Mendoza, Vineyards, Horses, Lack of Sleep, and Skatespots

Mendoza is wine country essentially. I got in on the morning of the 24th, hoping I´d meet some people to pass Christmas time with. It looked doubtful when I arrived, but people filled into the hostel as the day passed. The night of Christmas Eve I was hoping to go out to dinner with some people, but we ended up having a big parrilla at the hostel.



For some reason I was really sick that day, so I was unable to eat, and went to sleep. I work up about 3:00 am and everybody was still out, so I joined them for a drink. We kept talking about how late Argentinans stay out at night, and when about 5:45 am rolled around, we decided to take a walk outside. All the bars were still open, and not just open, but completely packed! George(a British guy staying in the same dorm) went out and had an incredibly interesting time. Needless to say, I found the girl of my dreams, found out she was a lesbian, and we met a racist Argentinean trying to pass his cousin off to us because he wanted to go to a brothel.

I couldn´t fall back asleep that morning because of the heat, and a new German ended up in our hostel. We walked downtown to try to find something to do on Christmas day. Everything that I had wanted to do was closed, so we ended up doing horseback riding.







It was overpriced and super touristy, and only lasted for about 30 minutes. The good thing about it was there was a parilla after with wine, and I got to meet some interesting people from Copenhagen. They finished college and were taking a year off to travel before going back to school. I still haven´t met a single person from the states doing something like this on this trip.

That Christmas night George and I went out again with people from the hostel, and once again we didn´t return to the hostel until past 6 am.

The following day we took a bus out to Maipu, which is the place where most of the vineyards are. We rented bikes to ride around the town, and tour each bodega.



We got to one bodega, and did a tour before the rest closed. Lesson learned to leave early.





Later that night a girl I met the previous night before showed me around town, and once again we ended up staying up until about 7 am this morning. Now I have the predicament of going to Valparaiso, Chile, with some people I met, or stay in Mendoza to spend the new year.

I left quite a bit out of what happened these last few days, but they have been quite important to me, and some of the best times I´ve had on this trip so far. I really developed strong relationships with those people in my dorm, and today they all left, so a part of me is feeling a little empty at this moment. Needless to say I should be getting to sleep, since 4 days in a row without more than 4 hours is not healthy by any means. Here I´ll leave some skatespots in Mendoza!