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After a surprisingly trouble free(as in no major issues at the border or bus crashes) crossing of the Andes I arrived travel weary and hungry at 6am in Mendoza. Due to it being a Sunday and Argentines having an ingrained aversion to working on Sundays my first walk around the city was a fruitless venture with nothing open apart from a very sketchy pizza place which was showing some Brazilian and some American guys having a cage fight on a very old television...the pizza was good even if the clientel weren't! That night the Flemish hostel owner asked whether I would be interested in having a barbeque and a few drinks by the pool with the other guests later on...the answer was of course yes. After a game of table tennis against Paddy, an Irish backpacker, and some beers with him and his friends Ciaran, Will and David the grilled meat began to arrive by the bucketload! Around this time the bar by the pool started blasting an eclectic mix of tunes(ranging from UB40 to Lily Allen...which I would later discover was the only music they had and would play every night) and we were joined by a Kiwi, two English guys and a middle aged Chilean-Scottish man from Dumbarton. There was also the rather awkward moment when the hostel owner loudly suggested, in front of a rather sophisticated group of female American travellers, that a stripper should be called in honour of the Kiwi's last day in Argentina...nothing came of it, much to the Kiwi's disappointment but probably for the best. As the music wound down none of us were in the mood to follow suit and so the motely assortment of travellers moved on to a pavement bar on the main strip of bars where the Caparioskas flowed freely and stories of home and travels were eagerly swapped. I awoke the next day to the at first very confusing sight of three very familiar Australian girls standing in the door way to my room while my head felt like it was being used as a drum kit by AC/DC. After a couple of seconds I switched on and realised what was going on. That day was fairly sedate, after a lunch which was terrible to put it mildly, I think the fact that a stray dog refused to eat one of Emily's left over mushrooms speaks volumes. The night was concluded with a relaxed game of monopoly by the pool with a bottle of Mendoza's famous red wine, the first of many during our time there. The next day was big. After negotiating our way on to the correct bus to Maipu we were equipped with bikes, in the case of Alice and I a tandem but thats a long story, given a map of the wineries and sent on our merry way. Having reached the first winery we were bored to within an inch of our lives by the well meaning Swiss-Italian tour guide, however after that we were given 4 glasses of wine to taste for 25 pesos, around £4, which though very nice one had a distinct taste of smoked cheese...surprising to say the least. From there we went to a second place for lunch which in my case consisted of a massive lump of grilled steak and fried potatoes, the lunch of champions, and accompanied by another couple of glasses of Mendoza's finest. The third and final winery we stopped at was the Trapiche one, a massive building of red brick and glass, we were too late for the tour so the woman at reception offered that we could have 3 bottles of wine and sit on the roof terrace which had an excellent view out over some olive trees and across to the Andes underneath a very warm Argentine sun...world class. From there we went to the beer garden which was a hut in the middle of the countryside that brewed its own beer, played really chilled tunes, made empanadas and was generally excellent! Having passed a fair amount of time there we succesfully made it back to the bike rental shop they presented us each with another glass of wine. It was at this point that I started to go downhill. Back at the hostel we broke out some Bailey's and I made the fatal error of finishing the rest of the bottle of Whisky which I had been given as a departing present from B.A...from there the rest of the night is somewhat blurry, though the food later on was nice. The same cannot be said of the next morning. The day consisted of a leisurely stroll around Mendoza and taking advantage of a special offer lunch menu, this restaurant was a significant improvement on our last attempt at lunch. After a homecooked pasta meal we decided to spend the night doing bowling of all things at a bar, we soon discovered Lucie's strengths do not include bowling but she made a valiant effort. On our final day in Mendoza the girls went of to a spa day which didn't really seem like my scene, though by all accounts they had a good time. So I spent my last day in Mendoza lounging about in the hotel, going to the Provincial Museum...not really worth it, having a nice pasta for lunch and watching the Liverpool game on TV, pleasant enough. Then onto the bus which I am sitting on at the moment to Bariloche, where we will meet a lot more familiar faces from B.A!
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