Arriving in Montevideo after a month in Patagonia was something of a relief – not quite of the scale of our arrival in Salta after Bolivia, but it was definitely a good to be back in a city again. And Montevideo, walkable in scale and with a population of just 1.5m people, was the perfect place in which to readjust to urban living. Unlike the airport, which seemed brand new, with a futuristic design and more brands than we'd seen in weeks. It was a little overwhelming.....

This is a special entry, not about a place we've been to but an item we're carrying that has become very close to Sarah's heart. Her back-pack.

Purchased in a market in Hanoi in April for the princely sum of £6, this '100% Athentic' (sic) North Face back-pack has now travelled with us across 3 continents over the last 8 months.

It started to show its quality two weeks after purchase, when the handle on the top of the bag fell off. About two weeks later, a large tear opened up in the material on the front of the bag, just below the wonky North Face logo. Luckily, Sarah has been saving up Christmas cracker sewing kits for the last three years, and was therefore able to stitch up the hole in an attractive 'drunken trainee surgeon' style with snazzy blue and white thread. This process has been repeated once every couple of weeks as more of the cheap nylon material around the stitching tears away.

Next the shoulder straps started to give way. These were fixed using a combination of stitching and black duck tape, that nicely sets off the blue and grey colour scheme of the rest of the bag.

In Australia we lost one of the zippers, but were able to make do with the one left over, which only falls off occasionally and can easily be reattached in a quick 5-minute procedure.

In New Zealand the metal support bars built into the back of the back suddenly decided to invert themselves, sticking painfully into Sarah's back. Through brute force we were able to bend them back into roughly their original concave position.

In Chile the zip teeth began to misfire, so that once a day or so the bag wouldn't do up and we had to run the zippers back and forth from side to side until they finally caught and started to work again.

Then as we walked around the Lake District in Bariloche, we heard a ripping noise and discovered that the breathable mesh back support had torn from top to bottom. Figuring this only made it more breathable, we left it as is.

What I thought was the last straw came in Ushuaia whilst we were trekking through the Tierra del Fuego National Park. The zips themselves finally fell off, and the bag fell open scattering our food over the forest floor. So that we could make it to the end of the trail, I tied the bag up with a scarf and we pressed on. Sarah was clearly upset, but I told her that the bag had had a long life, and we would buy her a better one as soon as we got back to the shops the next day.

The next day I awoke to a grin the size of a Cheshire Cat, and with bleary eyes watched as Sarah unveiled the ultimate expression of her worrying new make-do-and-mend mentality. She explained that she had found a number of buttons in the sewing kits along with the needles and thread last night, and had had a brain-wave. Instead of a zip, the mouth of the bag is now closed by means of a system of buttons around which you loop short lengths of strap that were re-purposed from a pair of her trousers. It really is quite ingenious. Over the course of the last week these straps have distintegrated into a loose weave of threads, but these can still be wound round and round the buttons to close the bag.

I only hope that Franken-bag makes it home, otherwise I think Sarah may have some kind of breakdown.

At the end of the world they've run out of scenery. The view from the bus window was bleak: dull tundra stretched to the horizon under a hot cloudless sky, and the few birds overhead looked hopelessly lost. We were on our way to Tierra del Fuego, Land of Fire, 'Fin del Mundo', The End of the World. I've always wanted to go, to follow in the footsteps of Magellan and Darwin and see what it's like at the very edge of the map, or what used to be the edge of the map before it all got filled-in.

So it was with no small amount of excitement that I found myself standing on the edge of the South American continent, looking south across Magellan's Strait to Tierra del Fuego. This romanticism was dampened when the car ferry pulled in to take us across. We could have been going to Calais.

Whilst the Strait is by far and away the safest route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (or was, before the Panama Canal was built) it's by no means a cake-walk. The clashing of the two oceans makes for a roller-coaster ride, and within a few minutes of leaving the shore Sarah and I had to climb out on deck to breath the fresh air and find a horizon to stare at. The air was pretty fresh. Freezing, actually. We were contemplating climbing back down when we noticed a black and white object streaking through the water towards the ship at high speed. As a large wave rolled over it, the black and white shape broke free of the water, jumping though the air for a second before diving under our bow. Commerson's dolphins! Just like their cousins in Puerto Madryn, the dolphins in the Strait like to ride the waves that form around the boats, and we were soon joined by four or five of them, zipping around in the surf. We were so distracted watching their antics that we didn't notice the enormous wave coming towards us. It hit us with a crunch and a splash, completely drenching the entire starboard side of the ferry, including the 30 or so passengers who were out on deck. Sarah and I burst out laughing, but the smug Dutch guy next to us with the now-soggy, formerly-fancy SLR looked less-than pleased.

