We were pretty sad to leave our friends and BA behind, but fortunately we were on our way to the perfect place to drown our sorrows. We began on the bus with red wine and champagne. Our very polite bus attendant approached us just after we left the terminal and questioned us in Spanish. Unfortunately we couldn’t understand, and upon my polite ‘¿Hablas inglés?’ he said ‘A little… let’s play bingo’. A minute later he handed us a bingo card, grabbed a microphone and off we went!

We arrived not so fresh at 8.30am on Wed and jumped in a taxi to our B&B. Unable to check in for a couple of hours we stepped out to check out the area and see if we could find a wine bar. Unfortunately the town was still pretty sleepy, so we had a coffee and some medialunas and looked around for a wine tour for the next day. Later that day we found a great place and booked on a bit of a posh tour, and as a bonus they gave us a voucher for a free glass of wine! Happy at last, we made our way to The Vines of Mendoza and ate cheese, drank wine and chatted to the staff who were all too happy to begin our vino education.

We dragged ourselves out of bed the following morning, ready to be picked up at 9am to start ‘tasting’. Already in the bus when we arrived were Bill and Mark from DC. Lovely guys who had already done a tour with the same company only two days before, a good sign! Mark is a Spanish teacher so it was pretty interesting having him around. Soon after, we picked up Walter, a Brasilian guy who was VERY into his wines. Needless to say, we felt a little like children amongst the grown ups! However, I was to discover towards the end of the day that Bill and Mark didn’t take it too seriously, when I commented that one of the reds smelled like washing up liquid and they chuckled along with me!

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…eat a couple of 450g perfectly cooked, juicy Bife de Lomos and a huge bowl of papas fritas, after a starter of grilled provolone cheese, then followed by a huge slice of ‘Guilt Cake’, and all accompanied by a great Malbec from Mendoza. But we managed it in Buenos Aires, more than once… a lot more than once in fact.

It’s been a long time since our last post, and we had a bit of time in Australia before we left to begin the last section of our journey in South America, so I’ll start back then. Here goes… this is going to be a long post!

After our wedding we had a wonderful couple of weeks up in Cairns, where it was a comfortable winter temperature of 28°C. We had enough time to relax after the wedding, to enjoy some post-wedding quiet time with family, and to start to think about a rough plan for South America. At the beginning of June we said goodbye to Cairns and returned to Sydney to catch up with friends for a few days. The World Cup had begun and the forced football fever had temporarily gripped a large enough portion of the nation to warrant a big screen in Darling Harbour and football-themed ads on television. It wasn’t the best place in the world to be, with the tournament taking place in South Africa, and after finding myself as the only person willing to get up at 3am to watch England play the USA, the following night it was a little easier to stay awake. It was the night that the ‘Socceroos’ (an unfortunate nickname) would be playing their opening match against the Germans at 3.30am. After spending the evening out with friends, Janna (an Australian/German friend, and a big F1 fan) and I decided to pop to a bottle shop on the way back to her place in Bondi to buy our fuel for a night/morning of sport – lots of Doritos, a decent sized bottle of vodka and plenty of Red Bull. Alexandra promptly crashed out on the sofa after a single sip of the drink, leaving Janna and I to finish off the rest while watching the Canadian Grand Prix. At 3am, after the race (which Hamilton won, the only English success of this post) we woke Alexandra and all stumbled, red-eyed and weary, to the local pub to watch the football. After the Aussies were comprehensively handed their coats by the Germans, we were surprised to run into some people from Framestore – small world and all that – and at 7am despite us feeling like zombies we went with them for breakfast to have a chat and a catch-up. Afterwards, Alexandra and I decided to try and get a few hours sleep.

After a great few days in Sydney with good food, drink and friends, we didn’t want to put our backpacks on again, knowing that it’d mean the last chapter of our trip was beginning. Despite our reluctance we caught our flight to Buenos Aires excited at all the things we’d be doing there. With a 13 hour flight, and with an awkward time difference from Sydney, we knew we’d be tired when we arrived, but a lucky upgrade to premium economy certainly helped soften the blow. Considering our exhilarating but exhausting time in India, our intention in South America is to spend longer in quite a few places over the few months we’ve got here. BA was one of those places and we were looking to spend at least 4 weeks there to really get to know the place.

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