mandy. We have arived safely in Mendoza on an over night stop as there are no buses north tonight. So I have taken this chance to write a quick enrty about the amazing amazing days we have just spent in great company in a place really close to punte del Inca( you can find pics on the net) called Los Penitentes. day one: Wayne and i managed to convince the familia( miss beya, lerica, Shirly and Lenny) we had made in the hostel in Bariloche to come with us to a magical place wayne had read about in the lonely planet... the gateway to the highest mountain in the americas and a place where there is an ancient inca bridge and some natural hot springs. We left Bariloche after a delicious breakfast of lemon merengue ice cream steak rolls and chocolate... with some more chocolate in our bags for later. i bought an extra chunk of pure choc to make hot choc... yum yum wow yum It was a eighteen hour, very comfortable bus ride(on which we amused the waiter by taking out our own supply mayonaize, chilli sauces, chocolate and coniac) and a further four hours through many many tunnels and a few small towns, into the mountains befor we were dropped off in what litterally is a deserted town that consists af a few refugios and two hotels a tin shack( that turned out to have the only chunk of meat a single potato and six packs of camel filters for miles) and a bus stop. At the bus stop Beya got hit by an old woman with her walking stick because i was laughing. She was begging, and even though Beya had given her money she wouldnt leave... I found this histerically funny as i had told her not to give the lady any money. The old bag started shouting at Beya telling her that she cant laugh like i can any more as her legs hurt to much, but all i could understand as she was speaking spanish, was this old lady pulling up her skirt and telling beya off. I found this more funny and eventually the lady hit her with the stick shouting some random nonsence at her. On the bus after this however, we did manage to get very drunk and all the girls managed to get a masive amount of makeup and glitter all over our faces... so not only did we not notice the deserted appearance of the town, we stumbled off the bus with glee. shouting nonsence about how beautiful everyone looked and how brilliant wayne was to have brought us here.... then the cold finally reached our liquer warmed skins and we made our way to the refugio, guided by a fuzzy memery of what it looked like on the net. It didnt take long to settle in and truthfully even sobre it was a beautiful beautifulbeautiful site... 360 degrees of snow covered mountains around or little wooden hut/ home.

Once settled we slowly realise we hadnt concidered food in our excitement to get there and were wondering what to do about it when beya realised that she had almost run out of tabacco... The panic , the distress nooooooooooooooo... what now? Never fear, said Javier, the little red van will come at six with supplies, all you have to do is be there when it gets there... mmmmmmmm.Pondering this we looked at each other... sit in the cold and wait? or suffer with out tabaco? or send out searcg parties every few minutes.... the last option won and it was one one of these that wayne and beya managed to bag 2kl of flesh, one potato and six cartons of cigs. Some others brought home a further 10 bottles of wine, two beer and a bottle of vodca. we made some soup with the supplies left over from bariloche and Javier( the hostel manager and mountain guide) made some pizza. We proceaded to drink our supplies of liquer and played loud music and danced and danced and danced to be cont with day two...