Mendoza.....Or as McBain would say it "MENDOOOOZA"

Me pretending like I actually cooked that sucker...I was actually off playing backyard cricket.
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Arrived in Mendoza with Justin, Kay, John and Daniel in tow after a bit of a boozy bus ride on our first proper fancy Argentinean bus that had big cushy seats, a meal service etc...better than flying.

Booked into a hostel and then took up were we left off in Salta by having a few beers..they're just so cheap!  Someone came up with the bright idea of making a cricket bat so Justin, John and myself (the German wasn't much help) ended up finding a bit of wood somewhere out the back and fashioned a cricket bat that would not look out of place next a Gray Nichols...well maybe just a little bit but only because of the sticky tape holding it together.  With that done the afternoon was filled with teaching the German how to play cricket by throwing ping pong balls at him as fast as we could....and drinking beer.  Went out for dinner and drinks later on and then came back to the hostel to find that Kay and Justin's camera had been stolen along with a few other minor things from the dorm room they had ben sharing with us...fortunately for us they chose to ignore my camera bag full of expensive electronic equipment and just took a five year old 3Mp Camera from the other guys.

Meat
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We ended up confronting the owner, as the only person with access to the room was the guy on night shift as the dorm was locked.  In the end there was a bit of push and shove and even a couple of punches thrown between Justin and the owner (fortunately for the owner, I was down the street checking into another hostel at the time...haha).  In the end Justin, Kay and for some reason John ended up at the police station filing a report whilst myself, Jo and Daniel spent the afternoon in our fantastic new hostel soaking up the sun next to the pool.

Eating meat
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Hostel Darmajiana was easily the best hostel we have stayed in with a huge backyard with a swimming pool, easy access to beer, a huge grill for BBQ's, large grassed areas for backyard cricket, table tennis table and located right in the middle of all the action.  Spent the next few days relaxing and making full use of all the utilities listed above, even had an international table tennis competition where I managed to do Australia proud beating off 15 players of various quality to take out the title....admittedly some appeared to have never seen a table tennis table before and the few that would have stood a chance had knocked back quite a few stubbies and were just struggling to stand by the final rounds.

John and our cricket bat, pretty good for half an hours work
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Our last night in Mendoza we bought Five kilo's of the best meat you'll ever see for fifty pesos ($20) between six people and had the mother of all BBQ's, with heaps of meat and even whipped up a potato salad or two (which we left to the Irish guys who are experts on all things potato).  Went out afterwards and ran into Max an Aussie bloke we'd met in Cusco..ended up having a quite a big night after that and got back to the hostel with the sun coming up.

Would love to write heaps and heaps about Mendoza as it is probably on the top of both our lists as best place we have been so far, good weather, Fantastic hostel and met a lot of great people but to be honest we pretty much did the same thing everyday....Beer, Pool, Steak, Beer, Bed.

After six days in Mendoza headed to Buenos Aires looking forward to resuming a slightly more normal (and healthy) lifestyle.