I was slightly bleary eyed all day with the lack of sleep from the night before. The guide company I am with had neglected to make a reservation for me but luckily there was a lot of room. The place is a lot scruffier than the hostel in Santiago it needs a bit of a renovation. After a shower and leaving my bags at the hostel I wondered around Mendoza doing all the must see sights in one day. There isn’t a lot to the city very easy to walk around and on a grid pattern hard to get lost.

Plaza Espana had a tiled display depicting what I am sure is history of the place however, I can’t read the Spanish that was on the sign.

Plaza Independcia has a fountain, craft stalls and a Museum of Modern Art. The Museum is small and the artwork was odd. I think I am more of a landscape oil painting fan type of person than speakers playing voices and projections of peoples various body parts on plastic bags hung from the ceiling. Some of the wood carvings were actually quite good.

I met up with two other people set to climb Aconcaqua next week at the hostel. One is Margaret from Germany who is climbing with the German Alpine Club and the other is Derek from Lexington Kentucky who is with my group. Margaret decided she was interested in the last year of my life and wanted to see some pictures so I showed her a few until I was bored amazingly she was not! She is a freelance writer who specializes in science journalism and is heading of to climb a 5000m peak before Aconcaqua. I was hoping to join her but the guide wanted a very large sum of money for a 5 day climb which I couldn’t justify to myself after spending so much money on the actual climb. We had a laugh over the differing amounts of kit we have. Looks like she is going for the light approach and I am going to be a mule but a toasty warm one at that. I did bring everything on the list I was given – Margaret thinks they sent me the Everest one not the Aconcaqua one!