Wine Country is great

Mendoza, Argentina

So Argentina has been great so far, a little bit more pricey than we thought but great. First of all the food is amazing, any steak loving, wine drinking individual should make it to this country because they know how to satisfy you. In Salta we went to this great steak restuarant called Viejo Jack´s. My steak was 750gs (about a 1.5lb) of amazing goodness, which is the perfect size to make anyone happy. Anyways Salta was quite a shock too because it feels more like Europe than South America, in fact all of Argentina seems that way and it´s great. Its nice to walk down the street and not stick out and draw as much attention. Also Argentines have a thick accent so our conversation skills have taken a few steps back but im sure we´ll get that figured out soon. We also got to see the first 2 games of the World Series so that was a big plus. The game was announced by a spanish announcer and since they dont pronounce the letter J it made for an interesting game pitched by Yosh Beckett.

We also decided to rent a car with our travel friends Roland and Katalin. We ended up getting a 3 door VW Gol. The Gol is the smaller cousin to the VW Golf but since Americans dont like small cars they dont send it here (i dont even think the "f" could have fit on the back of it to confuse it with the Golf). Anyways our 3 day road trip was more of an off roading trip in which we got to get off the beaten path which was great. We camped every night and the first night was at a secluded lake which hardly anyone goes to. We also got to visit a couple of bodegas (wineries) and go on a few walks. Our friend Roland has a thing for cake so we even got to test out one of the camp grounds adobe ovens which as a first for all of us, and it turned out great.

After returning to Salta we decided to hop on the 19 hour bus to Mendoza. The bus was actually very comfortable because the seats are very similiar to 1st class seat on international planes vs grey hound bus (there´s a picture of the bus in the photos and our favorite seats are the ones right over the driver.)

Mendoza has been a great town. Yesterday we rented bikes and toured the country side stopping at every winery and oliveara we could. I even tried to send some home but it would have been cheaper to buy a case of wine its on seat on a plane than ship it home... Oh well.

So i think our next move is into Chile and down into the lake district. We´re excited about this part of the trip because the best backpacking and scenery will be down that way. Anyways hope all is well and check out the pictures. Hope everyone had a good Halloween, we missed it :(

Best

Justin