Buses – Wine – The Andes

Our time in Buenos Aires was over! A good thing or a bad thing were not sure…It probably wont be a place we return quickly.

Our next adventure was getting from our hostel to the Buenos Aires Bus terminal, due to horror stories given by fellow travellers we had met this was more of a trial than it should have been. We had been told of pick pockets and muggings on the tube, so we intrepidly started our journey with an eye of suspicion on everyone on the tube. This journey wasn’t helped by the people trying to sell marker pens and pieces of paper?? on the tube to un suspecting tourists! However the journey ended uneventfully, luckily!

When we finally boarded our bus for the 13 hour bus journey to Mendoza we were shocked at just how nice the bus was, we had selected the second highest class but we were greeted with big leather chairs each that reclined to almost flat! We also managed to bag the front seats :-)

It’s pretty un believable the distances between places in South America when you look at a map you have travelled nowhere yet been on a bus for 13 hours!

What we were not so keen on was the dinner we were provided!!!

I was for once quite glad Sarah was a ceoliac…it meant I had more to eat!

However after an hour or so a bigger dinner was served with Wine, champagne and a movie and the obligatory pastry side dishes that must be eaten at all times in Argentina,  we then settled down for the night.

With the rising of the sun came our first view of the Andes mountain range and the highest peak in the Americas and actually the largest peak outside Asia at 6962 meters towering over Mendoza.

Our first few days in Mendoza were spent relaxing and visiting our new gym we are honorary members of for a week!! £2 a day isn’t bad!

We decided on Saturday to complete the winery by bike tour, there were about 15 from our hostel who went of all nationalities, British, American, Canadian, Dutch and Australian’s.

The tour involved renting bikes from the mad “Mr Hugo” http://mrhugobikes.com/ Hugo would great you all with free wine, free bad wine that could be used as paint stripper at 11 am was pretty hard going but duly drunk!

We then set off for our first winery..

Once at the winery unfortunately they had run out of clean glasses and it was a 45 minute wait…When does a winery run out of glasses?? we decided it better to hedge our bets elsewhere.

The second stop was for Chocolate, olive Oil and Absinthe. Drinking Absinthe at 12 lunch time is not a great past time but does make for a very eventful afternoon cycle ride!

The afternoon was spent visiting a few more wineries and back to see Mr Hugo for some more of that free wine!

We have met some amazing people in Mendoza and people we would really like to travel with for a bit, unfortunately everybody seems to be going in different directions right now. I hope our paths may cross again this seems to be the way it works in South America, The same faces appear in different cities in different countries..

We intend to spend a few more days here in Mendoza and then head up in to the mountains for a few days. We can walk up to about 4200 meters near the Chilean border so sure that will provide amazing views and a little acclimatization to altitude.