The Tooth Episode

Has been an interesting week in Mendoza. Quite a change from BsAs - its a medium size town with a thriving local nightlife and plenty of day trip things to do. Instead of doing any of that however, I decided rather to see how I could make my life a little difficult! While crossing the road, my foot and the pavement had a little altercation, resulting in half my tooth being knocked out and collecting some other bumps and bruises.. Anyway, long story short, I managed to rescue the missing tooth, find a dentist, speak my 8 words of spanish and 1 hour + 200 pesos later, its back where it belongs!! Has made eating steaks this week pretty hard, but dont think for a second that it stopped me :-)

Now that I had established myself as the "tooth idiot" in the hostel, I lined up some of those local events. Spent a day up in the high Andes, visiting Aconcagua, the highest point on earth outside of the Himilayas (app. 6,950m!). Was simply breathtaking.. Took pics with my ´real´ camera which means they may take a while to post - these hostel/cafe computers are not exactly high performance photo editing machines!! Followed the tour up with a guided wine tour of the Mendoza wine region on Friday - famous for making Malbec. Stopped at 3 "bodegas", went through their wine making process and sampled some of the product at the end... Wines are excellent, prices very low and people are more than happy to share some with you! If I only had some space in my backpack, I would be bringing a few bottles with me.

Somehow it slipped through that this weekend is a long weekend in Argentina and Chile.. Bascially, this means that Mendoza is absolutely full of Chilean holiday makers (its only 5 hours from Santiago). Which also means that my hostel was full, all hostels in Mendiza were full and the buses to Cordoba were sold out. Hmmm... So what was the best option? Stayed up all night last night in a few local bars and then got on the 6am bus here!! Crazy, but I now feel like I am a fully qualified traveller!! 13 hours on a bus, with no sleep the night before.. Oh, did I mention that the aircon broke, so we all spent 3 hours in a sauna wondering why on earth we hadnt planned better. Anyway, I made it, checked in and looking forward to a great nights sleep!

Also discovered that they celebrate Oktoberfest here in Cordoba this weekend... Strange, but true! So will for sure be sampling the local german beer and sausages tomorrow.

Ciao.