Once we arrived on the other side of the Strait, I was a little disappointed to discover that the scenery was pretty much the same, in that there wasn't much of it. More flat plain as far as we could see. This began to change though, as we drove further and further south. Over the next few hours evergreen forests appeared around large alpine lakes, and the road began to weave left and right as we climbed up towards some mini-mountains. We were driving up over the end of the Andes – the coccyx of the spine that stretches the entire length of South America. At their bottom as they peter out the Andes make one last swerve east, a detour caused by the grinding of the Scotia against the South American plate. These mountains are the youngest of the Andean range, and are only knee-high to some the peaks we saw to the west of Mendoza and Bariloche. It was over this last small hurdle that we had to travel to reach Ushuaia, the Southernmost City on Earth, nestled between the mountains and the sea, staring south towards Antarctica.

At first glance, Ushuaia looks just as you would expect. Stacks of shipping containers, small grey battleships, bunkers and more corrugated iron roofs crowd the harbour and give the place the utilitarian feel of a WWII outpost. This atmosphere is dispelled as you enter the centre of town and realise that the Twee Alpine Architecture disease that afflicts Bariloche seems to have claimed another victim. I suppose the many rich tourists that now visit Ushuaia en-route to Antarctica need somewhere to stock-up on chocolate gifts and penguin ornaments.

Most of Tierra del Fuego's recent history is shaped by its remote location on the border between Argentina and Chile. Both want countries want a piece of the pie, and have been close to war several times while staking out their claims. One of the rules for claiming sovereignty over a place seems to be that you have to have people living there. This is an issue in Ushuaia, as who in their right mind would want to live in such a place? Covered in snow half the year, ripped apart by wind for the rest, driving you to madness with 18 hours of sunlight a day in the summer or depression in winter with only 6. Argentina initially got around the problem by forcing people to live there. Inspired by the British Empire's penal colonies in Australia, they decided to build their own in Tierra del Fuego. We spent a great morning wandering around the former prison cells of some of the first inhabitants of Ushuaia, including that of the famous Russian anarchist Simón Radowitzky who served 18 of his 21 years in solitary confinement for blowing up the Police Chief of Buenos Aires. He then escaped on a pirate ship, was recaptured, then pardoned, then made his way back to Europe where he fought in the Spanish Civil War before finally emigrating to Mexico where he died, presumably from exhaustion.

Also in the prison, we found this photo which we think deserves a special mention due to the the unknown prisoner in the first row, second from the right...

I wish I knew what he was in for. Judging by the look of his brylcreemed hair, square jaw, and moustache/eye patch combo I would say seducing a Naval Commander's wife, stealing a ship and then knocking-out the Mayor in a bar-brawl that started over a game of cards.

Argentina now uses less extreme measures to encourage people to live in Ushuaia. The whole town is a tax-haven, and the government employs roughly 70% of the population (doing what, we never found out) with incredibly generous salaries and employment terms such as the 'The 25 Winters Retirement' whereby those who stick out 25 winters in the town are allowed to retire early, on the best pension in the entire country.

Those not working for the government work in tourism, and as I mentioned above the most common reason for finding yourself in the town is to catch a cruise ship to Antarctica. Ushuaia sits above the Antarctic Peninsula that juts out from the mainland towards South America, which means you can easily reach it by a 4 day boat trip as opposed to a several weeks through dangerous iceberg-filled seas. We were almost tempted to try and get onto a boat on a last-minute ticket until we found out that even the cheapest berth would cost over $4,000. Most people pay $10 to $20,000 to make the trip.

Instead we contented ourselves with a more modest expedition by sea-kayak into the Beagle Channel. To get to the river where we would start our journey we had to take a minibus an hour east of town. For the most part we drove along the edge of a long U-shaped valley that in the winter is used for cross-country skiing and dog-sledding. As we sped by we saw a couple of farms where the huskies are bred – hundreds of white wooden kennels arranged in rows like a miniature version of the POW camp from The Great Escape.

