We arrived in Mendoza on Monday morning 21st, This place is basically a desert with artificial grass and hoses keeping trees alive! Apparently they only have 200mm of rain a year here and this definetly is'nt the season for it!

We met up with our friend from rio, Pipo who is a tour guide here in Mendoza, and he took us for a BBQ in the mounains, and this BBQ wasnt your standard UK burger in a bun, it was full on chunks of steak strips and ribs, sooo good and the view of the Andes just made it so much better!

We decided to go on a high mountain tour with his company the next day, which was a 200km bus ride through the Andes, stopping at the outstanding views and one in particular mount Aconcagua, the highest mountain of the Andes and in the southern hemisphere. During the tour we took a 800m climb in the bus in just 8km, so as you can imagine the road was pretty sketchy and the drop from the side of the road was insane, but the view of the valley was unreal! At the top it was absolutely freezing and because it was so high our ears were killing, but absolutely worth it for the view up there.

Mendoza is famous for its wineries so we decided to hire some bikes and take a look round a few, one of which we learnt the whole process of wine making and had the opportunity to taste 5 varieties, not the best idea when you have to ride a bike on the busy argentinean roads!! On the way back we stopped at a chocolate and liquor factory, and again had the opportuniy to taste some, so nick decided to try the 65% proof absenthe, and between three of us we only managed a quarter of a shot glass... not nice haha!!

As it was Sams last night Pipo took us to a restaurant, which surprise surprise was solely steak... this was good, but still not as good as the Salta steak we tried hehe. This was followed by some bars and finally a club, which didnt actually open till 2am. This was banging, and we were all pretty drunk, but no way near the state of Pipo, who was hammered!! He thought it wise to start driving us home, bearing in mind he could bearly keep his head up, it didnt take us long to stop the car and get a taxi home haha!

So now three becomes two as Sam has gone, so we will travel south to Puerto madryn on the coast where we can see whales, sea lions and much to nicks excitement maybe some little penguins running around!!!