Nine years ago today, the World, and in particular our family lost a wonderful person. Every 6th of October since then I have taken time out to do something with family, friends or alone, but something that made me smile and was good for the soul. This year was to be no different and I was determined that it wasn't going to be a travelling day and had planned to be in Mendoza, home of the Malbec grape.

Rewinding a week, we left Bolivia at the end of our Salt Flats trip and headed straight into Chile. San Pedro de Atacama is a small dusty town in the middle of the Chilean desert. With 360 days of clear skies a year it obviously reminded me of Manchester! The day we(Rich, Gill & I) arrived we'd gone from sub zero temperatures and multiple layers in Bolivia that morning to shorts and flip flops that afternoon in San Pedro. After the salt flats it seemed like a little oasis of pretty streets and good food, and we met up once again with Nanda & Arjan the Dutchies. We also picked up Sylvain, Yanina and Stefan from the other jeep in the salt flats and became a group of 8. Some of us visited the San Pedro Austral centre, with the clear skies and lack of light pollution, San Pedro is one of the best places for star gazing. It was really interesting and I learned a lot about the basics of astronomy and the telescopes gave us some amazing views of the moon, Jupiter, nebular clouds, and various other stars. It made me realise just how tiny & insignificant we are here on Earth. We also rented bikes one day and rode up into Devil's Canyon, which whilst incredibly hot, was worth the effort.

And that was it for Chile, a short but sweet stay in my twelfth country, but it was time to move onto the long awaited Argentina. Rich & Gill had headed south in Chile but we planned to meet up in Mendoza, so the 6 remaining took the 10 hour bus trip to Salta. It was undertaken during the day, which whilst felt like a waste of a day but we had no choice, afforded us some beautiful scenery of the Chilean and Argentinean countryside. Salta was the first stop in Argentina, and was not quite as nice as I was expecting, but fine never the less. I've come across a number of Argentineans on my trip, who look quite different to the locals in most Latin American countries, for a start their average height is above 5'5"! But perhaps due to its location, tucked away in the North close to the Chilean & Bolivian borders, but in Salta there still seem to be a lot of people here with indigenous routes and most of the locals looked like the Ecuadorean/Peruvian/Bolivians I'd seen earlier in the trip. We started on the steak and wine fest by cooking fabulous beef kebabs on the barbeque at the hostel and washed down with a bottle of Malbec.....something tells me I am going to like this country.

Rain stopped play the following day when we had hoped to go horse riding and gave us a chance instead to catch up on reading and blogs etc. On our last day we took the cable car up to the park on the top of the hill overlooking Salta then strolled back into town and prepared ourselves for the 18hour bus journey which lay ahead to Mendoza. We got to the bus station on time to find out that the bus was running an hour late, not the best start to a long overnight journey. In actual fact, it wasn't all bad as the bus was almost empty, and all 6 of us got 2 seats each, a real bonus on an overnight journey and we all slept pretty well. It was obvious from the rows upon rows, fields upon fields of vines as we neared Mendoza, and once we'd checked into the hostel, showered and changed it was straight out to sample some long awaited steak and red wine.

And so that brings us to date, 6th October 2011. Things left to do in Argentina are horse riding, winery tours, tango, football and Buenos Aires, so as you can imagine, I'm still excited about all that is to come.

Today I spent wandering the tree lines streets of Mendoza, a stroll around the park, a lovely salad washed down with a crisp Sauvingnon Blanc and then Italian ice cream, all shared with some great friends. Not just travel buddies, but friends I know I will remain in touch with long after this adventure is over. This year, maybe more than most, I would have so much to tell Mum about what is going on here and at home, but I know how proud she would be of what I am doing now. One of my happiest memories with her was our road trip around Spain after my year studying in Valencia and I always remember how she loved me switching seamlessly from chatting to a local in Spanish to her in English. And so tonight, after a lovely day and as we head out for the evening, I will raise my glass: Suzie, this one's for you. x