Mendoza

Another crappy bus ride later and we´re in Mendoza. This time our bus broke down twice, they only played one crappy film for the entire 20 hour trip (the Italian Job), and we were not fed because they were too busy grinding the hell out of the gears. So spirits weren´t exactly high when we finally arrived. We also decided to walk from the bus station to our hostel, which took us more than an hour, and to top things off our hostel is a hole. The first thing we wanted to do was shower, and we all got to do this, but Ness and Sarah did so wading in a bout three inches of other peoples shower filth due to clogged drains. It is also the first time we have been put in single sex dorms. I have the pleasure of sharing my room with a silent mustached man, and Old Man Doom. Old Man Doom is nice enough, but about 50 years old, when he asked me where we were going and I replied amongst other places Peru. He responded with. Oh that´s a very dangerous place. And I said oh, have you been there. Turns out he hadn´t, but he did tell me a bunch of horror stories, and continues to look at me as if my days are numbered. This morning I woke up to him telling me that someone had been mugged in a park nearby, so we had better be careful. I asked him how it had happened and he told me that a drunken tourist was staggering throught the park at midnight, and then he got mugged. I told him that a staggering drunken tourist could be mugged in any park at midnight. And he proceeded to look at me as if my days were even lesser numbered.
After breakfast we jumped on a bus and headed to the wineries. We hired bikes and rode to 3 wineries, a wine museum, and a place that made amazing chocolate liquers. We tried beverages at all of these places, which combined with the extreme heat of the day made riding the bikes progressively harder. By 5pm we were exhausted, and headed back to the hostel. We just went to the supermarket to get our dinner organised and opted for our first vegetarian meal. It was so cheap the girls suggested never buying meat again. I don´t know if they were joking, but I let them know it wasn´t very funny regardless.
We´re heading off to Iguazu falls tomorrow and shall be spending Christmas in Salta. The Iguazu trip is 36 hours on a bus, I just hope it´s not as tedious as the last trip... That may not be a realistic thing to hope for, but I´ve still got a shred of optimism in me.

Catch yáll!
Chuckles