Sweet Mendoza.. wubwubwubwubwubwubwub (now with 100% more photos)

Just a brief note for parental units before reading this, a) we are fine, b) Nick and I didn't do anything too stupid so please don't stress, c) Dad you would have loved it...Party week!

As soon as we arrived in Mendoza over a week ago it looked pretty cool,we met a fake New Zealander (originally from England) and got a taxi together to our hostel, the hostel was great and had a pool surrounded by beautiful people so we were happy and got into the BBQ spirit instantly. We bumped into a bunch of "gap brats" 18 year old gap year students who had more money than sense, plums in their mouth, and zero charm, anyway they seemed to love Nick and I despite our best attemps to be rude to them whenever possible. After two nights at our hostel we moved on to another down the road and they followed us there!

When Nick and I arrived at the new hostel we bumped into our friends we met in Bariloche! the huge group of Californians, who seemed delighted to see us and vice versa, we instantly agreed to go on a wine tour of Mendoza and I ran down the road to let Sophs know we now had a party of 10 and that she was going to get a party over the next couple of days and quite possibly the sex that she was longing for, (by the way she is 32 looking 25!) So the huge group of us got a bus to where we rented bikes and began the wine tour, it was a brilliant day, really hot, lots of wine and cycling, bearing in mind how un coordinated i can be once pissed it was hillarious and i think we all managed to injure ourselves in one way or another be it going over the handle bars, wearing down our crotches with the bike seats, or falling off our bikes in odd ways.

We arrived home after the tour having got lost several times whilst on it, and drank a stupid amount at the hostel and did more zoidberg impressions than you thought were ever possible.

Another great thing about Mendoza was the fact that Emily was there (old house mate) and Dana the Canadian we had been stalking for a while. Emily bumped into us on a night out with Dana and made us feel loved and we went out twice them which was cool. Mendoza has a beautiful tree lined lake and glowing light display at night which looks like a magic mushroom and a cool night market just to show we did actually step out of the hostel despite our week of hangovers.

Various haircuts took place at the hostel, we got rid of Phil's hair and gave him a hawk and Sarah (skunk) cut nick's hair which was a bit of a disaster and I have just fixed it, he looks hot again now. The American's sure know how to do a BBQ and we had several whilst at the hostel each more impressive than the next with more alcohol than the last, and with a smeg head called Jessie providing members of the group with larger and larger quantities of coke, ending badly for some.

Oh and I fell off a bus... they don't fully stop so you get off whilst they are moving I missed judged it and am a bit bruised but I rolled quite a long way in an Indiana Jones esc fashion which was cool. There were several roberies at the hostel which we managed to avoid but quite a lot of people got hit.

The main event of the week has to be our road trip up into the mountains. We rented a van for ten of us which Nick and Seabass drove. We had the ipod blaring, good food, some wine, and Jeff had a fuck off jar of pot that people slowly made their way through. Unfortunately for us there were random police checks along the road and we got pulled over. Skunk speaks fantastic spanish and is very pretty and sweet which helped, he was furious that the van smelt of Alcohol (luckily this had been thrown out earlier) but also that we didn't have our passpots on us, photocopies apparently were not good enough. We had been swimming in a lake earlier and Lonnie, Skunk and Soph all had tribal style clay faces which he didn't seem impressed by at all. After making us stand outside the van he began to check through it, looking through bags, taking off pannels and generally scaring the shit out of us. Sarah did a great job of looking perplexed and when he asked to check the ipod speakers and Run DMC's "Tricky" came booming out he actually broke a smile and some how we got away without him finding the pot. For some stupid ass reason Jeff decided before we got to another police check to swollow the weed rather than chuck it away or anything, he was not a happy bunny later (nick: methinks he was telling porkies - he would have been even more of a mess had he actually eaten it!) Anyway we got to the mountains saw some beautiful views and had a great time, amazed by the fact we escaped a 2 year jail sentence, but apparently most Argentinians don't know what pot looks like, not that we really want to risk it.

Anyway our last few days were spent relaxing and having more BBQ's and more alcohol, we have some great pictures which we can't upload at the moment but I will do so when possible (nick - done!)

