We arrived in Mendoza, Argentina last night via a beautiful six hour bus ride east across the Andes.  We had just left Santiago, Chile for this famed wine region in hopes of finding jobs and saving a bit of money.  What we found upon our arrival was something more precious than money--good, old fasioned, grade A, meat!  Argentina is known world wide for their beef industry.  What makes the beef so tasty is the way the cows are raised.  They are, mostly, free-range cattle that feed primarily on grass.  Weird thing is, you can taste it.  

As we settled in, a guy with 3 plates of beautifilly marbled, ruby red carne came walking past us.  He had no less than 8 kilos of meat!  Thats close to 17 pounds of the beautiful bovine!  I watched him prepare the BBQ and throw the slabs of meat on for a traditional Argentinian slow cook.  It took about 45 minutes to cook the meat to a delicious medium temperature.  Okay, okay, if it seems like we were a little too excited for the BBQ, consider this: we havent eaten steak since we were in Italy and that was back in December.  But the wait was well worth it!  The steak had a sweet taste with a slight tang at the end, you could definatly taste a hint of wheat grass.  

We are planning on staying in Mendoza for a few weeks, so we´ll have time to catch up on a few blogs and tell you all about the various wineries.  Today,  we plan to just take it easy and walk around the city a bit, well...not before a breakfast of steak and eggs!   

Right now Im writing you from Lima, Peru.  We arrived here on Tuesday from Colombia. Colombia was amazing, not at all what I had pictured; a collection of slums in a druglord's paridise.  Colombia was one of the cleanest, safest and most culturally diverse places we visited.  We spent the bulk of our 2 weeks in Medellin, known for their vast collection of Ferdinando Botero's artwork (he paints and sculpts the really routund portraits of people, places and things) and, among other things, Pablo Escobars' grave site.  We stayed at a really cool hostel and did a lot of sight seeing before heading to a little farm 40 minutes outside of the city. It was a quiet little place nestled in the Andes that gave us a beautiful view over the valley. It was a nice to get out of the city and into the country, it gave us a lot of time to reflect on the busy past couple of months. 

Tomorrow we set off for the city of Cusco.  The jumping off point for Machu Picchu.  We have enjoyed our time in Lima and eaten our fair share of Chinese food. Lima's famous for their Chinese cuisine and rightfully so; it is tasty!  Even so, with only 2 months remaining, we want to crack the whip.  We want to get to Argentina in about 10 days and start looking for jobs on a winery.  Money is running low and so are the souls of our shoes, so staying put for a little bit would be a welcomed change.  

We will try to keep you all in the know, but internet time has been slim to none and with only one computer to share time is at a premium.  Well, I've got two big German women looking over my shoulder so... Adios!