Ive been in Mendoza for about 9 days so far, and I will leave in about 3 to 4 days. I have taken a Spanish course for 5 days here, and it was absolutely brilliant. We did about 6 hours per day, and the teachers hardly spoke any english, so you really had to get stuck in to learn. The good thing about staying in one place for more than a few days is that you make good friends. We all look after eachother because we are all in the same boat. People in the hostel often cook for eachother, and the evenings are about drinking beer and often someone plays a guitar, and its fantastic.

Mendoza is a great city. Its a really nice looking city and the locals are friendly. This is the centre of the wine region in Argentina, and it is framed by the snow covered mountains of the Andes to the West. It is Autumn here, but the sun is shining every day, and the temperature is around 20 to 24 degrees. TSHIRT WEATHER!!! I love it.

Stuff Ive been getting up to: a week of spanish lessons, so Im loads better with my spanish now. This will be tested once I leave Argentina as there will be less english spoken. A few days ago I took a Tango lesson, and I wasnt too bad, I stepped on my partners toes only 3 times. Ive gone paragliding off a VERY high hill which was fantastic, you could see the whole city. A few days ago, 4 of us rented a car, and I was the allotted driver. We drove to the foot of Aconcagua which is the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas. It is almost 7000 metres high. We drove up the old road to Santiago which is a winding dirt road that climbs up to over 3000 metres. It was pretty hairy in places! Yesterday I did a vinyard tour with friends from the spanish school. We rented bikes for about 4 quid each, were given a crappy hand drawn map, and off we went to do wine tasting. It was great to be shown around the vinyards and to see all the huge vats of wine being fermented. We stopped in one vinyard and sat on a sun terrace drinking wine. 3 bottles later, we had to cycle back in the near dark and pretty happy on the vino. The family that rented the bikes then let us sit in the garden and drink wine while we waited for the bus and we got on so well with them that they cooked us an Asado (a BBQ). we communicated through very broken spanish and hand gestures, and had a really great time, narrowly getting the last bus back

Anyway, Ill keep this short, and will update when Im in Salta, which is my next stop on my way north to Bolivia.

Salute!