Mendoza, Argentina

Hola!! So we arrived in Mendoza, Argentina (the heart of Argentina's wine country, with over 600 wineries) after a 6 hour bus ride from Santiago, Chile, which was actually quite pleasant. Two hours of which were spent at the border, but we finally arrived in late afternoon. We took a cab to our hostel, Ruca Potu. It's run by a family; the dad is this big, jolly Argentinian, his chain smoking wife, and two chubby kids. The best part of the hostel was the free wine!! Yes, FREE wine! A barrel was set up in the kitchen, and you could fill up your glass any time of the day or night. So of course we took advantage of that!

The first thing we did after checking in was find some comida! We walked into town and found a cute Italian style resaturant. We had appetizers, yummy pasta with pesto, and a bottle of wine..all for just $18USD!! It was awesome; we've never been so full! Thankfully the walk back to the hostel helped us to digest. The second we got back we started getting ready, and drinking our free vino. We went to this club that had a drag show at 2am! Oh yeah, people don't start eating dinner until like 10pm, and don't go to bars and clubs till like 1 or 2am, and don't leave until 6 or 7am, cuz that's when the after parties start. The drag show was really fun, including artists such as Madonna. Afterwards there was dancing to really good music, a mix of electronic and top 40ish tunes. And that's really hard to find, so we were enjoying it! We even got to hear Gimme More by Britney Spears! Woohoo! We took a cab back to the hostel around 6am, but unfortunately didn't have a small enough bill for the driver. So we stumbled into our 12 person dorm, and rummaged through our bags to find some dinero. We finally found a 10 peso and handed it over.

We slept in the next day, and then went out to explore the city. But not before getting a morning glass of red wine. It was a really pretty, cute town; and pretty much everything is in walking distance. We saw an archaelogical museum, a park and just wandered the streets. For dinner we each had a 40oz of Stella. Leif had a HUGE sandwich while I had two teeny, tiny empanadas! We got back to the hostel, got ready and started drinking again. We planned to go out to this club, but ended up talking to this pothead Pharmacist from Ireland and drinking wine until 6:30 in the morning! Oh well!

Three hours after passing out, we woke up, packed our stuff and went on several tours of wineries. Without time for breakfast, our hostel owner took us around in his van to a bunch of wineries. In total, we had about 6 glasses of wine, a glass of champagne, and a shot of absinthe! A very hearty breaktfast!!

We killed a couple hours at a really cool gas station, complete with tons of food and an internet cafe. We walked to the bus station to catch our overnight bus to Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, it was late and we ended up waiting around for like 2 hours. The bus was actually quite comfy, with good food and a game of bingo! About 14 hours later we arrived in Buenos Aires!! So stay tuned for a fun filled week in BsAs!!