Huentala Mendoza

I finally settled in Mendoza, a city of about 1 million in the Cuyo, a central region near the Andes and 1060km (659mi) west of Buenos Aires. What a beautiful place it is. We have many lakes, so water sports are popular in the summer months. The mountains provide a forum for hiking, climbing, and horse-back riding. And ...

... br><br>'What the hell are we doing here' moment: Drug bust en route to Puerto Madryn. 6 hours on the roadside watching pirated movies on the bus DVD player.<br><br>'Lost in Translation' moment: None come to mind really, except not having coins on the local bus to buy a ticket and they don't accept notes. Bus driver didn't know what to do so just waved us on...<br><br>New food tried: Empanadas! Amazing little meat pies - definitely Ian's favourite. Mate tea - an ...

... mountain outside of Asia. Gigantic. Snow-covered. Only about 12 miles away, and impossible to capture from my bus seat. We don't stop (though the porter does point it out to everyone), but it was wonderful to have seen it. There's a national park, in case you're interested. I wish I could have gotten closer. Maybe next trip. After that, we are on the way back down. We cross the border to Chile in the middle of ...

... is great about the $2-5 tastings in Mendoza is you get three full glasses of wine. They don't mess around. With some lounge music playing and a beautiful middle-aged Argentine woman serving up the glasses, I temporarily forgot I was at a vineyard in serene wine country! The wines here were delicious, probably our favorite of the day, particularly their malbec and cabernet sauvignon. With a good buzz flowing, we rolled our bikes down ...

... covering the tracks on all sides. I guess that it felt like riding in the subway... Along the line from time to time we go through ghost villages, relics from the golden age of that abandonned means of tranportation. The window panes are broken, the doors that haven't disappeared don't close, and everywhere reigns a 30s and 40s atmosphere. Going over all those high passes in the Andes, all those valleys, many memories from St-Exupéry's "Terre des Hommes" ("Wind ...

... a wine cellar where your friendly sommelier helps you choose the wine for your meal which is pretty flash! I head off to the mountains for a sightseeing trip and we get as far as the border of Chile at the christo redentor monument, 400m up and its 4oC, bit of a shocker! The andes are spectacular, reminiscent of Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, they are a multitude of colours from all the minerals. We stop off at a currently unused ski resort and i head up on a chair ...

... days we walked until our feet felt like falling off (around 50km over two days) and were blown away by the views of the glaciers and the famous torres (towers) of rock. The place was one of the most beautiful we had seen with glaciers, huge valleys and even tadpoles for Charlotte. And best of all was the weather which was supreme, without a cloud in the sky- something we would later come to appreciate even more. We crossed down into Chile for our planned 4 day ...

... making master's thesis and driving from Santiago through the Andes mountains to Mendoza - Ben and Natalia safely arrived at our hotel, which was after midnight (poor things).<br><br>We celebrated the next day. First with some vegetables, as we managed to find a vegetarian restaurant! This may sound rather insignificant but discovering an outlet for excellent vegetables in this sea of steak is always a victory ...

... see in every town where there are tourists.<br><br>We were there a bit early, introduced ourselves and were told that Kelly was still having dinner somewhere else, so we had a couple of beers and ordered some (very weird) nachos and (even weirder) banoffee pie while waiting. <br><br>We waited ...