We were a group of 12, and once we reached the river and got changed into rather fetching waterproofs we had to be divided into two kayaks for the two hour trip. We then dragged our inflatable kayaks into the river and spent a leisurely hour coasting downstream before we had to lift the kayaks over a sandbank and then pushed off out into the channel proper. Out in the open water we spent an hour paddling around cormorant-studded rocks and sea-weedy inlets. We even spotted an enormous turkey-vulture cruising around the bay, menacing the smaller birds.

It was a magnificent morning, but hard work. Sarah and I had elected to row in the smaller of the two kayaks, which was an error in that there were only 3 other people paddling with us, all of whom, whilst able to row in time, seemed completely incapable of actually putting any effort into the process. I found myself wishing I had the rest of The Gentlemen's Eight from college in the boat, with Miss Gledhill coxing. Then we would have got somewhere. As it was Sarah and I had to take the strain for all of us, which turned into a herculean effort as we made a last push back to shore into a headwind.

After our exertions we were treated with cups of soup, and piled back into the minibus for the second half of our trip – a nature hike on Gable Island, an almost-deserted Argentine military outpost in the middle of the Channel. To get there we took a zodiac – no more paddling thank god – and had a great lunch of steak sandwiches, olives and red wine on the island before setting off on our hike. We had lunch in the garden of the one and only building on the island, a three room wooden shack manned by three Argentine soldiers. Sounds official, but the reality was somewhat more casual. When I went into the building to use the loo I found all three in the living room having lunch. A fat man in a string vest was spooning meatballs out of an industrial sized pan set on the table for his colleagues. One of them was shoveling the food up as fast as it could be served, the other was slouching in his chair playing playstation (Assassin's Creed I). Keeping these three consummate professionals company were their three dogs; an ancient Alsatian, a mad Huskie-Corgie hybrid (a Horgie?) and an adorable terrier puppy. I spent most of lunch playing with the puppy, after it was bitten by the Horgie for acting up.

When we set off on our hike, the Horgie stalked off ahead through the bushes whilst the puppy happily bounded along with the group, clearly thrilled to have such a large pack to play with. We walked away from the camp along the beach before heading inland through sub-Antarctic forest from one side of the island to the other. Our guide Augustino was very knowledgeable, and supplied all manner of interesting names for the many trees and plants we'd been seeing over the past months – our favourites were Winter's Bark, Old Man's Beard, Indian's Bread and Chinese Lantern. As we walked through the forest, stopping to play with the puppy every five minutes, we saw several beaver dams and whole patches of forest destroyed by their malevolent tree-felling.

When we reached the beach where the zodiac was waiting to pick us up, we tearfully said goodbye to the terrier pup. The Horgie had emerged from the undergrowth to see us off as well, and both stood on the edge of the beach, looking forlorn as we chugged away waving in the boat. They looked terribly sad to have lost their playmates. That is until the Horgie turned around and began to cheerfully sodomise the poor terrier, staring out at us over the increasing expanse of water with his tongue hanging out.

From El Calafate our journey down to Tierra del Fuego took us south, back over the border into Chile to visit the Torres del Paine National Park. The park is known as one of the best in the whole of South America on account of its spectacular scenery and epic hiking trails. It has only recently acquired this reputation, as before 1959 it used to be one great big sheep farm, before being bought back by the Chilean government.

The nearest town to the National Park is Puerto Natales, a ramshackle collection of buildings that are really little more than shacks, stitched together from plyboard, corrugated iron and plaster, leaning against each other to keep out the cold. Dumped in the centre of town after a 6 hour bus ride we were a little unsure what to expect of our hostel, and were most pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find we had booked ourselves into a very well run B&B with warm rooms, TVs and big comfy beds.

We had no time to take a rest though, as we frantically ran around town trying to sort out our hiking trips for the next couple of days before the shops shut. Most people only stay in Puerto Natales for one night, heading off into the National Park the following morning to 'Hike the “W”' - a four day trek taking in the main sights in the park, camping en-route or in mountainside refugios. We neither had the time, equipment nor the inclination to put ourselves through that ordeal, so had to work out the best way to see as much as possible in the few days we had. After checking the weather forecast we decided to take the bus into the park the next day to hike one leg of 'The W' route – the most impressive stretch up to the namesake 'Torres del Paine' peaks – then take a rest day before taking on a one-day minibus tour of the other main sights.

