Whoever though that cycling and wine would be a good combination has started a phenomenon in Mendoza. I don't know which one was first, but there is a selection of bike rental companies located in the heart of the Mendoza wine region. An added bonus is that there is also a lot of liqour, chocolate and olive oil production in the same area. A day of cycling around getting increasingly drunk and stuffed on chocloate, olives and preserves sounded to me like as good a reason as any to visit the city of Mendoza. However, there is only one problem with this... the heat is ridiculously intense which is the last thing you need when embarking on these activities!

Before I embarked on the obligatory wine tour, I thought I should have a relaxation day to rest from all my recent exercise and the 18 hour overnight bus from Bariloche on which I watched both "Meet the Parents" and "Meet the Fockers" dubbed in Spanish. If you are after relaxation in Mendoza there is a very nice spa with natural hot springs etc, but I was not really in the mood for pampering and being caked in mud so I opted for a morning of reading by/in the small pool at the hostel before spending the afternoon paragliding. Paragliding is something that I have never tried before despite a couple of previous efforts in various locations which have been scuppered by the weather. However, this time it was a success and I finally got to have a go.

The trip started with a 20 minute drive to a point where we switched into an open 4x4 truck. I was joined on this little adventure by four Argentineans and a Brazilian, of whom all but one were staying in my hostel. They were all really nice and friendly, making the experience lots of fun. When we eventually climbed the windy roads of the mountain and reached the launch point, I was struggling to keep up with the everything in the conversation. As there was a lack of professionals to go around, the group had to split into two and jump in stages; I was in the second group. One of the Argentineans who also had to wait (Demián) took it upon himself to begin teaching me some Spanish. This guy talks at the speed of a thousand gazelles, with a strong Argentinean accent and is constantly using slang, idomatic phrases and way too many tenses for me to get my head around. With the others in the group I did not have anywhere near as much trouble understanding them, but I found it virtually imposible to understand anything he said to me in Spanish. Fortunately he could speak English which made things a little easier! These "lessons" continued throughout my stay in Mendoza and I think it entertained the other locals to hear the apparently "vital to my survival in Argentina, especially nights out in Buenos Aires" things that he was teaching me.

It all started off with me asking ¿Tienes miedo? which means Are you scared? and he thought it would be good to teach me to ask instead ¿Estas cagado? which means more like Are you sh*tting yourself?  Here are some of the other highlights for those of you who wish to learn to speak Argentinean:

Tirar los perros - literally: to throw the dogs. This is a phrase that gets used when a guy is giving all his best lines and going in guns blazing to try and seduce a woman.

I have friends smaller than me :D

Directo a los papeles - literally: directly to the papers. This phrase is used to describe someone who does not beat around the bush and launches straight in with explaining what they want, when and how.
Te parto como a un queso - literally: I break you like cheese. Apparently this is a chat-up line that I should try out if I like a guy, although I'm not sure I could bring myself to actually say this to anyone!
Chamuyero - This is the term given to a guy who is throwing his dogs, but in a more subtle and gentle manner, like a smooth operator.
Dormilón - a 'sleepy' guy who is a bit useless and does not get around to throwing his dogs; usually some chamuyero will come in and swipe the woman away from under the dormilón's nose.
Porque no te vas poquito al carajo - an insult to tell the someone to take a hike. Carajo is the part of a ship which acts as the 'naughty wall', but it has been taken into slang and is used as quite an offensive word.
Che boludo - che is what people in Argentina all call each other, like we use 'mate', and this is where Che Guevara got his nickname from. Boludo essentially means 'stupid', so this is a insulting term of endearment.
Boludeando - when you make someone look like a boludo.
Ella tiene de hijo a ele - literally: she has him like a child. This phrase is used when a guy is the butt of all of a girl's jokes and he does not bite back.
Cancherita - apparently if you look this word up in the dictionary then you will see a picture of me. Basically I got called this by Demián as I was always mocking him/"having him like a child" for being shorter than me and telling him that he speaks English with an Eastern European accent. I don't think I was being that mean... I was just stating the facts!

Anyway, I got sidetraked... let's get back to the top of Cerro Arco where I am stood dressed in a harness attached to a man by a couple of caribinas, and he is attached to a parachute. In order to take off I had to try and run to the edge of the mountain as he launched the Canopo. I used the word 'try' here as I was pretty much running on the spot, but once the 'chute was up he joined me in running and I was soon running off the edge of the cliff and soaring into the air. If you have ever been skydiving or bungy jumping this is not going to raise your adrenaline levels too much, however it was the first activity of this kind for some of the others in the group and they definitely estaban cagados! It was a nice peaceful and relaxing 30 minute drift around with beautiful views from 800m up. Obviously it would be much better to do it without someone strapped to the back of you, but I wasn't about to embark on a paragliding course without ever trying it. On a similar note I had also enquired about finally completing my solo skydiving course, but there are no companies who will do this in high season as they are too booked up with tandem jumps. Hopefully I'll find somewhere I can do this at some point during my year away.

That evening we had a big BBQ and I got to meet many more people who were staying at my hostel and continued with my Spanish lessons. There was probable about 15 of us in total, and a whole lot of meat and wine to consume. As luck would have it, some Argentinean fella came over towards the end of the night and went directly to the papers and started to throw the dogs at me. He interrupted a conversation that I was having with Damián and his friend Hernán, and I was convinced that it was a set up by the boys to give me practice on all the things they had taught me that day. They assured me that they had nothing to do with it and this guy was genuinely there off his own back. Either way I did not want to break him like cheese and I manager to get rid of him after he had returned three or four times. Argentineans are still proving to be less persistant than their Brazilian neighbours whose attempts will usually run into double figures and move onto blatant begging before they give up.

