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Published: November 28th 2007
So we flew from Rio to Santiago on the 13th November. (Only 5 days left in South America... where was the time going to). We left Santiago straight away and headed for Mendoza- the home of Argentinian wine.
The bus journey from Santiago to Mendoza is through/across the Andes and is pretty cool except for the most painful border crossing of our trip so far. What should be a 5 hour journey takes almost 8 because of all the formalities at the border. Customs officials inspected every single piece of luggage on the bus!
Anyway we arrived in Mendoza and got down to the real reason for our trip- a visit to the wineries:-) We spent a day cycling around a group of wineries- having the odd glass here and there... The cycling bit became more of a challenge as the day progressed! It was great fun though.
The scenery around Mendoza is fabulous so the next day we decided to explore it a bit more as Gauchos.. we took some horses out for the morning and did a really cool trek through the mountains- even got a few gallops in. Horses fed and watered and back in
Which bottle..
We'll take them alltheir stables we headed off for some paragliding. A rough ride to the top of Cerro Arco in a battered World War II jeep took us to our take off point. It was a little more windy than usual and as a result my take off wasn't the best - I nearly knocked Eddie off the top of the mountain. He has since forgiven me. (Safety is not really high on the list of priorities in South America in general). The paragliding was pretty cool and we had a great view of the whole area. By the end of my flight I was feeling a bit queasy though- not sure if that was related to the flight or the wine the day before. One final steak dinner that evening before heading back to Santiago on an overnight bus. The border crossing was even more painful at 4am in the morning!
We only had two days left then to spend in Santiago which was probably enough- it seemed to be a pretty small city and we strolled around at our leisure. The whole place shut down on Sunday, so there wasn't too much to do.
Time to leave South
Gauchos??
Don't really think we have the cowboy look perfected yet.... America :-(
We're sad to be leaving- its a great continent with so much to see and do. We'll definitely come back!
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