Hi!

Well we finally arrived back in Argentina after a mammoth few days mostly involving long days and nights on buses! We spent our first day wandering around the city which is lovely, with wide tree-lined streets. The city is so pretty because following an earthquake which destroyed most of the city, the people chose to rebuild it with wide streets for rubble to fall in to and big plazas for evacuation points! It had a similar Europeany feel to Buenos Aires but the smaller scale makes Mendoza a really pleasant place to be.

Mendoza is wine capital of Argentina and on our first night we celebrated leaving the rubbish food and expense of Chile behind us by going out for steaks and wine-huge portions and delicious wine for only 15pounds each!!!We love Argentina! The next day we went on a bike tour of the vineyards just outside of Mendoza with a group from our hostel. The weather was lovely, it is autumn here now so a bit chilly but mostly sunny with the tree-lined avenues to show off the golden autumn colours! We tried some very nice wines, olive oil, licquers, jams (including quince...though it didn´t beat either mummy smith´s or mummy richards´!!) and chocolates before a fantastic lunch. And Jackie you can make a schnappes from quince! Did you know!? We didn´t get to try any but think it should be next on your list!? Argentina is also celebrating it´s 200th year of independence this week so there are flags and ribbons everywhere, they have even died the water in their fountains blue for the occassion! It´s nice to be surrounded by so much patriotism. We don´t have very much time left in South America now, so are hoping to go West of Mendoza edging our way back to Santiago for our flight via Aconcagua the highest peak outside of the Himalayas! Hopefully we wont get snowed into Argentina!

Will update you soon,

lots of love Hannah and Rhys xxxx