View from the bus

Leaving a relaxing four days of camping in Bariloche, we boarded our 19 hour bus to Mendoza. A couple of hours past stunning scenery of endless lakes, the servicio man (buses over a certain length tend to be “con servicio” meaning meals served on board, of various quality, but always edible), began passing out cards and pencils.  Marieke was convinced this was some sort of “gringo” game, mishearing the attendant, who was actually announcing we were about to play bingo.  On a bus.  He actually told us a lot of things, but being in rapid Spanish, all we really got out of it was that we needed to fill out the whole card to win, and that the winner would receive a bottle of Chardonnay from Mendoza.  Mendoza was looking good to us!

Gorgeous sunset from the bus

Although the numbers were called in Spanish, the attendant spoke slowly and repeated the numbers every time.  It was pretty fun.  Soon enough, I only had two numbers to go, 68 and 15. The girl across from us also needed 15, so when that was called, we both sat up straight in our seats.  One to go.  Suddenly, the next number was called, 68!  I yelled out Bingo and held my breath as the attendant checked over all the numbers, fearful I had misheard a number.  But no, I had won a bottle of cold chardonnay!  Best bus ride ever!

Waking up in the morning, we were a bit dismayed to see rain streaming down the windows. Wasn’t it supposed to be summer, full of eternal sunshine for growing tonnes of grapes to make delicious wine?  We waited a bit for the rain to stop, bypassing the confusing bus system, and made our way to a hostel.  Which was full.  Fortunately, on our way to another prospective hostel, we stumbled across a place called “Bed for Wine”.  We were sold.  It also happened to be the cheapest hostel we had found in Argentina, and had pretty good internet.

Our meal on the bus-hot food!

We spent the rest of the day wandering the streets trying to replace a few of the things we’ve managed to lose on the way, with only mild success, before heading over to another hostel where a friend we had met in Punta Arenas was staying.  We grabbed our bingo bus wine win (no, we didn’t drink it on the bus, as I didn’t want to use the bus bathroom ten times), and headed across town.  Our plan was to go out for dinner after a couple bottles of wine, but others in the hostel offered to barbecue (asado) for us if we bought meat and veggies at the grocery store, so we took them up on the offer, enjoying steak, chorizo, grilled eggplant and onion, and watermelon, an impulse buy from another girl staying at the hostel.  We chatted late in the night, finally heading home, determined to get up early to rent bikes and check out some wineries in Maipu.

Yum!