Hi everyone!

We came to Argentina from Chile June 11th and have since stayed most of the time in Mendoza. I think we both are a bit tired of the travelling which is a bit sad because South America is a really cool place! So, we stayed in Mendoza for 10 days. We ate lots of steak and drunk a lot of wine. We stayed in a hostel where we got free wine every night and there were wine tastings and free Spanish lessons etc. We went for a wine tour one day with some Australians so we took a bus an hour from Mendoza city and rented bikes from Mr Hugo (I am sure all of you who been to Mendoza know who Mr Hugo is). We cycled around to a wine museum, the oldest winery in Mendoza and an olive oil and chocolate place where we got a lot of beautiful tastings. It was a freezing cold day so not really the best day for us to go on the biking tour but we had fun anyway and got police escort through a dodgy area. That felt very luxury!

Another day we went for horse riding a whole afternoon and after that we had a huge bbq with a lot of wine and music. It was a typical Argentinian ranch with beautiful horses. We got a horse each and went through the mountains where they had a lot of cactus and spices. I thought it was pretty dull because we just got to gallop once the entire time which was like, three hours! But we had fun anyway.

After some time in Mendoza, we met a lovely married couple during an Empanadas cooking evening that the hostel had for us. She, Hanna is from Sweden and he, Raul is from Spain but they have both been living in Spain and Hanna moved to Spain eight years ago. She is also a Nurse and we have had so much to talk about. She studied and worked as a Nurse in Spain but has also done some interesting projects in South America and Africa and has done some work in Leeds in England. It was so nice to hear from her that her experience with the British Nursing system was exactly the same as mine! She even does sutures at work in Spain and in England she had to make beds and wasn't allowed to do what she was trained to do. It was nice for me to get some confirmation that I hadn't been the only one!

We decided to go for some trips together. Scott and I wanted to go to Aconcagua to do some trekking and they had been thinking about the same thing but first one day, we went to the Thermal Springs which was a beautiful place with mountains around and really hot water. We went there by bus and were bathing for a couple of hours and had nice lunch and a walk after that. We were also cooking a lot of nice food and had another British girl come over to our hostel. They had met her earlier on their trip in Argentina. Vijya is her name and she decided to come with us the day after on our trip to Aconcagua. Raul decided to stay at the hostel in the morning but we went as decided and our three hour bus ride there turned out to be four and an half hours and when we came to the Argentinian-Chile border where the trek was, it was snowing so much so the police didn't let us through. We took some pictures with them and went in to a snack place where we drank hot chocolate, coffee and wine and played some cards before we went on the bus again for four and a half hours so the day wasn't too successful but at least we got to see some snow!

Scott and I hadn't decided where to go after Mendoza so we decided to come with Hannah and Raul to Cordoba and decide from there where to go thereafter.