For all those who watched and remember the amazing cities of gold cartoon from the 80´s you will know the significance of the title of this entry. For all those who don't, it is the main town of the province of Mendoza where we holed up for almost 3 weeks to learn Spanish.

Mendoza is a very pretty town in the middle of a desert whose special feature is that every single street is lined with trees. This is made possible by the irrigation trenches which were the design of the indiginous indians to enable crops and livestock to prosper. The trenches are not all covered over however and in some places you must navigate a narrow concrete bridge in order to reach the edge of the road to cross. If this was London, a special truck would have to be commissioned to drive round every morning clearing out all the people who had got drunk and fallen into the trenches, but the Mendoceans seemed to be able to avoid them.

On the subject of drink, Mendoza is also famous for their wine. They have many many Bodegas (wineries) in the surrounding countryside and unlike the French they are able to alter their grapes to produce finer specimens year by year. This means that even the house wine in restaurants is a mighty fine drop and unsuprisingly we drank ALOT of vino tinto while we were there. (For wine buffs, Norton Malbec from 2000 and 2004 are especially good!)

The main reason for our extended stay was to learn some Spanish (or Castellano to be precise. Similar, but different...). We were lucky enough to be introduced to a lovely lady called Mirta who taught English to Argentinians, and Castellano to the English. Every morning we took the tram to her house where we sat in a small room upstairs in those little seats with the table attatched. We all got on very well and would chat for half the lesson (in Castellano of course) and learn more formerly for the remainder. When she taught us the alphabet we chanted with her as she danced around the room. I will never forget her shouting 'hotta hotta hotta' while dancing around the room. We soon picked up enough to get by and began having simple conversations with the Mendoceans, even though after a week or so we discovered that when people had been asking Jon's age he had been telling them, "I have 30 anuses". Doh!

Life is very relaxed in Mendoza and we enjoyed our time tremendously. Class in the morning, then lunch and siesta before a late dinner and drinks in some pleasant bar or other. We became far too keen on it all and when the time came for us to leave it was a very hard separation. Our friends at the hostel Damajuana (it's the name for a very large wine container) all came out to say goodbye, staff and other guests included, and we were so sad to leave Mirta that we all cried.

Mendoza is such a great place that I think the phrase should now be amended to Mendoza!......YEEEES!!

Max and Leo

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