To get to Mendoza we had our longest journey yet. It started with an hour's bus ride from our hostel in Asuncion, follwed by 6 hours on a coach to some town we have already forgottenin Argentina. There we changed to a different coach for a 12 hour over night ride to Cordoba where we would wait for 14 hours before getting another 12 hour over night coach ride to Mendoza. That equates to 45 hours without a bed, wash or change of clothes. Lovely.

Cordoba

Well the plan was to break up our journey with a day out in the lovely city of Cordoba. Unfortunately we hadn't factored in that it was Sunday so most places of interest were closed or the fact that after spending 18 hours with no sleep on various buses the last thing we wanted to do was explore a busy city in the boiling sun. Thus most of our day was spent in the bus station which is what we shall concentrate on.

Cordoba has an amazing bus station. We spent 14 wonderful hours there. On the ground floor there are several cafes, each offering their own finely selected fresh instant coffees (the one at the bottom of the stairs on the right hand side was our favourite). The wifi is strongest on the ground floor too, although for plug sockets you want to be heading to the cafes on the second floor where again there are several. These cafes tend to be a little pricier and our preference was the one directly in the middle which had some TVs showing premier league highlights. On the upper floor is an inexpensive supermarket and yet another cafe, again offering wonderful coffee and hotdogs. There are escalators between all floors but unfortunately they dont work effectively making them just big stairs.

Whats that? You want to hear about the toilets? Ok well the men's take up both floors of the Eastern side of the station whilst the womens take up the West side. For just 10p you may enter and if you require toilet roll (more than likely after being on buses for 18 hours with no proper toilet and then consuming large amounts of very suspicious tasting coffee) you can pay an extra 5p and the fat rude lady behind the counter will quickly size you up and count out the exact amount of sheets that she feels you will require, which you have to agree is an amazing skill. Once in the toilets there are five cubicles, one of these cubicles has a lock, the others do not but dont worry because there is a handle that you can hold the door shut with just in case the fat rude lady barges in on you 'mid drop' to attempt to evict you from the toilets under the pretence of wanting to do some actual cleaning. All toilets come with standard bus station themed graffiti offering various forms of oral sex, rape and blind dates in both English and Spanish.

So aside from our dodgy belly encounters with the toilets, drinking rediculous amounts of horrible coffee and a very quick tiring look around the local park, our time in Cordoba was both pointless and horrible. We have no fond memories of the place but that is not to say it is not a nice town. Whilst we feel we are probably more knowledgable than most about the bus station we certainly didn't give the town a fair look.

Mendoza

This city is one of the wine capitals of the world famous for producing a very nice Malbec. The city itself is busy but small enough to feel like a small town and has a nice friendly atmosphere. We also got lucky with a hostel that makes crepes for breakfast and in the evening you get free wine! Free wine!

The wine

The free wine was wine that you can only drink (and we certainly did drink) because it's free. The real wine experience is done by touring the vineyards of which there are numerous on the outskirts of the city. We decided to do this by bike. We caught the local bus out there along with 2 Germans we had met at our hostel, Maxi and a girl whose name we have forgot. We hired some very poorly maintained bikes which included a map of the area with several vineyards to explore. The bike shop rang and booked us into a few tours of the better wineries and off we went.

First up was a small place which was more like a garage than a vineyard. A nice old man explained in Spanish (which we now understood word for word thanks to our Spanish school) all about his wine that he exports all over the world including London. We then got a free taste of the wine before pedalling to the second vineyard. The second vineyard was quite posh. And we were late. They said that we could still pay for the tour but not get the tour - only the tasting, we decided that we wanted to see at least one vineyard so we skipped it and moved on. Posh gits.

Next we got to a lovely family vineyard - Bodega. Here the lovely lady of the family showed us all around the cellars and the production process with several tastings along the way. At this point we would like to share with you our new knowledge of the wine making techniques of Mendoza and also details of the other vineyards that we were due to visit in the afternoon...

Unfortunately the wine at Bodega was really really good. So good that we didnt leave. So good that we didn't bother visiting the other places and simply spent the rest of the afternoon drinking copious amounts of the Bodega wine. This also made sure that anything we did learn became a blurry memory at best.

What we can say though, is that riding a bicycle along a busy main road after drinking several bottles of red wine is fun but very dangerous.

The only other thing of note in Mendoza is that we walked up a big hill in the city with a couple of Aussies. It was ****. (The hill, not the company).

We have really enjoyed Mendoza and met some great people who we will stay in touch with no doubt. On our last morning a Canadian from the hostel gave us 2 bottles of posh wine that he couldn't fit in his bag! The fool, he could have just drank them! We finished the stay with our last Argentinian steak. For now anyway, as we are heading to Chile...


Mendoza stats

Planes used - 11

Buses/coaches used - 79 (+5)

Trains used - 25

Metros/subways used - 41

Cars used - 11

Minivans - 10

Russian Campervans used -1

Horses used - 1

Camels used - 1

Taxis used - 19

Cable cars used - 1

Bicycles used- 3 (+1)

Tuk tuks/autorickshaw used - 31

Scooters used - 6

Elephants used - 0

Ferrys used - 5

CycleRickshaw - 1

Bamboo HouseBoat - 1

Tour Boat - 1 Combi Van - 2

Huge 4x4 Truck Thingys- 2


1. It is really really annoying when watching a movie on the coach and you have 10 minutes left and the coach arrives at the destination.


2. It is perfectly acceptable to mix different wines of the same colour in a glass to reach a desired taste


3. Free wine are 2 of our favourite words ever.