Villaggio Hotel Mendoza

... our make shift Africa! I had a bit of an elephant shower when I got too close - but I’ve moved on!!
That’s it for Mendoza, a very pretty city - full of young lovers kissing in the beautiful plazas oblivious to the outside world. We spent 3 nights there and found it pretty hard to leave (literally) - with the help of our friend Herman from Puerta del Sol - we will hopefully make our mammoth trek to Iguazu falls.

... this time. Got to find a way to catch me fubol americano...starting to freak out. Thought it would be good for me to take the season off of loafin and consuming my weekends, but not sure I have the willpower.

Headed to Salta today, another 18 hour busride from Mendoza.

From there we head to Bolivia, hopefully by next week we will be at the largest salt flats in the world...and things get a whole lot cheaper--we are both peeing our pants with excitement.

... very slowly and very steeply. It took us three hours to go up, and we go down in about 45 minutes, so not that slowly, I guess. This is the rainy side of the mountain, of sorts, and now there are trees and villages to be seen. We arrive in Santiago at dusk, to pollution, chaos, noise, and COLD. It was an abrupt ending to an afternoon full of rock and sky, but it can't last forever, right. That's not how traveling works.

... exodus to Chile as the border crossing was a nightmare and jam packed. It took us 3 hours to clear the border when it took only 45 mins on the night bus earlier in the week. When we did leave the border around 6 pm the trip was spectacular as we scaled the high Andes Mountains and saw harsh vistas and cliff with snow caps high up. Parts of the area are ski fields during winter and it was strange seeing chairlifts sitting on the sides of the mountains and empty ski ...

We left Valparaiso and Chile behind, and travelled up and over the Andes one more time. Crossing the border meant ascending several thousand metres, through a series of switchbacks and tunnels. We passed several barren ski hills and the huge Mount Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalaya/Karakoram in Asia...this route has to be one of the ...

... Couldnīt tell you much about the game except it was 1 all when it was stopped. At half time the local fans tried to get to the away fans and basically had a full on battle with the police. They were throwing stones and trying to get at the away fans. The police came in with dogs and riot gear firing rubber bullets. We were well out of the way thankfully but I have never seen anything like it. In the end the away fans were ushered back to the bus ...

... it, and some of the finest wine in the world is produced here. We have booked onto 2 tours, 1 goes tomorrow and we visit 4 vineyards, have a 5 course lunch at one with a different wine for each course. Then on Friday we visit 3 more vineyards that are at high altitude ( a new concept in wine making, and it is producing some incredible results), again we have a 5 course lunch with wine included on that trip. Well, it has stopped raining now (apparently it ...

We had planned originally to go to Bariloche to catch some winter sports action but as our time was drawing nearer to an end in South America and as it was middle of winter we decided to kill two birds with one stone and do our skiing from Mendoza, we had planned on going there anyways to see the wineries.

Wineries - never happened - we had all intentions of doing it but either rain or a hangover stopped us - cant remember which.....

We did however go skiing for the day - we ...