendoza, a place famous for its wine. As soon as we arrived at our hostel we planned 3 days of activities to keep us busy starting with an afternoon tour to visit some wineries.
The tour itself was pretty boring walking around the winery listening to a guide talk about the process of how they produce their wine. I felt like I was on a school trip and it didn't take long for us to start pissing about waiting to get to the tasting part of the tour. Bim made out he was some wine tasting expert coming out with phrases such as "check out the legs on this", although i'm not sure if he was talking entirely about the wine!!
The following day was spent visiting what was advertised as "High Mountain" - I think the mountain was called Alta Mountain although ยก'm not sure. Most of the day was spent in a minibus getting there with a tour guide talking about the history of how the mountains were formed. Some of it was quite interesting but in all honesty it was hard to stay awake. We stopped by a small
stream by some man-made bridge and were told by our guide that the water was fresh and said to be "magical". The myth was that early settlers used to drink from the stream to enhance their sex lives and manhood so I thought it would do no harm to drink a few sips and left Bim and Olly bathing in it and filling bottles up to take with them!!
The views were spectacular and it was well worth going just for "Happy Hour". At first we thought we were heading to a bar for cheap drinks but it was an hour in the local ski resort for some sledging. The sleighs were tiny, about the size of a baking tray which I nearly returned to the counter because I thought the woman had given me a baby one. Being the adventurous and stupid guys we are we struggled up to the highest peak we could get to which was further up than most people were sledging. I've never laughed so much seeing 3 mates fall over so many times trying to reach our summit. Eventually arriving at the top, Gareth decided that he would go first which in hindsight
would have been best. Seeing Gareth slide down a mountain after coming off his sleigh rolling around like a dead body was hilarious to watch but Bim, Turner and myself soon realised that the only way down was to do exactly the same thing. A very painful experience for us all but also a great satisfaction seeing your mates tumbling out of control down the side of a mountain. During the next half hour we were more realistic and started a bit lower down the mountain but had a mini competition to see who could hit a previously made ramp at the bottom the quickest. I think we all hit it quite hard but the funniest was seeing Gareth fly over it on what looked like the lid of a biscuit tin!!!
We all woke up the next morning feeling like we'd gone 12 rounds with Tyson but morale was high as we looked forward to another day of hiking, absailing and hot springs. We were dropped off in a mini bus in the middle of the andes and started hiking what seemed like a small mountain compared to what was around us but felt like it was everest.
Reaching the summit, we walked some more to the location of our first absail descent. The instructors started demonstrating how to put all your harnesses on etc which proved extremely difficult to understand as it was mostly in Spanish. Being the last ones to be ready as usual I began the first descent having never done this before. Leaning over a 9 meter drop was quite scary but we all managed to complete it quite well. The second descent was very similar but the third was a 45 meter drop which was a huge adrenaline rush and a quality experience.
After risking our lives absailing down mountains we were all looking forward to getting our trunks on for a dip in the hot springs. Expecting natural hot pools of spring water was far from what we got. Instead it was a local swimming pool at the bottom of a mountain with a few outdoor hot tubs. Great views and very relaxing but not quite what we were expecting.
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leonard
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real willies are never that big
that's not his real willy. i mean come off it, its easy to see that its exactly the same colour as the couch.