More Argentina

So...back to Bariloche. After the rafting we spent a couple more days there chilling out. Did some bike riding (once we found the rental place, first time we walked straight past because we were arguing about mortgages!!!! why???), saw some more of the mountains and drank more beer.

We then got the night bus to Mendoza. First experience of a longer bus ride in Argentina was great. The 18 hours or so flew by in our reclining seats, we watched three films, played bingo for a bottle of wine and were even given dinner and breakfast, what more do you need? when we got off we shared a taxi (well jumped in the back of a pick-up) with tim and just from the hostel and agreed to meet up in the evening.

The day was spent sorting out a hire car for our trip to San Juan, seeing the sights in Mendoza and eating. Next day we met-up with just and tim to do the bike and wine tour. Great concept, you get a bus out to the vineyard area in Maipu, hire a rubbish bike and then cycle round all the different vineyards sampling the wares. We went to a good 5/6 different vineyards, tried lots of wine and had some good food at a little italin vineyard. The more expensive wines were deffo for sure the nicest. After the tour we took a quick power nap then headed out on the town.

Next day was an earlyish start, we weren´t too hungover, which was good considering stevo was driving. We picked up our hire car and headed out of the town without hitting anything. The route we planned to take went up towards San Juan and then through the mountains the Barreal. The lonely planet that was published in 2005 did say that the road we planned to take would be closing because of a new hydroelectric dam, however, the map we brought had it marked so we chose to ignore the information. Bad move, after taking a few wrong turns we discovered the road was definately closed. Probably why the local I had asked for directions had looked at me kind of funny. We decided to abort and spend the night in San Juan then go straight to Rodeo.

This turned out to be quite lucky as the hostel we were planning to stay at in Rodeo was fully booked when we had been planning to go because of a windsurfing contest. Rodeo itself was pretty awesome place, up in the mountains in the desert / cordillera, it´s a reservoir of turquoise blue water with a back-drop of the Andes. Pretty much everyday the wind goes absolutely mental in the afternoon, we´re talking 40-60 knots!