had an all round farce trying to find my hostel in mendoza, stupid directions told me 1702 av. san martin, however failed to mention that below 0 then theres another san martin, which doesnt appear on any of the maps. so walked for like an hour to the northern one with my massive unwieldy bags, only to arrive at a sweet shop. not ideal. eventually got a taxi to the hostel which turned out to be at the other end of town, so turned up really hot and grumpy, soon cheered up though as the hostel was really cool. people running it were awesome and there was a pool and lots of spanish reggae music, yesssss. having finally got rid of all my mates i was looking forward to being antisocial for a few days, not drinking and having a nice sit down with my book. however the next morning i got talking to an irish couple who were going on a wine tour, and was fairly easily cohersed into signing up immediately. d'oh. mendoza is the biggest wine producer in argentina and is surrounded by vineyards, so got picked up at 9.30am to go and drink all day, yaaaaay. it was a bit more busy than the one i went on in australia so met loads of people on the bus, spent most of the day hanging around with the irish couple, two american girls and a dutch girl, who all seemed far too enthusiastic at going to start the wine so early in the morning. the first couple of bodegas were fairly boring, the tours were really long and you only got a bit of wine at the end (unlike in australia where they make you drink as much as possible then get rid of you), and i kept getting bitten my mosquitos. also in the second one, when the really gay and drunk guide gave us our wine, everyone suddenly started coughing at the same time, someone said later that the wine had just come out of a lab next door! not sure what that was all about, almost certainly got cholera now though. things perked up a bit at the next one, which was more of a distillery so they gave us some shots of random spirits and liqueurs, perfect pre lunch snack. the best bit of the day though was the lunch, which was AMAZING, enormous spread of really good tapas and like 4 courses, with awesome wine from their own bodega, potentially my best meal of the trip. definately worth the price of the tour on its own.

got back at like 5 so had a bit of a siesta and a swim to recover from the wine, then went to meet dutch girl for dinner with the irish people from my hostel. on her map all she had marked were STEAK, BARS and HIPPY BARS, i like meeting people with the same priorities as me. we decided to go to STEAK, got persuaded to go a restaurant by a waiter who claimed to have the best meat in argentina, fairly bold but thought we'd give it a go. ordered a parrillada which is like a massive mixed grill with chicken and pretty much the entire contents of a cow. i was the only one who would eat the deep fried intestine, which impressed/disgusted everyone. mmm entrails. got talking to the waiter half way through the meal, who then spent about an hour ranting at us about his life story, the political and social situation in argentina and pretty much anything else he could think of, quite interesting for a while but was eventually quite glad when his boss came and told him to leave us alone! he also told us about the current situation in venezuela, ecuador and "locolumbia," which was the first i'd heard of it and may mean i have to change my plans fairly drastically! hopefully it will all have settled down by the time i get up there, see how it goes. after that we headed to BARS for a bit, all quite tired though so had a sneaky beer then got an earlyish night. had a nice relaxing day the next day, chilling out reading by the pool mostly, then went to get my overnight bus.

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