¡Hola!

After I left Salta I headed south to the city of Córdoba, Argentina's third largest I think.I had planned to meet up with one of Josh's friends who was living in Córdoba, but unfortunately she was heading out into the countryside for that weekend; so, instead, I headed to a very sociable hostel that had been recommended to me by some other travellers - Hostel Tango.There I met with a whole bunch of wicked people, and we set out straight away into the streets at 11am to watch the first of Argentina's World Cup games against Nigeria.We found a bar round the corner and sat out on the pavement with the rest of the locals (well, university students mostly) with a few beers, me sporting my freshly-purchased Argentine shirt.Whilst the atmosphere was certainly buzzing during the match, it was pretty much the same as being in England; but, after the end of a lacklustre match, which Argentina won 1-0, the audible applause and cheers that could be heard reverberating around the street grew into a frenzy of music, drums and whistles, fireworks and bangers, ticker-tape, confetti, and toilet roll streamers raining down from the apartment blocks.The streets filled with jubilant crowds marching off downtown towards one of the main intersections, where we found them in their thousands effectively closing down the city centre, blocking roads, cheering and waving flags.All this for a crappy 1-0 victory in the opening game of the group stages; I can't imagine what the final would be like to watch here if Argentina make it that far.

The hostel was indeed very sociable.It was Saturday night, and we warmed up the night early on with a few hours of drinking games, including Ring of Fire, before the Colombian family who ran the place laid on a massive finger buffet of Colombian food, complete with Salsa dancing in the dining room.I had firmly intended to go out to one of the big clubs here, like Infernos, Dorian Gray or Club F, to part hard to some decent music, but, in the end, the majority of people at the hostel were content with some underground place downtown that played exactly the type of nauseating reggaton that has plagued my trip since arriving in Nicaragua.That said, once it was clear we weren't going anywhere else, I got down with everyone on the dance floor and we had a good night.

The next day we managed to squeeze in a bit of culture by going to a modern art gallery and going for a walk round the city, but after that it was time for me to cram onto another semi-cama night bus to get to Mendoza by the morning; this would be a fleeting visit.

I arrived first thing in the morning and staggered my way around the city with all my stuff until I found the Hostel Lao that had been recommended to me.There I met up with an English and an Australian girl who were heading out to do a bicycle wine tour of one of the nearby wine-growing pueblos, Lujan (or Chacras).This was an alternative option to the usual destination of Maipu, where most backpackers go for wine tours, and was a pretty neat place.We intended to visit four wineries, but we didn't get past the first two because we spent too long chatting with the owners and quaffing wine, and even then I had to burn it back to the bike rental place and jump in a cab back to Mendoza so as not to miss my bus to BA - not exactly the tranquil end to proceedings I was looking for.The first place we went to, called Clos de Chacras, was a small 'boutique' winery that had scaled down its operations a lot since it was originally founded, but the second one, called Weinert, was a huge place with something like 200 or so massive oak barrels and a capacity of four million bottles a year.They had the oldest Malbec in Mendoza still in a barrel, from 1994, and the oldest one still in its bottle, from 1977.None of the wines we tried at either place were especially outstanding, although there were one or two pleasant ones, but the real surprise was the food.We had lunch at Weinert and ate truly some of the best pizzas I've ever had - seriously delicious!They had a fantastic chef there, and his speciality was the local delicacy - a corn, chorizo and carne stew, called Locro.

After my slightly drunken, and slightly unnecessary, race back to Mendoza, I caught my luxurious, leather-seated, full-cama, overnight bus to Buenos Aires.

R

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