Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread....

Three days of wine tasting in Lujan de Cuyo were followed by two far quieter days in Mendoza, or 'Dozy' as Abs now calls it.

On Wednesday we had dinner at a lovely restaurant, Florentina Bistro. It's nice going to restaurants where they have thought as much about the interior design as they have the food and they've definitely thought about both in this restaurant. We ate in a beautiful covered outside seating area with wooden tables and chairs all painted white with floral cushions and with the biggest wall painted white and filled with terracotta pots with geraniums all bright red and in full bloom. [note to self: start taking your camera out at night!]

Pork with honeyed carrots for me and Pasta and prawns for Abby washed down with a glass of the Alta Vista Torrontes that we had discovered on one of our wine tours.

On Thursday we headed to one of the shopping malls in Mendoza to pick up a couple of last minute Christmas goodies and some wrapping paper - we were unsuccessful on both counts, Santiago wins hands down on the shopping front. I did manage to replace my sunnies though which was a result.

What do you think?

For those of you familiar with J.R.R. Tolkien you may recognise the quote that I've used for the title of this blog entry, we went to see The Hobitt last night and I loved it when Gandalf said this to Bilbo Baggins. 

The film is excellent - so much so that when the credits rolled I could not believe that three hours had passed - I highly recommend going to see it.

Tomorrow morning guess what, we're going on another wine tour.... 

Update to follow.

Raine x

The road to Tunuyan

We've just got off the bus from Mendoza to Tunuyan and arrived at the hotel that we're staying at for the next two nights, Posada del Jamon (Ham Inn).

The trip only takes one hour and the views are incredible as the road runs in parallel with the Andes. 

Out of the window on the left hand side of the bus the land is completely flat and all that you can see is sand and scrub like areas with low green/grey bushes and lots of power lines but what a difference when you looked out of the window on the right hand side of the bus!

In the foreground the same sand and then scrub land but beyond, the Andes - completely covered in snow and looking spectacular. It's hard to believe as it's 22C (70F) as I write but yesterday there was so much snow that the road over the Andes that we had travelled from Chile to Argentina on on Sunday and the border crossing were closed.

The sky is a pale duck egg blue, to the left wispy cirrus clouds and to the right, over the Andes there are occasional puffs of fluffy white cloud sitting above the peaks. 

On the journey I saw a bird of prey (sorry David & Anne, I couldn't identify it) swoop in mid air and take a much smaller bird out of the sky - amazing.

Every mountain top that we can see from our hotel is covered in snow, each one looking like the Paramount Pictures logo.

Another room with view.....

So I guess we could be closer to having a white Christmas than I thought......

Raine x