hello hello from Mendoza... it is suuuuper warm over here... which is a nice change from the cold temperatures.. I think it will only last for a couple of more days though as we soon will be heading towards Patagonia. From Salta we headed to Cafayate which is where Argentinia´s wine region starts. so a course a visit to a winery and some wine tasting was a must on the programme. The landscape started to change from the stunning dry rocky scnerary ( with different colours of red) and loads of massive cactus which are at times twice my size... The Cafayate area was amrked by the wineyards and lots of agriculture and is quite similar to where we are now in Mendoza...
From Cafayate we headed to a little ranch near Cordoba. This I had marked down as one of my personal highlights of this trip as since (I used to ride quite a bit when I was younger ) I had almost dreamed about riding western style (here they call the cowboys gauchos)on a Ranch... but the lesson that I learned was that expectations are a dangerous thing.. I had imagined a really argentinian ranch but turns out that almost all the staff were English including the couple and on the two rides that we went on we had to take it quite easy.... on the other hand though the ranch was really beautiful and the surrounding area as well... We also had a big barbecue one of the nights and tried our cowboy skills attempting to lassoo a cow.. we first practised on a little tree and the gauchos then send a couple of cows towards us.. hahaha it ws a lot of fun and everything but easy... one of our guides and one of the guys from our group actually managed to capture one!! what seemed more harder though was trying to get the lassoo back off as it was literally a cow running around like a mad cow... it took three of the gauchos to get it back off.. so that was quite a good laugh...We all enjoyed the stay at the farm as it gave us the chance to relax a bit as at times it is quite tiring sitting on the bus for 4-7 hours almost every day...
We were supposed to camp somewhere between Mendoza and Cordoba last night but decided to drive all the way to Mendoza which took over 10 hours... Today we took the opportunity to explore the city which I like very much. with the warm temperatures I have the impression to be in a warmer and more quiet version of a spanish city in South America. I absolutely adore this country.. The cities so far all had a bit of a European flair, the people are simply wonderful ( sooooo friendly and open and I simply love their accent) and the food is also very nice....I think I can easily picture myself living here...
Tomorrow we have another day in Mendoza and will then cross over to Chile and stay in Santiago where our group will change again ( a lot of new people are joiing, apparently 9 new girls which our guys are very excited about hahaha they keep on hoping for the swedish netball team)...
hope you are all well
