Now before I start this one, you have to google some of the things we told you about but couldn't show you (due to loss of camera) like the Garganta Del Diablo and Recoleta cemetery.

Anyway, we're in Mendoza now! We arrived yesterday morning but Ash wasn't feeling well after a 10 hour very cold bus journey so we did'nt really do much.

Today after a bit of a slow start we walked into town (which takes quite a while from where our hostel is). We went in search of a shop where we could buy the magnetic cards you need for the buses but no where seemed to have them. A nice old lady walked us round about 6 shops before we found one that sold them. Then we had to search for the bus. Finally we boarded a ridiculously slow and rattly local bus and headed for the 420 acre park. Turned out the bit we wanted was on the other side and it was quite a long walk in the hot sun. The park was supposed to be designed like an English park but I'm not sure the architect had ever been to England because there was a series of main roads running through this park and people looked at you as if you were crazy for walking.

Finally at about 5pm we got to where we wanted to be - the zoo. It cost us 6 pesos (1 pound). What a strange and upsetting experience. The zoo was pretty vast with long winding paths, not many maps and no staff that we could see. But with all that space the cages were tiny and either crammed full or only had one or maybe two animals. All of the animals looked bored out of their minds. It was really depressing. You could hear these really loud and frightening moaning roars from all over the zoo. The cages weren't good but what was even worse was the security of them! We saw 2 monkeys in two different bits of the park who were on the wrong side of the bars! There was a rocking elephant, two bears who could barely stand up, pacing wild cats, condors unable to stretch their wings out and worst of all a lone POLAR BEAR! it had a tiny enclosure with a little bit of water in it but it was lying flat out on a rock on it's belly looking like it's life was over. It was really horrible.

Near the end of our trip we encountered the chimps. They started sticking their hands out of the bars and reaching towards us. Then this couple explained what they wanted. One of them had an empty coke bottle and handed it to this woman who went and filled it with water and handed it back to the chimp to drink from. When it had finished it came back over to the bars and handed the bottle to a slightly stunned Maia who went and refilled it. The chimp was getting really impatient whilst we were faffing with our camera so we didn't quite get the perfect picture.

On the bus trip back to town we saw a weird kind of shanty town within the park with houses with some walls but mostly boards and corrugated metal without roofs.

We have decided not to carry on to Bariloche in Patagonia like we had intended because of the recent volcano erruption in Chaiten. We're planning to use the days we've freed up to take some private spanish lessons. We've found a place that's really cheap that our hostel put us in touch with. Tomorrow we plan to rent bikes and do a tour of the wineries. we'll let you know how that goes....

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The wine tour was fun. We started off at about 10.30am. We met an English guy and a couple from Holland who we cycled round with most of the day. First stop was the wine museum. They started us off with a tasting. Red wine at 11am, thats the life. Then they showed us round a bit. We saw the vineyards and the tour guide explained about how they grow them and flood them. Then she showed us the collection of old wine making tools and told us all about how they used to make wine before showing us the new winery. That was followed by another tasting!

Next was the chocolate and liquour factory for more tastings. We didn´t make it all the way to the end of the 12km circuit cos it was pretty hot and we were pretty full of red wine but we got to see a good few wineries and taste a good few of mendozas wines. they make 80% of all the wine in Argentina and Argentina is pretty huge. Aislinn´s bike was a bit dodgy and the chain kept falling off and half way back to the bike rental place she fell off and hurt her knee pretty badly. We ended up sitting at the side of the road for about half an hour, next to a dead dog, waiting for the bike guy to come and rescue us in his van.

We did manage to have some spanish lessons. 10 hours of them in fact, one on one. Both our teachers were really nice and Maia´s teacher Maru helped us organise to go paragliding on our last day, after our lesson. The instructor picked us up from the school and we drove out of town and up into the mountains. The drive up was pretty uncomfortable. There was tons of dust coming in through the window and the 4x4 was throwing us all over the place as we went up the rocky track. it was really beautiful though. When we got to the top we discovered we weren´t going to be able to fly after all. The wind was really strong and it was a weird hot wind called ´La Sonda´ which they get over the mountains in Mendoza which isn´t safe to fly in. One pair did try it and we watched as they only just made it down.

That night we went for a slap up meal to treat ourselves at one of the best known restaurants in Mendoza, Don Marios. We´d heard they had good steak but we weren´t quite expecting what we got. We both ordered Bife de Chorizo, the most expensive type of steak in Argentina (although it was only actually about 7 quid). It took ages to come but it was worth the wait. I´ve never seen anything like it. It didn´t look like a steak, it looked like a whole sunday roast, 17.6 oz of sirloin steak!!! mmmm.

The next morning we packed up in a hurry and headed to the bus station to go to Puente del Inca.