Soph has now come with us up north to Salta and we are basically bumming here until we can get to Bolivia in a few days wooohoooo! and there we will hopefully run into someold friends again.

Take care

Flossie

x

Chileno Dancing

Just a short video of some silly dancing in Santiago from a few days ago, keep an eye out for the guy that is:

a) too old
and,
b) waaaay too keen!

Pucon and Santiago

After a brilliant time in Bariloche we arrived in Pucon in Chile. Basically we went there just because they had a big volcano and we thought it would be cool. When we arrived in the town we got a bit lost as the "lonely liar" had an old address for the hostel we were in search of, the hostels owner then came up to us in a pick up van, baring in mind it was pitch black at night and we didnt know who he was, and offered to take us to the right hostel. I instantly said that he must be fucking joking and I wasnt going to get into his creepy van, it transpires that he and his funny looking wife were lovely and being full up for that night, booked us another hostel and took us to it agreeing that they would have room the following night. The other hostel we stayed in had three tiny kittens so i was sold and reasonably annoying as i gulped down my food so I could play with them whilst nick was eating his food in the evening and in the morning, and pined as we had to leave them.

The next day we returned to lovely Herman and Marias hostel, Herman owned an activity store in town so we set about organising our trip for the following day up the big fuck off volcano.

The volcano trip was hillarious for several reasons...

Luckily there were only 4 of us in our group as well as our guide which was great, and one girl had a bad ankle so had to go back down the volcano near the beggining so i was stuck with three boys, Rodrego our guide who loved the ladies lets put it that way, Daniel a yank, and Nick and myself, we each had our strengths and weaknesses and took our turns at being a bit shit at different things. Baring in mind that it took over 5 hours to get to the summit and only an hour to get down you can take a guess just how steep it was. We had to climb on ice using our ice picks to steady ourselves, it was bloody scary at times, and i am so greatful that i dont suffer from vertigo otherwise you would be screwed. Even with factor 60 on we caught the sun and climbing on the ice took ages and was very hard going and a bit demorilising as it took about 30 mins to cross what looked like 15 meters. Other groups were allowed to use crampons but oh no Rodrego would have non of it. I was nearly dead by the time we reached the top and I could have hit Rodrego the amount of times he said Vamos vamos vamos but the view from the summit was amazing and we were right over the clouds.

The smell of sulphur at the top was really strong and Nick did some good gagging and an Isreali girl from another group had a bit of an asthma attack slash panic attack whereby Rodrego leapt up and carried her to higher ground asap... loving the ladies. I got to see some lava though so thats all that mattered really and i threw some volcanic rocks over the side like a stupid big kid, oh and we bumped into Nicks god sisters ex boyfriend, my god that is tenuous, but he is lovely and let me have some ketchup so i recon she should probably ditch her current boyfriend and get back with tiny bearded lovely ketchup dude.

After we had been at the top for about 40 mins I asked Rodrego how the hell we were getting down to which he replied, we slide down, of course you do stupid flo. so we put on our crazy yellow jump suits that were sexy and were instructed how to slide down the volcano. Half of this was done on our asses literally sliding down, and the rest was basically sking without skiis. I loved the sliding but could not stay upright when we were meant to be, after me shouting back at Rodrego several times he just held my hand on the way down basically pulling me allong like a toboggan, a glowing yellow stupid toboggan, which was cool.

It was really good fun and a real achievement and when we got back home Rodrego cracked open a couple of beers for us and some fake non descript pringle things and we were happy chappies.

The next day was recovery day, the boots we had been made to wear the previous day were snow boots and looked and felt ridiculous and my legs felt like jelly. I managed to fall asleep and loose nick for a couple of hours this day but finding him again we agreed to relieve our weary limbs at the natural hot springs the next night.

We were picked up for the hot springs at 8pm and guess who should be in the van but mr lover lover himself Rodrego, who I had already bumped into earlier that day in search of nick and he had expressed his interest in all things ladies, British, and bikinis. Fearing a reasonably embarrassing night we met loads of really nice people whilst wearing next to nothing and had a really good time, to state the obvious the hot springs were really hot but really really nice kind of like really deep rock pools, there were 7 in total of varying heats, probably not at all naturally heated it was dark after all, but i like to believe they were.

