Mendoza (Christmas and New Year)

Mendoza is now probably my second favourite city in the world (after the bright lights of Walthamstow of course). Tree-lined boulevards, amazing old houses, probably the world's best ice creams, wine shops on every corner, beautiful people, and all of it surrounded on 3 sides by miles of vineyards, and the highest snow-capped reaches of the Andes on the fourth.
We spent a wonderful Christmas day sunbathing in the huge city park, (along with the rest of the city - it seems to be the thing to do), and we spent Boxing day touring the wineries of the Maipu region on our bikes. The 60km we covered in Maipu is going into 'the bank' to recoup the lost 160kms between San Juan and Mendoza.
The bulk of our days here have been spent enjoying the benefits of being in a civilised city, ie; day trips to water parks, and finally finding an engagement ring that Catheirne likes.


To see in the New Year we wanted to do something special so we decided to head for the mountains. Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas and whilst we hadn't organised our own summit bid, we could at least spend NYE at one of the base camps. We spent 3 amazing days dodging pack mules and trekking up to 4300m where we saw glaciers, the impressive south face of Aconcagua, and lots of gore-tex. After so long in the desert, I couldn't believe that it would be that cold up there so I didn't take the advice to pack gloves. Our first night in the tent reached minus 5 (the wind added a bit more on top), and the second day saw us huddled outside our tent cooking rice in a blizzard. Naturally my hands went blue and then swelled up to twice their size so that I couldn't make a fist (luckily for the pesky mules). Naturally Catherine packed gloves. It was an amazing experience from start to finish with some of the best scenery of the whole trip, and some of the nicest people we've met. It was great spending a couple of days with mountaineers from all over the world making their final preparations before their summit bids, and we spent NYE sheltering from the snow listening to their stories (both success and horror) from past expeditions. Amazing ... if you like that sort of thing.


Tomorrow, we set off for our next leg destination of Bariloche and the southern lake district, 1200-1500km to the south, depending on the route we eventually take. Whatever the route, we still face at least another 800km of desert before we reach cooler climes, but the principal difference seems to be the switch from mountains to flat prairie. Hopefully we'll have the wind on our backs!