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The bus to the Mendoza was amazing, Gustavo made it a dream within unlimited wine, champagne and hot choc before bed, as well as a game of bingo to keep us entertained. He even put on Life of Pi in English for us, despite the Spanish passenger's protest.
We felt brave and got a bus to the hostel, which gave us a free tour of the town and taught us some intense map reading skills.
After settling in we made our way to Aguas Thermas, the thermal baths in the middle of the Andes. It was freezing but managed to peel off our thermals and jump into the hottest pool we could find. We had amazing views of snowy mountains, blue skies and curvy Argentinians in thongs.
We meet Arthur and Albert (seriously) in one of the pools, their chat up was 'I like your bikini and woolly hat combo', and went and had a drink with them in the sun once we'd shriveled like prunes. They gave us a lift back in their bus, turned out our hostels were next door so had dinner and drunken table tennis together that night.
We are such great company that they decided to do a bikes and wine tour with us the next day even though they had already done it and Arthur doesn't even like wine! We even convinced them to get a tandem bike from the brilliant Mr Hugo, it was the funniest thing watching them wobble off into the road shouting at each other, not very romantic.. Mandem on a tandem! We got our bikes from Santiago the hippy and peddled off to the first (and only) vineyard, Tempus Alba. The tandem broke before we even got there, don't think it's made for two such strapping young lads. The vineyard was gorgeous, we sat on the roof terrace looking out towards the mountains and pretended to be wine connoisseurs. Next stop was the beer garden, a cute little bohemian cafe in the middle of the vineyards with outdoor sofas and hippy canopies. We refuelled with home brewed beer and the best empanadas in the world. All the wine had obviously gone to our heads as we ended up discussing the philosophy of life, and realised there was nowhere else we'd rather be.
Arthur's legs were tired so Beccy helped him with the pedalling on the tandem all the way to our next stop, a liquor tasting place called Tierra de Logo. We ended up trying almost everything they had, while Mr Wolf explained how he made all the liquors and the history of the production, his life and how he got to Argentina from Switzerland. Our favourites were the traditional Argentinian Pisco, Triple Sec Naranja, 50% Anis, and obviously Dulce de Leche.
Suddenly we were late to hand our bikes back (standard) but it didn't matter as Santiago was stoned off his face, saying he will see us in another life, and Mr Hugo gave us a bottle of wine. He even opened it so we could drink it on the bus back, classic Brits abroad.
That night we put our new wine knowledge to practise and ordered the cheapest bottle off the menu, then showed the boys how to play pool properly. They were so impressed with our mad pool skills that they decided to come to Santiago with us the next day.
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