We arrived in Mendoza after 30 hours on a bus, for a couple of days of relaxation, good food and nice wine.  Well that was true for the most part.

Mendoza is a nice city of about a million people, though still maintains quite a relaxed feel, probably as it´s surrounded by Argentina´s wine region (which produces 70% of Argentina´s wine).  It´s also not far from the Andes and the Chilean border.  The streets are wide and leafy with lots of outdoor restaurants, though in the city itself there was not much to see.  There were quite a few westerners though, but as the city seems tourist-free in the day we assume they are only there for the wine tours, which we decided to miss out as we took a tour in the Napa Valley, and had heard there´s not much wine to be drank on South American vineyard tours.  So what´s the point?!  Better off waiting to New Zealand and Australia where you can drink a bucket load!  Anyway, as we hadn´t relaxed for a long time, we took two days to drink, eat and sleep, and to take advantage of the fact that you can have a nice meal in a restaurant with a decent bottle of wine for about GBP 12 including tip (not that we tip much now we are pikey travellers!). 

After our two days relaxing were up, we got to the bus station for an overnight bus across the Andes to Santiago.  Unfortunately we were probably a bit too relaxed however, as we turned our backs on our small bags (which held all our important documents) for about thirty seconds and they were gone.  Luckily a security guard had seen it all, and chased the guy down and got the bags back.  We were so grateful we had to stop ourselves from hugging this guy.  Definitely a lesson learned.....don´t drink too much wine before travelling.

After crossing the border at 3am, we arrive in Santiago the next morning.