8th February 2015 – Malarque to Mendoza

We have now been on he road for about 1 month and we seem to have settled into a routine, most days the alarm goes at 6:00, up and shower & pack, into breakfast at 7:00 and out in the car at 7:45 ready to be on the road at 8:00. At breakfast we have our thermos flasks filled with hot water, we make our tea all ready for our morning tea stop, we have a small flask each that we drink from which saves carrying cups. We slip pastries or fruit from the buffet into our bag for morning tea. We drive for about 2 hours, stop for morning tea and a driver change. During the drive Kay types up the diary finishing the day before and doing the current day as it unfolds. We then drive till a lunch stop or if it’s a short day we’ll keep going to our destination. Lunch can vary from a service station stop as we fill up, a cafe or mostly a roadside stop where we self cater, mostly tuna and biscuits and fruit (like being at work really). Upon arriving at the town of our overnight stay we fill up with fuel ready for the next day. Once we arrive at our overnight hotel Michael plugs in all our devices to charge them and time permitting we load the photos onto the PC from the camera & upload the diary to the blog, (wifi access permitting). Each night we have a 6:30 briefing meeting mostly to discuss the plans for the next day, have a chat and discuss where we’ll go to eat that night. They eat very late in Argentina and it takes ages to order as we have to get out the dictionary to work out what’s what (all part of the adventure). Consequently we eat quite late sometimes at 10:00pm. We crash into bed so we’re ready to greet the next day. The days are filled with wonderful varying scenery, metting new people. lots of laughs and the occasional break down – we are having a blast!  Today we are driving approximately 400 kilometers to Mendoza which is the Malbec capital of the world, so we’re bound to do some further tastings over the 2 days that we’re there.  The road so far is excellent, very straight & fast, the mountains are behind us as we head north east.  Driving into San Rafael we are looking for a bypass road and end up in a local tip, not the morning tea stop we were hoping for, the GPS got a bit crossed up, but it’s mostly spot on, however not this time. We had to turn around or back up to get out.We did manage to find a very pleasant park in town to have our cuppa. As we drive closer to Mendoza the road swings around closer to the mountains again.We drive through many small towns on the outskirts of Mendoza and they all have beautiful avenues of green trees welcoming us. Even though we are in the middle of the desert the mountains are a source of water for Mendoza & the surrounding towns. As we drive through the wine and food producing area about 50 kilometers from Mendoza, we see the sign to the Chandon winery along with many others & with all the grape vines and fruit trees it reminds us of a larger Mildura.  We arrive at our hotel in the middle of the afternoon and we wait for the Argentinian MG Car Club contingent from Buenes Airies to arrive. At about 6:30pm 4 MG’s arrive, after a 2 day 1,000 kilometer drive – 2 x J2’s, 1 x Q type and 1 x B. What a scene they created in the street when they park their little cars. The president of the Mendoza Classic Car Club, Leo arrives in his VW beetle and fortunately his wife Ellie is fluent in English so she can translate for us with our new like minded Argentinian friends.  Dave gave a welcome speach to the MGCC Agentina members and they presented Dave with a plaque for the Gold Coast MG Car Club.We found a fabulous restaurant that could accommodate us all upstairs so we didn’t disturb other patrons with our noisy talk. Given the language differences we have, and with the help of 3 interpreters, we manage a night of interaction mostly about cars and MG’s of course.