We leave Mendoza today, well not until 8pm so we decided we were going to spend the day planning the rest of the trip. Bamba can't confirm our travel details until they know the hostels we're staying at so we decided to make the trip easier and whilst we have a free day we could book the hostel up to Rio.
We were both reading through different reviews on 'hostel world' for each hostel. It is crazy what people write. 'Don't stay here the dog humped my leg' and another wrote 'the bathroom was covered in insects, there were 3 ants' and 'the high police presence makes the Favelas feel safe'. High police presence usually indicates a crime area, your lucky if you have just 3 ants and would you put on a review that you had sexy time with a dog?
Anyway we booked all the hostels, emailed Bamba, revisited the post office with less items, still to much, we had a wonder to the super market, I bought disney princess books in Spanish, we made food then finally it was time to head for the bus terminal. The taxi driver was really chatty. We told him we were trying to learn Spanish so the lesson began. It's really weird but so nice when we get in the taxi and not only can they hold a conversation in English but they go out of their way to help us with our Spanish. The driver pulled over at the traffic lights and 3 men with instruments jumped in front of the car. The played a tune until the lights went to green then jumped out the way? Bizarre! We said our thank you's to the driver and headed into the terminal.
As we were waiting for the bus I saw a little girl about 2-3 years old. She was getting a little bored waiting for her bus with her mum and dad so I took the stickers out of one of the Disney books id bought and gave them to her mum. They spoke Spanish and no English so I used my Spanglish.... The girl walked up to me and said 'gracias' then stood there. I asked what is she doing to her mum. Then realised she wanted to hug me to say thank you. By the time I'd realised the girl was walking away so I shouted 'Los siento'. Crimany I wasn't expecting a hug. Lee thought it was hilarious. I was bright red. Ah language barriers!
We got food on the bus. It looked like spam with a boiled egg in the middle and for desert I think we got an egg custard. It was sweet and an egg custard texture. We were on the top deck for this bus journey. The seats are less comfortable but still sleep-able. We slept right through. For breakfast we were given a chocolate biscuit that was kind of like a wagon wheel but instead of jam and marshmallow it was dulce de leche.
At one point the bus man came up stairs to play seat bingo. He only spoke Spanish so we got the gyst when people pulled out numbers from a bag... Seat 20 came out and guess where I was sat... Seat 20. We didn't know what was going on though. The bus man asked my name, where I was from then said something, over the microphone to the rest of the bus. It was fast speaking Spanish and included Inglaterra. Everyone was laughing. Maan I hate not being able to speak Spanish. There were probably 6 English on the whole bus and the other winner was English too. We won a bottle of white wine each.
For the rest of the journey I read through my Spanish grammar book.