Sunday 30th September

After a 19 hour coach journey we arrived in Mendoza at around 7am. We tried to get a taxi to our hostel but no one seemd to want to take us. (god knows why!) After about 30mins we managed to flag a taxi willing to take us. When we arrived (about 3 mins later) at our hostel none of us were too impressed (apart from Lisa) with the look from the outside. The man who ran the hostel (who we named Daniel Son) let us in and showed us to our room. We found out that our triple room did not have a private bathroom which we believed we had asked for in the email previously when booking. Daniel son offered to make a shared bathroom private for us at a little extra! (after we kinda threw a little wobbly about not having a private bathroom). We kinda rudely used his internet to look for other hostels and after no luck we decided to stay with Daniel Son. Daniel son (with every right) told us he felt very uncomfortable and suggested that he find us another hostel to stay at if we didnt like his (go Daniel son)!! Tom (myself) decided to defuse the situation and explained our situation to him. After settling in all three of us actually thought the hostel was really nice. We had a huge kitchen to use, a swimming pool (filled by a hose), nice garden and a TV. The bedroom was nice and the bathroom was clean. I have to admit we all felt really bad about being slightly rude to Daniel son. As the temperature was about 30 degrees we all decided to put on our summer clothes for the first time in...... well the first time. We headed off to the shopping mall and had a juicy chicken kebab. Was good!!! We then took a stroll round the shopping centre which to be fair was pretty pants. We then went to the supermarket and bought food to cook in our nice new kitchen. It was really nice to cook our own meal as we had all got a bit tired of eating out every night. Lisa Made a really good Rissotto! Cheers Lisa :o) We then got an early night as we had booked a little adventure tour for the next day.

Monday 1st October

Today we booked an adventure trip just outside mendoza, which included trekking a mountain, abseiling down it and then lunch and an afternoon in a spa resort :o) We were picked up in a minibus where we met our fellow adventurers, which included a brazilian guy and two germans, one of whom looked and acted like Augustos Galloop!!!!!!!! We arrived at a small mountain and were given our abseiling gear and helmets and made our way up the mountain. Half way up the tour guide told us to watch out for SNAKES...... argghhhhh. Thankfully we didnt see any and made it safely to the top, then started to head down again.... Coming down was cool cos it wasnt really a trail and was quite dangerous, the brazilian guy slid down loads! The tour guide asked me to go behind him so he could keep hold of me incase i fell, which was a bit of a cheek but i let him!!!! We reached the abseiling point and we were a little nervous, but the first decent was only 15m which after decending calmed our nerves for the next one which was 45m. We decided to go first for the 45m decent and tom headed down with no problem, i had a little slip at the start as the guy forgot to tell me to stay to the right side! The glasps on the rope were so hot by the time you get to the bottom, its hard to get them off. We sat at the bottom waiting for Augustos Galloop to decend and took the piss out of him till he reached the bottom!!!!!!!! After the guys headed off to a thermal spring and we went to the spa, as we are poncy travellers and went for the more expensive option. Augustos wasnt very happy as they had to wait 4 hours at the thermal springs for us :o) The spa was lovely and we started off with a nice healthy buffet lunch. After we were taken down to the spa area and changed into our bathing gear. A guy led us down some stairs to a natural cave sauna which is heated naturally from the earth. He told us to stay no longer than 10 mins in there, but we didnt even make that long! After we had a hydro bath and shower which is basically a room with a powerful shower which sprays from all angles over you, and a bubbly hot bath. After this we were shown to the mud :o) As you can imagine we had lots of fun covering ourselves in mud literally from head to toe and then went outside to let the mud dry. After washing it all off we dipped into the various natural hot rock pools for the final stage in our treatment!!!! well, backpacking is such a hard life :o) me (lisa) and nikki opted for an additional massage after costing all of 5 quid, and i have to say they knew there stuff!!!! Tom stayed by the pool eyeing up the....... well there wasnt any eye candy there, all old people!!!!!! We headed back thoroughly relaxed and satisfied at making augustos galloop wait for us. It was toms turn to cook that night, chicken stir fry, but he forgot to add the noodles...... you just cant get the staff!!!!!