The next morning I was offered some Fernet and coke by one of the guys at the hostel. Apparently this is widely used here as a 'hair of the dog’ hangover cure. Fernet is not too dissimilar to Jaegermeister and I’m not convinced of its compatability with coke, but who I am to judge? When in Rome…  I figured it would be ok considering I was going to be tasting wine all day, so why not get in early and start at breakfast time? At about midday I rounded up the Canadian girl and Swedish guy that I had arranged to do the cycling wine tour with and we headed off to find the bus to the vineyard/bike rental area. Given that there is an option for half a day/4 hour bike rental with Bikes and Wines we figured it must be possible to get it all done in the afternoon... we were wrong! For anyone interested in doing the cycling wine tour, the best advice I can give you is to leave Mendoza as close to 9m as your hangover will permit so that you can reach the rental place at around 10am when they open. Also, I would advise going with Mr Hugo as his bikes looked the best and they seemed to be having a good after-tour party when we cycled past at the end of the day.

I was surprised to learn the the furthest winery from the rental place was 12km away, and most of the good wineries were also in this general area. If I had a bike rental company there I would open it further along the bus route and nearer to the wineries for lazy tourists such as myself; it's way too hot to be cycling that far (and back)! On the way we stopped in at the Wine Museum, but it was closed for lunch so we went to an olive/olive oil, liqour, chocolate and preserve factory just down the road whilst we were waiting for it to reopen. Here we could take a tour for a small fee and sample some of the delights that they produce there including absynthe with wormwood - yum yum. Some of their jams were heavenly and their olives were also very tasty, but I was not too keen on many of their liqours and the chocolate was a disappointment after Bariloche!

We managed to somehow pass an hour by tasting pretty much everything they produce there and then headed back to the museum. It was fairly interesting and had lots of equipment exhibited... mainly wine-making apparatus, but also a few typewriters alongside a computer, and a small section at the end containing what looked like to me a small torture dungeon, but I didn't really make a close inspection of this! They had the biggest barrels I've ever seen and also offered us some wine to taste which they produce onsite and is only available to buy from the museum itself. The wine was not too bad at all, and made a nice change from downing shots of various strange coloured and flavoured liquids in the place down the road, plus it was free which always gets my vote.

By this point almost four hours had already passed since we left the hostel and we hadn't really got started on the cycling yet! Time to get pedalling and take on the 12km that lay ahead of us. About half way along the almost straight road to the winery was a turning down a dirt track to a recommended eatery. As we were drinking with only a bowl of cornflakes, a few olives and some jam to soak it up we thought it would be a smart move to at least grab a snack. This place was annoyingly half a mile down this track and when we arrived it was a fancy place with only hot meals on offer - thanks for the recommendation Bikes and Wines, but that really is not what I needed to be eating on a day like this - boludos.

So, we ended up continuing without food with just a quick stop off at a garage for some coke-shaped-revitalisation. The woman in the petrol station didn't give me any change when I bought my bottle of coke and when I asked why she said it was because she didn't have any. I've heard many stories about the lack of change in Argentina, but this was my first experience of someone just not giving me any without a word. I managed to find a smaller note to give to her and negociated a lolly to make up the difference that she still owed me; it was good practice for my Spanish at least! The most annoying thing about the lack of change (especially coins) is that you need them if you want to take a bus anywhere. When I arrived in Mendoza I had a purse with a good handful of change in it for this exact reason which I managed to stock up on as I've moved through the country. I had been carrying this around for the last few weeks, but then I had it stolen from my room in Mendoza at some point on our BBQ night. I know I should have really locked it up, but it was a purse full of coins of such an insignificant monetary value, however a great find for a bus fanatic.

After what felt like forever we reached a winery not too far from the furthest one. This looked like a good one, but it was 4pm and they have scheduled tours on the odd hours - damn. We grudgingly continued to the furthest winery and eventaully after a lot of waiting around before taking their tour/tasting session it was already 5.45pm. With no time to visit any of the other places on the way back we pedalled away to return the bikes by 6.30pm.

That evening I was disappointingly sober and came back to the hostel to find a lot of commotion. Two skater boys who I had hung about with a bit the previous night had just been kicked out of the hostel and the police were there. One of them had his wallet stolen in the hostel (notice a pattern), and raised voices from the boys combined with a bit too much alcohol lead to them having to leave, and resistance on their part resulting in the police presence. This was a shame as they were very entertaining. One was from Brazil and the other from LA; the American guy is probably the most random person I've ever met in my life and has the most hilarious stories which I hope he publishes one day. As luck would have it I bumped into them the next day, but I didn't get to see too much of their skating skills as I think they were still a little tender from the previous day's liver damage. We went to the park along with the Canadian lass I went cycling with, it was a sweltering hot day and we were seeking out a hosepipe/sprinkler to aid our cool down attempts, but the gardener did not seem too keen on that idea.

Once I had a much needed shower and said farewell to all my new friends I set off on my first ever First Class Super Cama bus. These are the bees knees of all Argentinen buses, which as I have mentioned before are pretty good even at the lower end of the scale. I had a seat that reclined fully into a bed with a curtain to make it all private, lots of wine, a glass of champagne, steak and played a round of Bingo. Unfortunately I did not win, but I was just happy that I had managed to keep up with his rapid-fire bingo calling! The film entertainment started off with an Argentinean film which was packed full of the things that I had learned in my lessons with Demián and Hernán. I managed to follow the whole film, but I don't think I would have been able to keep up with it had it not been for the Spanish subtitles to tell me what I was listening to. I hope that one day subtitles will become a thing of the past.