Mendoza, Argentina

Strange things were afoot in Mendoza. I'd arranged to meet up with Hans, a Swede I'd met travelling down the Amazon from Tabatinga to Manaus. In Manaus, we'd had some very strange experiences with Brazilian girls, Mendoza proved to be just as surreal. The girls here (mendozinas locas) outnumber the guys, and tourists are in high demand. The Argentinian guys seem to get quite jealous; at a night out in a club, after just rescuing a friend from a dangerous situation, five guys walked into the toilet behind me forming a wall between me and the door. One of them said, in Spanish, "Let's turn off the light, nobody will notice". I pushed my way out, but afterwards all the guys seemed like enemies.

The day I flew
Mendoza wasn't all about wine, women and song. On one of the few days when I managed to emerge out of bed before 4pm, I decided one of the best hangover cures could be paragliding. I borrowed a magic hat from Spike, a fellow traveller with whom I shared a few drunken nights, then set out to fly.

This was surely one of the most liberating experiences of my life, in the air a couple of eagles circled around us, checking us out and sharing our thermoclimes. Mendoza was visible in the distance below, as was the cordillera de los Andes, a 5000m volcano prominent in the distance.

Damajuana Hostel
My stay in Mendoza wouldn't have been the same had it not been for the crazy hostel in which I stayed, Damajuana. This place seems to be some kind of pilgrimage for crazy travellers, and rightly so. The staff were just the friendliest people, Rasta Max & company made everyone feel at home, organized asados (BBQs with the best Argentinian meats), and could sort out pretty much anything else you needed.

Spuddy, another dorm-mate of mine, had trouble with his top bunk, and didn't quite make it to bed most evenings. One evening he got as far as the floor of the dorm, the following evening the flowerbed in the garden seemed to be a good place to stop for the night.