The cama busses certainly are more comfortable than your average Murrays coach, but none of us had what one would term a peaceful night’s sleep. Anna and Amy got cooked a few times by the heating under their seats while I occasionally froze from a draft from the window. But we arrived in Mendoza in early morning and found our way to the hostel.
Being so early (like 7.30am) we couldn’t check in so spent most of the morning catching up on email, watching DVD’s etc before we were able to check in properly. Being a Sunday we found out where the local handicrafts markets were and headed down there only to discover lots of empty stalls. It was 1pm so we thought we had missed them, but quickly realized that we were applying Australian/New Zealand market logic, not Argentinean time, they were only just setting up!
We headed off to find some lunch and found local place where we got salad (yay!) and lots of meat. There were sausages of two kinds, one beef, the other blood, which we tried and tasted quite good but the texture was awful, some other unidentified meat and really delicious ribs. We also tried some of the local wine to go with it.
Filled up with tasty meat and wine we headed back to the markets. Only half the stands were full but we found some lovely jewelry. At one of the stands we met two American girls who were deciding on earrings as well. They agreed that the jewelry here is fantastic.
We continued along the markets, then headed down to find somewhere for a drink. On the way we ran into the American girls, Rachel and Erin again and they joined us. We had a great chat, Rachel is working for the peace corp in Paraguy and Erin has just been working on a farm in Argentina before doing an internship in La Paz. We got on really well but wanted to go back to the market so agreed to meet up for dinner.
We headed back to find the market in full swing now and bought some seriously stunning stuff. It is mostly silver, all handmade filigree with local semi precious stones set in. We are doing pretty well with our purchases and we will have some lucky friends and family as well!
We headed back to meet Rachel and Erin who had also brought a guy from their hostel, David. We found a good pizza place, and over pizza (topped with various interesting things but of course this being Argentina there was plenty of cheese and ham) had a really nice dinner and good conversation including some good tips for Boliva.
On the way home Anna fed various stray dogs with hot dogs, becoming the sausage fairy as we like to call her.
It has been a really nice relaxed day, and even though we have eaten and drunk heaps we have walked miles so we are set for a really good night’s sleep.
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