New Friends

Learning to ski was great fun. Stu picked it up very easily and was zooming around in no time. By the end of the week we were both ok, but Stu with his knowledge of the snow from snowboarding definitely had the advantage. In the mornings it was often very icy and so not great - those lazy Argies didn´t go out with the plough very much!

We met some great people in the hostel - everyone was really friendly. Stu also tucked into some parrilla - an Argentine BBQ with 18 different types of beef (all BBQ´d though) and always eaten at least after 10pm at night. The wine flowed and the laughter was loud! We made some great friends. Luciana wants to meet up in BA to dance tango, Ximena wants us to go to Rosario for a weekend and Alemo wants us to stay in his father´s hostel at Iguazu Falls. Funniest of all was Camilla and Neil who we had a hilarious time with, particularly after 8 bottles of the worst Argentine table wine from the local tin hut (shop) which got us break dancing and singing Argie songs with our new friends.

Winding through the Andes

The coach from Santiago to Mendoza runs through the Andes, which as you can imagine is six hours of the most spectacular scenary you could see. Three hours into this journey is a small ski resort called Los Penitentes, so named as the mountains look like the hands of praying monks. We jumped off the bus in this small village in the middle of the Andes, only to find we weren´t booked into the hostel, even though we had made a reservation. Nice. It was Saturday and the village was full, so we had to go to Mendoza and stay the night there. Unfortunately Mendoza is a kicking city in the desert (yee-ha) and so was also booked up. After trying our third hostel, we managed to find a bed for the night. The next day we tried for the second time to get up to the ski resort, only we missed the bus. Finally, we arrived in Los Pen and again, the reservation wasn´t in the book and our prefered hostel was full, so we had to find alternative accommodation. Thankfully, it was Sunday so most people had gone home and next door we found a very cold room for the night and settled down to "Dumb and Dumber", dubbed in Spanish (Hayley, your favourite). Stu later looked in the reservation book and found our names crossed out - typical Argies! Even with all the fun and games, we were still chilled out and quite at ease with what was being thrown at us. What´s the point in getting stressed, at the moment we have all the time in the world! We also met Donna and James, a Scottish couple who we spent the next couple nights with sinking bottles of vino tinto.