And so, a little over 4 years after I was last here I'm back in Mendoza, the famous wine region in Argentina!

After arriving late on Wednesday we found a hostel and were gonna go straight to bed but ended up sharing a couple of bottles of wine whilst getting to know some people at the hostel together with the 2 owners Luke and Matias, who would turn out to be 2 of the nicest guys you could wish to meet.

The highlight of Wednesday night was the fact that I had unintentially claimed a bed which was alrewady taken and so when the guy who had actually got it first came to go to bed, a 4 foot tall Argentian guy who spoke not a word of English, he had to mount on to the top bunk without a ladder - which took him about 5 atempts and then he spent the next few minutes clearly muttering Spanish expletives about me as we tried to stop ourselves from laughing in the dark! Bless Eric!

On Thursday we did Mr Hugo's bike tour of the local bodegas (wineries). This basically involved the 4 of us going off by ourselves on bikes to visit as many bodegas as we could-doing wine tasting and tours at all of them!

Given that I'm not the best on a bike to begin with (Ballard you can testify to that!) after 4/5 glasses of wine the ride back was particularly interesting riding into the sun and trying to get the local lorry drivers who seem to pass you with only centimetres to spare to honk their horn!

One winery in particular, Tempus Alba, was very posh and modern and as we sat out on the balcony in the blazing sun with chill out tunes playing in the background we all said we felt more like we were in Ibiza than Mendoza! We got talking to Christian, the owner of the bodega and he was really friendly as he sat with us and we just chatted. He actually invited us to his home to watch the Argentina match the following day, but the catch was that Becky had to go on a date with him that night so unfortunately it wasn't to be!

After more free wine back at Mr Hugo's we were definately feeling merry and what had made things better was that by pure chance we had bumped into Frank and Laura, an Irish couple who the girls had spent a lot of time with in NZ! So we all went out for something to eat before heading back to the hostel for an early night.

On Friday we had paid to go on a pretty posh and exclusive wine tour of 3 bodegas which are off the gringo trail. It was an absolutely brilliant day and the bodegas we visited were unreal-plus we actually learnt about the different wines and the process involved! At the second one we had a 5 course meal which was gorgeous and we had a different wine served with every course! Throughout the day Luke and Matias were brilliant guides and it was nice getting to know them as we were driving around. What topped it off then was Luke inviting us back to his home for a couple more glasses of wine, and you could tell he had only done that because he liked us.

Saturday was then a pretty lazy day spent mostly in the pub watching the world cup and being disappointed at Argentina not getting through! Then we went out for a lovely pasta meal with Frank and Laura where again we got talking with the nice owner and he gave us a free bottle of champagne!

After saying goodbye to everyone at the hostel we were kinda sad to be leaving Mendoza as we had had 3 really good days and everybody we had met had been so nice, but a 26 hour bus journey to the Bolivian border beckons for Sunday.......!!!!