Of the bus trips so far, the ride from Santiago to Mendoza was the worst by far. The bus was small, cramped, bumpy and had intermittent bursts of air-conditioning wich where hardly effective; not only this, it took us 9 hours to go 400k´s! Santiago and Mendoza are on opposite sides of the mountain range so pretty much the whole journey was winding up and down mountains and following the river that ran between the valleys. There was little to no vegitation so we didnt even have any pretty trees to look out at! Additional to this it took over an hour for us to be processed at the border... grr.. i have lots of pretty stamps now though.
Mendoza is situated pretty much in the middle of the desert and is known for its wines and adventure sports (ie. white water rafting, mountain climbing). The overall town is pretty run down but it has pretty, tree lined streets and lots of shopping malls. Today we just walked around town and checked out the malls and should spend the rest of the day chilling at the hostel which has super facilities like in-room internets, table tennis, foos-ball (which Herb tells me is german for footbal..) a pool and a big keg of red wine that we have unlimited access to! When the young son of the owner hit us with his sales pitch as we exited the bus i was skeptical, but it is probably the best hostel we have stayed at in our travels. Run out of the family home it has spacious rooms, air conditioning and as the owner was super proud of; a big toilet and a bathwith a showerhead a big bigger than a cd. "two people can even shower together!" he said excitedly, "just dont drop the soap..".
We have another 3 days here wich should be a great way to wind up the trip, we´re going on a bycicle ride of the wineries tomorrow and then SKYDIVING the following day!
i have broken my camera so the upload today is the last of the photies:(
5 days to go, see you all soon!
