19/11/2019 – Mendoza, Argentina

We had the best sleep for as long as we can remember. The house is so peaceful and it was so warm we slept with the patio doors open! Josh made me a coffee and we woke up slowly. We got up and our bits and bobs together, browsed the map, and set off for the day. Our host Monica is really friendly, but there is a slight language barrier! We do manage to get by anyway. We left and headed for a hipster café near the main square called Brod. It looked like a Scandinavian place. We sat in the shade in the whitewashed courtyard, dotted with cacti. It was over 30°C today! We enjoyed a nice coffee and some food, before setting off to wander the streets of Mendoza. We went through a handful of leafy picturesque plazas, and headed towards the tourist information, for, well, a bit of information! We grabbed a free map and asked for directions to some cambios. Because of the economic crisis in Argentina, money is a bit tricky. After speaking to lots of guests at the hostel in Pucon, we were well prepared for this, and so had brought many USD with us. Currently, if you find an ATM with any money in it, your maximum withdrawal is the equivalent of 40 GBP, and you get charged 25% for every withdrawal. £1 is worth 77 Argentinian Pesos currently, and it is changing by the minute! By this time, at around 15:00, everything was starting to close and we noticed the streets were pretty quiet. Siesta time! We walked home via the supermarket to buy some dinner. We dropped our food off and chilled for half an hour before walking back into town to find the cambios that opened up again at 17:00. Along the street of cambios there were loads of men on the street offering better exchange rates, but dodgy deals, they are known as ‘arbolitos’. A bit too sensible to risk doing that we eventually found a cambio that would accept 20 dollar notes (some would only accept 50 dollar notes) and changed up a small amount of dollars, to see us through the next couple of weeks. On the walk back Josh found a book shop with a small table of books in English. He bought himself Dracula to read next! Josh bought an ice cream and we browsed some beautiful shops – one a cowboy/leather shop and another that sold some beautiful clothes. All very reasonably priced but not justifiable to us on our budget! We got home and did some admin on the WiFi – researching the bus for tomorrow, booking some future accommodation e.t.c. We had a picnic dinner of bread, cheese, meat and salad. It is very hot again this evening!