Thanks to a certain someone forcefully making me catch up on the blog following a facebook conversation where I confessed I was 6 places ahead of the last blog, here I am sitting at a computer screen when I could be out watching wild sea lions perched on rocks literally about a metre below our feet at a peer, or going to a museum to see the world`s oldest mummies (interestingly, the ancient Chilean`s mummified their dead around 3000 years before Egypt yet Egypt are the ones who get all the credit)....but I guess I`ll get to doing all that tomorrow, cos this blog is more important apparently. Love you long time Jess! Get back to your `reading`! (tee hee)
So.................chocolates munched we said goodbye to Bariloche and made our way to our final stop in Argentina, Mendoza. Clearly we had planned well as Mendoza is Argentina`s wine region, so a good place to see off Argentina. Mendoza actually produces 70% of the 1.5 billion litres of Argentinean wine production (no I didn`t learn that from a tour, I just got that from Wikipedia, but even if that`s not true, we did learn that it produces a lot of wine).
Arriving really early morning in however meant that that wine would have to wait. But we were ecstatic to be offered eggs and pancakes for breakfast from the hostel which was a welcome break from the normal bread, jams and fruit. As we couldn`t check in yet, we played cards until we could and then we ventured out into town and found some fountains where they had decided to colour the water pink.
More importantly, we came across a cafe which upon first glance looked like a Cafe Nero we would find in the UK, but out here they have their heads screwed on right and named it wisely.
After noticing the hostel offered BBQ for about 11 quid we turned it down to save up for our wine fund and got a boring pasta. Sitting with the other hostel folk whilst they ate their BBQ food, we made the right choice, as they got about 4 tiny bits of meat, and we all got as much free wine as we wanted courtesy of the hostel, so cheap pasta was the way forward.
The next day we opted for an excursion that I would excel in.....sunset horseback riding. Arriving at the ranch I realised I wasn`t going to be quite as good as I thought as I petted what I thought was my horse.
After being redirected to an actual horse which I would be riding, I was keen to hop onto `Vino Tinto` meaning `red wine`, apt for both the wine region and my love of alcohol............
...I succeeded with no help whatsoever as this picture demonstrates......no this guy didn`t help me at all.
Jen successfully got onto her horse `Zorro`, everything was going way too swimmingly.
How hard could it be with this little kid prancing about on his horse without a care in the world.
After a quick test run around to get to know our horse and attempt to control it, we set off in our little group of five (one girl we knew from the hostel named Kathryn and another couple we just met, one of which had worked with horses for 10 years), led by our instructor James Franco.
Horse riding was pretty cool, we followed the instructor through a dirt track through the Argentinean mountains. For some reason, Jen had a crap horse (even though she`ll tell you Zorro was awesome - yes he was awesome actually, he didn´t bow down to peer pressure to be speedy - aka crap - stop editing my editing Jack - only when you admit Zorro was poo - he was lovely - noooottttt - stop it - ok) and it just seemed to plod along at its own pace. You can see the gap between the others forming.
With my horse at the back of the group apparently wanting to go faster, he was literally with his head up Jen`s horses arse. I didn`t mind so much as I was on the Vino Tinto`s back and not up Zorro`s arse however that situation quickly changed as Zorro decided to cock his tail and let a massive poo out in Vino Tinto`s face. Luckily I saw it coming with the cocking of the tail and managed to guide Vino away, didn`t stop him hurrying back up to the arse again afterwards though.
With Zorro`s poo both fresh in my mind and on the floor, I hung back a bit to attempt to get some artistic photos, mainly of our silhouette.
Getting to a resting point, our instructor checked all our saddles as we would climb a steep hill to get a good view.
With Jen`s horse refusing to do anything that Jen asked it to along the way, I decided to play around a bit with my horse seeing as mine actually did what I told it to. I found it pretty funny too, showboating doing circles. Tee hee.
Upon getting to the top there were pretty cool views and the instructor told us a bit about the wildlife. At one point he was talking about a purple vulture and as soon as he did, one literally flew about 10 metres above our heads so that was pretty cool.
Back on the horses and after Jen wasn`t too impressed that the instructor made all the horses speed up a bit, we arrived at the ranch for a BBQ. Jen gave Zorro a pat (even though he sucked) and said her goodbyes.
Clearly a long day for the horses, out came the piss, as pretty much all of them proceeded to take the opportunity to relief themselves systematically.
....Onto the BBQ, with Juan our chef showing off a pretty good chunk of meat. Argentinean BBQ`s are pretty cool, they only use wood, no coal, and only use the embers of the wood so you get a proper BBQ taste.
Accompanying the BBQ was the mandatory Mendoza wine, 5 litres to be precise between the group, meaning almost a litre each after the instructor and chef got in on the action.
Food done, and with wine in hand, our instructor James Franco (not really called that if you were wondering that, but he looked like him even though this picture doesn't really show it, but trust me, in person he was James Franco) cracked out some tunes on the guitar in English and Spanish with some funky remixes somehow incorporating Elvis with Barbie girl.
After a good old laugh we were all then treated to our driver playing the guitar, who to our surprise was an actual Argentinean folk music player and it was awesome even though we couldn`t understand a word he was saying. With my limited Spanish knowledge it sounded at one point to me as if he were saying `I can kill the whale`, turns out that wasn`t what he was saying at all!
After a long old day we went back to the hostel where Kathryn had to go to bed after she realised she was actually allergic to horses! Picked the wrong excursion there eh Kathryn?!
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