23 April – Mendoza

After leaving Santiago we headed back to Argentina over a very high mountain range. The scenery was spectacular especially when you looked back down the mountain to see the road zig-zagging back and forth. We got to a height of 2130 metres before we came to the border. It took us nearly 2 hours to get through as the customs seemed to be x raying everyone´s baggage and then making quite a few people open theirs for inspection. However, when it came to our turn, no bags were checked and we were through the whole process in a couple of minutes – quite a relief as it would have taken ages just for each of us to get all our bags and sleeping bags etc together. As we started to descend on the Argentinian side the scenery was even more amazing – very steep mountain sides with wonderful colours and many small waterfalls feeding into the River Mendoza which we followed for mile after mile. We stopped to bushcamp in a very isolated spot which has its pitfalls ( No loos or fresh water etc) but was made extra special by the brilliant night sky and no light pollution. We saw the Southern Cross and the Milky Way and many other stars as well as a couple of shooting stars. Up early the next morning we continued to Mendoza arriving at lunch time. After settling into our hostel and having a shower and putting on some clean clothes we headed out into the balmy sunshine in sandals and t shirts (what a welcome change after the cold of the last couple of weeks). Today, Sunday we bought a map with 4 walking tours of the city we have already completed 2 of them and will probably do the others before going on a wine tasting trip tomorrow afternoon. One notable thing is that they still run a trolleybus system which costs less then 20 pence for any length of ride.

On Tuesday we leave to continue our journey to La Paz.