Not much to report today but for the sake of keeping things up to date, here we go.

We arrived in Mendoza around 9:30 am. We gathered the few things we own and took off for our hostel, Hostel Lao, which was fortunately only a few blocks from the bus station. We had written down the directions and of course, even with only a few blocks to go, we still managed to start off in the wrong direction. Short story short we found it in 40 minutes instead of the ten it should have taken.

We had some time to kill until the 12:30 check-in time so we relaxed in the lobby, chatted with a few other travlers, and readup on the wine-bike tours in the area. Check-in came earlier than expected so we moved into our 6 person dorm and headed out to the Ferreira (hardware store) to get some locks for our cubbies and some lunch. The rest of the day was quite lazy with the only productive thing we managed to do was set up a volunteering opportunity on a finca in San Rafael in the coming week. Otherwise we did not move from the couch until 6pm when someone mentioned the word beer. And beers there were.

We felt right at home as we sat around the reception desk with some of our fellow hostelmates and one of the owners, Mike. For the next few hours, we sat and exchanged stories over a couple litros of Schneider and shared lots of laughs. Aside from the several hilarious hostel stories my favorite take away from the Hostel Lao happy hour were the terms hangry and grump sac.

To give you a little background for these terms and why we like them so much, my mood and capability to function as a traveler depend entirely on food. When hunger strikes so does a grumpy Holly (sorry Brent). Thus the term hangry (hungry angry) and the solution to the hangry problem comes in the form of a grump sac which is a sac full our hearty snacks to ward of the handgries. We will definitely be investing in a grump sac.

After our little happy hour we took off for dinner with a fellow hostelmate who is a wine maker. We grabbed dinner at a brew pub called Jerome and picked her brain about the harvest season, her travels, and Argentina’s wine country.

So all in all a great, relaxing day. We made lots of new friends from all over and are thrilled to be surrounded by other travelers. The hostel is awesome and we are so looking forward to spending the week here before heading South to San Rafael for our first work-away volunteer experience.

Fast friends. Margarita and Brent.