Another busy weekend has passed by but this time in Mendoza for once! WE successfully managed to get a lot done in a short time, mainly because I got a sudden urge to see everything in the area when I woke up on Friday and the sun was shining again. It`s become a lot colder recently, probably explains my cold, which is miserable, so when it`s sunny and warm again I feel energised. Mendoza always looks stunning in good weather. Friday night was brilliant as I was invited by my family to go to a special fund-raising festival at Vanina and the other kids`school. I knew it was quite a big deal before going because the school had oprganised it to raise money for one of the girls in Vanina`s class who has cancer but can`t afford any of the treatment. When we all actually arrived at the school and everyone was setting up the stalls I was even more impressed. Hundreds and hundreds of people came, there was an enormous queue outside the school right into the night, live music on the stage inside, tango dancing and lots of the students had practiced these very impressive dances to perform. There were also stalls around the outside selling artesanias (arts and crafts etc.) as well as empanadas, hotdogs and cakes! The atmosphere was buzzing as it seemed like the whole town had come to support the cause! It was lovely to meey so many of Vanina`s friends and talk lots of spanish, as well as just to be with the family for a bit. Flor was sweet as she kept bringing all her friends up to see me and asking me to say something in English, which consequetly made them giggle and they then ran off! At 10.30pm Jennie and Karen arrived, stayed for a while and then later we set off to try out another nightclub in the centre of Mendoza: La Gitana. I was impresseedd with how many people were queuing outside in the cold when we got there at 2.30am, the poor bloke in this town have to pay to enter and also have to find some willing girls to go in with otherwise they aren`t allowed in! Girls can stroll right in easily though, it`s a strange culture they have here, but I`m not complaining! The music was pretty bad, as always, with lots of cumbia, and the boys were very grabby, but overall we had a good time and met loads of people. It`s impossible not to get talking when you go out here as everyone around you is so chatty. When they find out we`re English they just fire questions at us, and usually follow this by trying to teach us "proper" Argentine dancing, very amusing! We eventually got dancing at 4am and had had eboufgh of all the sweaty crowds of people by 7am. On Saturday I woke up to find I had lost my camera, and am guessing that it was stolen from my bag while it was in the bags place in La Gitana. SO annoyed about this, as I`ve now lost all photos from Tucuman. To chear myself up >I met K at the bus terminal and we booked an excursion for Sunday morning. Spent ages talking to the guy in the Informe in the bus terminal, he was so nice and helpful that we swapped emails- definitely a good contact to have in town, and his spanish was so easy to understand! After munching empanadas in Mendoza`s enormous Parque San Martin Karen and I felt like some exercise so we hired some (extrremely old, noisy and falling apart) bikes to go for a cycle around the park. We hired them for an hour but probably only managed to see about 1/6 of the whole park, it`s so big. For the night we stupidly decided to go out dancing again, don`t know what we were thinking! Everyone had recomended a great place in Chacras (nightclub central of Mendoza with about 10 in a row!) an hour outside the city. Thankfully the music was better, lots of rock and National Rock, and the atmospher was very relaxed with sofas scattered all over the place. The people were over 16 yrs old too, which is a bonus! Forgot to mention that before going out we went to Plaza Independencia where all the market stalls are at the weekend, and each got our hair braided for a few pesos. Very girly thing to do, but it was great in the nightclub as the white bits in the braid glowed in the lights! Sunday: dragged ourselves to the bus terminal at 8am where a minibus took us into the mountains for our excursion to Villavicencio. This is a small but famous old resort some miles away, where all the bottled mineral water we drink here comes from. We had a very enthusiastic guide who latched onto Jennie when he found out she was from Ireland, and questioned her continuously about U2 for the whole trip! He was however very good about putting up with our frequent falling asleep on the bus when he was talking! The trip involved seeing a tiny museum, going around the caracoles (this means snails in Spanish but refers to the winding roads up the mountainside) to a lookout point and seeing the famous hotel which is on the labels on all the waterbottles here. Finally at 8pm I went to catch the bus home, feeling quite rough frrom lack of sleep, and ended up waiting for over an hour!! Would have been anoyed had I not met a really nice bloke who goes to the university in Mendoza and spent the whole time talking to him. It turned out at the end that he spoke good English but had been nice enough not to tell me so that I could practice my spanish!