Mendoza is a small mountain metropolitan town. The surrounding mountains cannot not be viewed from within the city, although buildings exceeding five sotries are few and far between, but from about an hour outside you can view many snow capped mountains, one of which is Aconcagua, the highest peak outside of the Asia (around 22,000 feet). Even though you can´t see the mountains from within the city, all of the roads are bordered with moats to handle the run off from the mountains in the summer time. Mendoza is very well known for the wines it produces in the surrounding vinyards.

Shortly after arriving to Mendoza we met Victor, who is from Ireland. Victor has been travelling the world for the past two years seeing the sights, surfing, and stopping to work for a few months every so often. Later that day we met Jess and Nick, a couple from Australia who have also been travelling the world on and off for the past couple of years. Nick is an independent contractor in the trade of building boats. The five of us quickly became friends and wasted no time making our way to the park for a few beers and some good times.  Yesterday we all went white water rafting and the last night we all went out to dinner to a steak restaurant where we also had some good laughs and had a taste of Mendoza´s great wine. Argentina is very well known for the excellent, as well as extremely affordable, steak dinners (or lunch). On thurday, Nick, Jess, Dakin and I are going to go on an overnight hike, where we should get some good views of the mountains and experience some high altitude trekking.  The peak of our ascent is going to be around 4000 meters (14,000 ft.).  Tomorrow we will spend making sure we have everything neccesary for the trip, and of course it is only an overnight trek so this will be a good trial so that we know what we will need for a multi-day trek in the future.