Reina Victoria Mendoza

... to bring us off.
We collected other people there was 10 of us in total doing the horse riding, we had a cook, a photographer and a guide with us.
He explained a little about the Andes mountain ranges as we drove it took over 30mins to get to the ranch! How cool is that THE RANCH! Hee!! Totally wild west territory!! I’m telling ya!

We had to wait a couple of minutes for the ‘Cowboys’ I am not kidding you they call themselves cowboys!! To arrive ...

Yesterday was a good day. We got up at 7:00am, which I could have done without, and went with Carlos to work. Actually it was kinda of nice to wake up early. We went to the site of a new vineyard he´s managing and it wasn´t even light out yet. It was beautiful watching the sunrise in the vineyard, especially with 8 foot hight parrel vines around you! We spent ...

... brightest turquoise water you can imagine - it looks like there are turqouise strobe under-lighting!! On the ferry back we enjoyed whisky 'on the rocks' fresh from the glacier! Back in town, I went out for dinner with a couple of guys from the hostel before an early night...ready for an even earlier 5am start! Another beautiful sunrise over the Andean mountains as a small group of us took the 5hr journey over into Chile's Torres del Paine ...

MAKES YOU STRONGER. I realize the problem with my present system of recording information re credit and debit cards. I have cancelled most of them and frozen one that I can unfreeze to access money. Live and learn. The concern re money lost eg maximum $100. US pales in contrast to what identity theft could do to your accounts even though companies try to reassure you of zero liability.

... snakes up the Aconcagua valley to reach the Chilean-Argentine border at approx. 10,000 feet. Awesome mountain views appear around every corner during this part of the journey! Aconcagua, South America's highest peak, at 6962m (22,841 ft), even showed itself a few times ...

... d'enfin arriver à la première bodega, "La Rural" qui possède un musée du vin dans lequel sont entreposés une kyrielle d'outils et d'engins utilisés anciennement par les viticulteurs. La visite du musée et de la bodega se termine par une dégustation d'un verre de vin de maison, cuvée spéciale "musée" qui ne transcende rien. Mais bon, au moins c'est gratuit! Ils semblent avoir de meilleures cuvées dans les vitrines d'exposition mais celles-ci sont nettement moins abordables ($200 ...

... anyway. We only had a ceiling fan in the room so to get a little extra ventilation I opened the windows but kept the shutters closed to allow a little airflow, so the following morning when I woke with an itchy bite on my shoulder I thought I might have let in a few mosquitoes. Still groggy I shuffled to the bathroom to inspect the damage in the mirror and to my horror discovered not one bite but several bite all over my shoulder. I knew immediately that these were ...

... where lots of locals have their wedding photos taken.

About half an hour later we found it, very cute.



We picked up some ice cream on the way down, a 1/4 lb tub each (!) with 2 flavours and then sat in the shade in the middle of the square wolfing it down! Tremendous.

How's work today everyone by the way ...