Though I came to Mendoza for the wine festival, I wasn´t prepared for the whiney film about rich Californians (inextricable featuring David Mitchal from Peep Show) on the coach. Because of it, I have now bought ear plugs for my next journey.

It turned out that the wine festival was due to start next Saturday but thankfully I wasn´t the only person to make this mistake so it was at least full of people wishing to sample fine wines. It´s probably a good think I missed the festival as Mendoza is a terrible city to be drunk in. There are large ditches between the road and the pavement, which I almost fell into sober. The city is quite nice, although very modern too as all the colonial buildings were destroyed in an Earthquake and it now feels very European rather than South American.

Yesterday I went on a cycling tour of the wineries, which sounded like a very good combination. Though the road was full of signs warning cars of bicycles, they still didn´t give much room, so the cycling was taken very carefully. All the wine was excelent, though the best place was the chocolate and liquor shop, where I sampled a very potent orange liquor. The samples were all very generous, though the cycling was quite sobering so there were no accidents to speak of.