Tuesday 2nd October

Another tour day, we had a wine tasting day, heading out to 4 wineries, an olive oil factory and a chocolate factory!!! Was an early start and the guide didnt speak a word of English, but luckily in the group of women booked on with us (aussies) one of them lived in Argentina so translated for the whole day for us and her aussie friends. I have to say she was the most entertaining part of the day as she certainly had a character! The first winery was in fact the best and at 9am we were tasting some great wines. They showed us around and saw the biggest wine barrell in Argentina, and some of the oldest wines too. The women taught us how to taste red and white wine properly and what to look for, as we had no clue!!!! The dessert wine there was amazing, shame we couldnt ship any of the wines home!!! We went on to a bigger winery after which had a museum full of old tools blah blah blah, only interested in the wine tasting! We went out to the vine yards as well, while our already drunk tour guide had his hands around some young birds waist talking to her about something to do with a bar he wanted to open!!!!!! We only got to taste one red wine there, tight asses! Next we headed off to a family run winery which again was totally different to the other two we´d seen, this one did cheaper wine. We were greated by a heavily pregnant tour guide who did speak english. At this point we decided as we'd seen so many heavily pregnant young women that grape picking season (february) was a time to get pregnant out there!!!!! She showed us round and we saw an old barn room full of old wine barrels and empty wine bottles which they use now as a party venue, was wicked place. We tasted a red and a white here which were nice too. Half tipsy and very hungry we finally headed off for lunch, which was supposed to be in the vineyards, but as it was out of season they took us back to mendoza town and we ate in a resturant which wasnt great to be honest! After we went to a distillery where a seriously insane guy was there to great us, he was off his rocker, probably on the pure alcohol they were distilling from some odd looking machine! The building was very contemporary which i liked, but we didnt like being shut in the celler which was pitch black very much! We got to try some odd tasting liquers, grapefruit, dulche de leche, rosehip and graupo. Next was the olive oil factory, where we discovered that Nikki didnt know olive oil came from olives (we've used that against her ever since!!!!). Basically the place stunk and wasnt interesting, but we brought some nice yellow raisins and soaked up some of the wine with olive oil on bread! The cheeky tour guide tried to get away without taking us to the chocolate factory, but we werent having any of that and made him take us. We got chocolate on arrival and when leaving, but the factory wasnt that interesting apart from it smelt amazing :o) Great day out in all but we didnt get to taste enough wine to get drunk! that night we spent about 2 hours walking around trying to find a nice resturant, the problem being we were looking for a particular road name and didnt realise there were 4 roads with the same name, all in opposite directions! This appears to be the norm in argentina, all the towns use the same road names and use them a few times in each town!!!!!!

Wednesday 3rd October

Another adventure day, white water rafting this time! There was a larger group of people, all older, but at least they spoke english. We arrived at the site and were given rather attractive full length wet suits, over jackets, over sized wet shoes and helmets, and told to get undressed and put them on... Slightly concerned as we were expecting to raft in our bikinis, we asked the guide if the water was cold or something, and he said FREEZING!!! it was glacial water from the mountains, and trust me it was friggin well cold. I (lisa) as s***ting myself as i'm scared of the water, more so being trapped under and drowning! But thankfully these rapids were only 1 and 2 level and really i had no reason to be scared at all! The 3 of us were in 1 raft with a women who does rafting all the time and our crazy rafting guide! The old people were in another raft and one women fell out twice, once not even on a rapid!!! (though tom nearly fell out at that part too!!). As it wasnt too wild we got to surf some of the rapids which was fun, and one of them mine and nikkis side of the boat went under and they continued to surf with us fully submerged in the ice cold water!!!!!! Towards the end the guide asked if anyone wanted to jump in, so tom being tom decided he would take up the offer!!!!!!!! 1 1/2 hours later we were back at the start and dried out and grabbed some food to eat by the pool. The old people were going trekking in the afternoon (same as we had done on the abseiling day) and it would seem the tour guide thought it would be ok for us to wait around for 4 hours before taking us back........ thats when its good to have a trainee lawyer with you, and tom, who both argued that we were not staying around for 4 hours... unfortunately due to language barriers and the driver refusing to budge, we had to get a bus back, which took 1 1/2 hours... not impressed, but we had a good morning rafting.

Thursday 4th October

We had a coach booked to Salta at 18.30 so had pretty much a whole day to waste. As it was a gorgeous day we put our shortest skirts and skimpy tops (tom had shorts, obviously!) and headed to the park. It took us ages to walk there, and we found the road we'd been looking for 2nights before with all the nice restuarants!!!! The start of the park was lovely and we walked around a huge lake trying to get to a cafe. After lunch we headed off round the rest of the park, trying to find the national football stadium, zoo, theatre etc etc. After far too long we found the football stadium which wasnt very impressive, nor was the theatre! we decided to skip the rest of the park and walk back to the main square in Mendoza to do some shopping. Again it took us forever to walk to the end of the park, so we cheated and got a taxi the rest of the way!!!! We wanted to go to a chocolate shop which was recommended and get some icecream, which mendoza is famous for. We brought a box of chocolates for the coach journey (very very nice) and popped next door to get a small ice cream... which turned out to be massive!!!! at 3pm we headed down the main high street and noticed something a little odd, all the shops were shut, bloody siesta again, we'd totally forgotten again!!! seriously, siestas start to get REALLY annoying!!!!! We wasted some time back at the hostel by getting drunk with a bottle of wine whilst updating our blogs! Whilst i (lisa) was cooking us some dinner (spag bol) we met an english guy called Andy, who we kindly shared our food and drink with as he'd only just arrived! Just as we were finally heading off to the coach station for another 19 hour journey to Salta i (lisa) noticed my expensive waterproof coat had gone missing... Some cheeky b****** must have taken it from the room, which i had accidently left in the cupboard when we checked out in the morning!!! But still, all of the women staying in that hostel were huge and fat, what was the point in nicking my XS super petite coat..... some people...................