From Santiago we headed east, back across the border, to Argentina. This was a beautiful but painful trip. The border we crossed was in the middle of the Andes, and we had to do 30 switchbacks to get up the mountain. It was spectacular scenery. Unfortunately, when we got to the border at the top of the mountain, we were stuck in a queue for 3 hours!
In the end we made it to our destination - Mendoza. This is where 70% of Argentina's wine is produced so, of course, we had to do a tour of the wineries. We chose the bicycle self tour option. We caught a bus out to the region and joined a couple from Sweden to hire bikes and cycle around to a few wineries, a beer garden for lunch and olive growers. The weather, the wine and the company made for a great day.
From here we headed to San Juan and San Agustin. We hung out with a Yankee hippie named Turtle, a cool brother and sister from Germany, and a well travelled Columbian lady for our couple of nights here. The main attractions were the Valle de Luna (Valley of the Moon) and dinosaur fossils. The oldest dinosaur fossil in the world was found here. We did a our of the national park, to see the valley, the fossils and some cool rock formations.
On the day of our departure from this town (San Agustin) the hostel guide offered us a free tour of the nearby mountains if we modeled in some photos for him. He basically wanted the blonde Germans but James and I still got to come along for the ride. He offered the tour at about 2:30pm and said to be ready in 5 minutes... He assured us we would be back by 3:30pm so that we had enough time to eat and head down to the bus stop for our 5pm bus. However, in true South American style, we were still waiting to leave for the tour at 3:30pm. The guide came out and apologised saying he had fallen asleep. Anyway we still went and got back just in time for our bus with a few rushed empanadas for a very late lunch.
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