Princess Hotel Mendoza

... it was definitely a highlight of Mendoza. <br> Another highlight - Mendoza Zoo! This place is amazing, but I doubt it will stay this way for long. For some reason they haven&#8217;t barracked the animals away from the public like they normally do, so we literally patted a puma, interacted with monkey&#8217;s and elephants and if you dared you could have even poked your finger through a fence and touched the lion!! It was very ...

... and culture here is quite European with coffee shops aplenty and products and services as you would expect. Definitely an easy place to travel and get around with the great full-cama bus seats being more comfy than some dorm beds!<br><br>Highlight: By a nostril Perito Moreno Glaciers take the honours. Close second is whale watching in Puerto Madryn. (Iguacu, Argentina side, is in a league of its own, too good to be considered for the highlights section.) The ...

... and they keep falling short. Finally, there is a mountain that measures up. I don't know its name. I try to take it's picture but the result could be any rock anywhere. And then I am surrounded by them. I would say they are immeasurable, but of course they have been climbed and measured and that's not true at all. But they are Big. And Barren. They seem like they are each cut from a single piece of granite. Sometimes ...

... is listed in Lonely Planet. However, the place wasn't packed and instead of a tasting at this place, where the grapes are hand picked and the 100,000 bottles of wine per year are made in cement vats (not large steel containers), we bought a bottle, sat outside in the bean bag chairs they gave us and had lunch with our wine in front of the grape vines. It was quite romantic and we were doing quite right after downing that bottle. Our last ...

We eventually get to Mendoza..unfortunately having just got off a 17 hour bus journey, Heidi puts her bag down for just a second..and its gone. With passport, so we head off to the police station to make a report..pretty good at this now. I have reported to the police in Peru, Neil had to in Sucre and now Heidi in Argentina...muy peligroso (very dangerous) in south america. But no harm to us physically so could be a lot worse. H is able to apply by post and wait ...

... expensive part of Argentina and that was right. In a day we saw the one and only attraction- the admittedly impressive Perito Mereno glacier, and moved on. This glacier was one of the biggest in the world- 42km wide and 60 metres high, and a light blue colour. The most impressive aspect was the occasional cracking of the ice which reverberated around the valleys and huge sections falling into the ocean, which was a milky white colour from the ice. On the trip to ...

From Patagonia we had been diligently trying to arrange our onward travel plans attempting to find a route and schedule that would allow us to meet up with friends Ben and Natalia, whom we met in Brazil. The best plan turned out to be an overnight bus ride to rendezvous in Mendoza, the wine capital of Argentina. A nine hour semi-comfortable semi-cama (the full on beds were booked) bus brought us to this tidy city-town ...

... friends Sophie &amp; Shaw have just had their twin boys, which is fantastic news. CONGRATULATIONS GUYS! ;) xx <br><br>For dinner we headed down to another picturesque square to find a Spanish restaurant that Katie fancied from the guidebook. <br><br>It was really nice, Katie had some salmon and ...