After our 4 hour bus from San Luis, we arrived in Mendoza just after lunch and caught a cab from the bus station to a hostel we had read about in the guidebook. The hostel sounded nice and seemed fine when we arrived. However, after strolling around the city, booking a wineries tour for the next day and having a nice meal, we headed back to the hostel for a reasonably early night, only to find that the ´Pizza Party´ that was going on was actually an excuse for blaring Argentinian dance music out as loud as they possibly could, so no-one in the whole of the hostel could actually sleep until it finished!

The next morning, we all grumpily awoke (!!!) and caught our transfer from our hostel to Maipu, a small town just outside Mendoza where all the wineries are based. We were dropped at the ´Bikes and Wines` office (the company we had booked through), collected our bikes and were given a map of Maipu so we could navigate our way around all the places to visit - along with about 8 wineries, there was an oil farm, a deli farm and a liquor and chocolate factory.

We set off first to a winery museum just round the corner from ´Bikes and Wines`, to go and see all the old machinery that was used to produce the wine. We also tried our first glass of red! Yummy! From there we cycled 12km to the end of the ´wineries route` to visit a small working winery called Bodega Carinae, which produced white, rose but mostly red wine. After a tour around the winery we sat outside next to the vineyard in the sunshine, and had our first proper tasting session. Just across the road from this winery was the LAUR olive oil farm, so when we had finished our wine tasting we headed over to have a tour and then try some samples of the olive oil with bread, aubergine and sundried tomatoes... so tasty!! By this time, despite our tasting sessions, we were all pretty hungry, so the next stop was a small family-run winery (Di Tomasso) which also had a restaurant. We had a yummy lunch there then set off again, onto the next stop, another beautiful family-run winery called Tempus Alba. All the family were sitting upstairs on the balcony next to the bar when we arrived, and they greeted us with a big kiss and told us a bit about the business. After a quick walk around the vineyard (we were on a bit of a time restraint as the bikes had to be back by 6pm), we cycled on to the Almacen del Sur delicatessen. We had another small tour then the boys stayed for coffee and biscuits while the girls cycled as quickly as they could (with very sore bums at this point!) to the next much larger winery, only to find it had closed. We then all met back up at the last stop, the liquor and chocolate factory, where we tasted banana and nut chocolate liquor and 3 samples of different white, milk and dark chocolate... a yummy end to the day!

When we arrived back in Mendoza, we headed back to the ´Bikes and Wines` office, as Steve and Elle had spontaneously decided that they wanted to do a skiing day trip to Los Penitentes in the Andes! Jess and Lee unfortunately had to resist the urge to go too (due to our budget), so once Steve and Elle had booked the trip and gone to hire their gear and equipment from a nearby ski shop, we went back to the hostel for some much needed sleep (fortunately there was no loud music blaring this time)! Steve and Elle were up and out by 7am, while Jess and Lee had a lie in. We then checked all the bags out the room and spent the day walking around the city, visiting the enormous Parque General San Martin (supposedly the biggest park in Argentina), looking in the shops, and booking our overnight bus tickets from Mendoza to Buenos Aires. When Steve and Elle arrived back from their trip that evening we found out that Steve had been very ill all day (we think it was due to the crappy food we ate in San Luis) and had hardly managed any skiing at all. He had originally been planning to stay an extra day in Mendoza and catch an overnight bus to BA on Saturday night. However, because he was so ill, none of us wanted him to stay in Mendoza on his own, so we booked another bus ticket for him at the last minute, bought some food from the supermarket for the journey, grabbed our bags from the hostel and caught a cab to the bus station. Fortunately the buses in Argentina are really nice and the bus from Mendoza to BA was the nicest one we had been on, with big comfy seats, good food and a clean toilet! We loaded Steve up with immodium and all tried to get a good nights sleep!