Lauren on the blog!

The reason I (Gareth) write most of our blog posts is simply because, if you waited for Lauren to get around to posting, it would be much like getting a postcard from a friend who had been back from their holiday for six months! To be fair to Lauren, she looks after all our finances while we're away, maintaining spreadsheets of accurate daily spending so I think I get the easier job of the two of us!

Nevertheless, a number of friends and family have been asking for Lauren to write some blog posts so I may have come up with a little compromise; I write most of the post and Lauren will write her thoughts here and there (I'll put them in italics so you can skip to her bits easier if you want to)! Let's see if it works!

Lauren writes:

"Mendoza was supposed to be a quick stop over, sampling a few of Argentina's finest wines. Instead, it ended up being a place we could stop, relax and spend time enjoying what we loved to do the most: eat and drink!


Whilst Mendoza did not have a lot of historical architecture to explore, we realised we loved the alfresco restaurant culture and lapped up all of the people watching on offer whilst sipping on a mojito or two and making friends with a number of the local dogs. It reminded me a bit of Brighton, the only difference being the 35 degree heat.

I definitely got itchy feet, fearing we were missing out on discovering new places but there are a lot worse places to settle in for a while. We considered going to Salta for a few days (a long bus journey north) but as the weather was due to rain we decided to do some sun chasing and leave Mendoza a few days early and head to Valparaiso in Chile as recommended by a fellow Spurs supporter we met whilst watching Spurs lose. What a great recommendation, thanks Phil! 

Leaving Argentina felt sad, we had fallen in love with the country, the people, the food and drink and the extraordinary scenery but it's time for a new adventure. No doubt we'll see you again Argentina, next time I'll starve myself for a month beforehand #everthingisalittletighter."

We checked out of Bohemia Hotel Boutique Monday morning with sad faces. It had been a great stay but it was time to uproot ourselves and move on.

We lunched at Azafran then walked for miles through the streets of Mendoza looking for a decent pub that played football but they were all closed so we ended up setting up camp in MacDonalds where we FaceTimed Lauren's brother Elliot for some tips on our forthcoming travels (he's travelled South America before).

Everywhere we've been in SA we've noticed loads of really old cars. They're not being kept for classic car shows though, they're actually driven around daily by their owners. Mendoza has more than its fair share of them, most are rusty old heaps, but some are still in good condition. On our last day, I decided to photograph just a few that I saw. 

These pictures I took all in about 20 minutes so you can see how many there are around! No doubt they'll bring back some memories to a load of you!

We had an hour to kill before our bus left for Chile so it seemed only right to have one last mojito and get a picture with our waiter who spent more time looking at girls walking to the nearby gym than he did waiting! As we arrived he put up his thumb, went inside and returned with 2 mojitos! Are we really that predictable?!!

As he delivered our drinks he said, "Usted es un fanático de mojito" which means, "You are fanatical about mojitos!"

We returned to the hotel to collect our bags and Pablo poured us 2 large glasses of wine on the house and gave us the best bottle of Malbec he had in the hotel as a parting gift. So generous!

Clockwise from left: Me, Pablo, Lucas and Lauren.

This is Claudia one of our fantastic receptionists marvelling at the selfie stick!

It was time to leave and our taxi driver took us to the bus station in time to catch the 22:00 to Valparaiso, Chile.

En route to the station he was playing some fantastic mixes of brilliant tunes. I photographed the CD/MP3 cover but cannot find this online anywhere. Can anyone help?

Mendoza disappeared quickly into the background as we headed into the night, wondering what Chile was holding in store for us.

Our first experience of the country was: Chile was Chilly!! The bus was FREEZING and, as we'd been so hot on the bus into Mendoza, we both had worn thin clothes and I was just in t shirt and shorts! All our clothes were in the under bus storage which we wouldn't be able to get into for 8 hours!

At 1:30am we reached the Argentinean/Chilean border and were ordered off the bus. We then queued, re queued and then queued again for over 2 hours in the freezing cold whilst the customs officials occasionally stamped someone's passport but mainly chatted, drank 'Mate' (pronounced matay - a traditional SA tea drunk from a small pot through a metal straw) and ignored us all!

Tired and cold we got back on the bus only to find the driver had switched the air conditioning from 'freezing' to 'Arctic' and our final 4 hours on the bus were spent trying to find ANY WAY to keep warm and not die of frostbite! I wore my rucksack, eye mask and moneybelt for warmth, found a thin shirt in my hand luggage and Lauren found a purple headband/scarf thing in her bag that I used to compensate for having no hair! Turns out Lauren took a sneaky picture...desperate times call for desperate measures.

(This is a genuine picture of me desperately trying to stay warm!)

We eventually arrived in Valparaiso at 6:30am, jumped in a cab and headed to our guest house, La Nona, way up in the hills.

Lauren had arranged with René, the owner, for us to leave our bags there until our room was ready at 2pm but we hoped beyond hope that we could get into our room early as we were still so cold and had only had a maximum of 2 hour's sleep on the bus, most of which was in a frozen coma so didn't really count!

Unfortunately we woke René and he had no recollection of Lauren's email (even though he replied to it!) but fortunately he let us in to our room and we slept until 11am.

.................................................