After lots of lazing around enjoying the sun we decided to head for Santiago...

We are now at a really nice hostel called Chilli hostel. Our first night was a bit of a challenge as a BBQ was organised and no body there seemed to speak much English but we attempted to speak to them, got ourselves understood, and by way of reward an irish girl arrived at the end of the evening, yey, by the way I cant use any punctuation on this computer as the keys are fucked so image where I would have put things please. Any way Santiago is a bit weird, we have visited itçs beautiful parks and yesterday we went to the poet Pablo Nerudas house which was really really cool he collected anything and everything and his house his like an amzing flo dream world. But the city is covered in smog from polution and makes my eyes sting he he brilliant stuff huh. As it is easter weekend the whole city has shut down and hardly anything is open, crowds are accumilating round a huge statue of Mary in the middle of the city and there seems to be a big live baned rehearsing ready to play on easter sunday. No chocolate eggs for me this year booooo, the chocolate in Santiago is shite, any way we are heading to wine capital Mendoza back in Argentina on Monday and meeting up with Emily so that is something to look forward to, and we may be meeting up with a canadian we met a couple of weeks back to.

Love to all

flossy

xxx

7 days of laziness

So we travelled for 30 odd hours, the bus broke down a few times, and finally got to Bariloche and did nothing for a week and it was fucking sweet!

ok so there's slightly more to it than that but we were pretty fucking lazy however after our 5 day trek i feel that we earnt it.

We stayed in a hostel that had been recommended to us by a girl in El Calafate (thank you freakishly blonde belgian girl) and it was really cool. stayed in dorms again since there was only one double room and it was a bit pricey but we were really glad we stuck around. the first night we went out for dinner and came back and chatted to a couple of english sisters but pretty standard evening really. Until bed time when flo and older sister Imogen had gone to bed and I was still chatting to younger sister Alannah and a few other guys who were trying to persuade Alannah to go out with them for the evening but she said that her sister had gone to bed and that she wouldnt go out without her, the guys took this as a sign to go collect the sister from bed, but allanah pointed them in the direction of our room so whilst she made a bid for freedom, the guys had collected flo and carried her up the stairs despite her protests that she didnt even have a sister.

Middle of our first proper day and a crazy looking long-haired ginger swiss girl came up to us and asked us if we fancied making pizza that night since a load of them were planning on making some. slightly scared, and since we had no plans, we said yes and flo went off with a few of them to collect ingredients from the supermarket.

So that afternoon was spent sorting out all the pizza things (basically chopping shit for us and making proper pizza bases for marco, the swiss ex-baker) and also getting to know all the other guys in the hostel, and finally realising that the girl strutting around in a bikini on a cloudy day was not doing so because she was a little bit too obsessed with getting a tan but because she had a number of insects burrowed into her skin (mmmmmmmm, nice) and the combination of salt and sun would kill the evil little fuckers.

So everyone in the hostel was really nice and the pizzas were really tasty, a bonus.

The next day was the most active we got for the whole week, we rented a car and took a drive around the '7 lakes'. The views from the roads were beautiful, you'll have to look at the photos, and we even got an opportunity to stop at a very remote point for a bit of cheeky skinnydipping!

the rest of the time was spent lazily wandering around the town and eating the tasty chocolate bumping randomly into amanda's ex boyfriends, ok that only happened once but still very random. dave is cycling from tierre del fuego in the south to venezuela in the north the crazy fucker.

we also managed to fit in a couple more communal eating nights with a big barbeque, although i dont think ours was as impressive as the guys who cooked a whole goat before we arrived, and a mexican food night with homemade tortillas, guacamole and salsas (thanks tashina et al.) and a couple of nights out at the bars of bariloche drinking tasty local beers and some dirty quilmes as well (its like an argentinian carling but actually drinkable!)

oh, and flo loved the dog a little bit too much, i think it reminded her of herself (in a good way! before i get hit)

peace out

nick