At 7am the next day we clambered onto the bus taking us into the park. We slept most of the way to the base camp, waking up in time to be shoved off the bus at 10am, at which point we realised we had a 26km round trip ahead of us, and not that much time to do it in. Off we went! The first hour we walked along a broad flat plain, then up a mountain path that wound round into a steep river valley. There were a few dark clouds around, but for the most part the entire valley was lit up by the sun and we were soon down to wearing just our T-shirts. As we walked up into the river valley though, the weather flipped from nice to nasty. An icy wind kicked up and it started to rain and sleet. By the time we reached the first refugio at 12:30 we were soaked, freezing and thoroughly demoralised at the thought of another 10km ahead of us, mostly straight up, before we reached the end of the trail. To make matters worse the clouds had come in and the entire range was covered in a thick white mist, so we didn't even know if we would be able to see the Torres when we got there.

We sat in the refugio debating the best course of action over our soggy sandwiches. As we counted kilometres and looked out the window up at clouds, we found that we were sitting next to an English couple who were making the return trip from the Torres. They assured us that it was worth the trip, and as they had camped on the mountain the previous night before setting off at dawn, we felt like complete wimps for considering turning around halfway. So we set off again.

Luckily the weather cleared up almost as soon as we set off after lunch. The track was also a lot more easy-going and sheltered from the wind inside a shady forest. We kept up a good pace too, so found ourselves an hour ahead of our planned time as we broke free of the treeline and found ourselves at the foot of the final ascent. This last hour was to be a scramble straight up over a scree slope of boulders, sand and gravel. As Sarah has achieved true 'Mountain Goat Status' through our hikes in China, Borneo and Peru, we had no problems (well, maybe a couple of vertigo panics, but nothing serious). The view of the Torres del Paine when we reached the top of the scree slope was breathtaking. Three spires of granite laced with streaks of basalt, soaring above a hidden glacial lake you can only see when you reach the summit.

The way down actually took us longer than the way up, carefully treading down the mountainside till we reached the safety of the forest. The clouds rolled back in again, and we walked through more rain to make it back to the pick-up point with two hours to spare. To Sarah's disgust, I insisted we walk a further 7km back to an earlier drop-off point. She sulked for the first few kilometres, before I made the error of suggesting that the empty gravel road ahead looked like something out of a pop video: Cue Sarah's interpretation of 'That Don't Impress Me Much' by Shania Twain, followed by countless other karaoke classics, all the way home.

After a much needed rest day, lying in bed till noon massaging our aching legs and watching Friends re-runs, we were ready for another crack at the National Park. This time, we would be doing it from the comfort of a mini-bus with minimal hiking. It was a long day – over 12 hours of touring – but took us around all the sights we would have missed. We saw more mountains and glacial lakes, waterfalls, rheas (ostrich-like birds) with their chicks and lots of guanacos (another llama spin-off).

The two highlights for me though, were a trip to a giant milodon cave and a short walk to Lake Grey to see the glacier. Milodons were prehistoric plant-eating mammals that look kind of like giant sloths. They were about 10 feet tall, and were the preferred food of the hunter-gatherer tribes that used to inhabit the area. The first stop on our bus tour was an enormous cave hollowed out by an ancient sea, within which Victorian archeologists discovered a Milodon skeleton and human artifacts from around 5000 BC. The discovery of the Milodon skeleton caused quite a bit of excitement at the time – the Daily Mail even sent a team of explorers over in 1909 'To capture a live milodon to exhibit at London Zoo'. Ambitious.

Glacier Grey was the last stop of the day. We actually only caught glimpses of the glacier from the southern end of the lake, but the shore was crowded with massive icebergs that had broken off from the glacier and floated downstream with the wind. We nearly didn't make it to the lake itself as the wind blowing down from the glacier was so fierce - it regularly reaches over 100km/hr, knocking you off your feet and ripping the heat from your body. We definitely felt like we were close to the Antarctic, and were very glad once we had taken our photos and sprinted back to the bus. We were even more pleased as we sat back in our heated seats ahead of the rest of the group, and it started to pelt it down with rain, then snow.

El Calafate is famous as the base for visiting the Perito Moreno Glacier. As a result it's bustling with western tourists clad head to toe in shiny new North Face adventure gear, buying maps and boasting about their amaaazing 6-day trekking exploits. The phrase "all the gear, no idea" seemed to apply to about 90% of them......

Despite being something of a tourist mecca, El Calafate still has a local feel: on the day of our arrival, there was a music festival happening in town. The music could be heard as soon as we stepped off the bus from Puerto Madryn, and we eventually discovered it was taking place in the field next to our hostel. We had thought about going along once we were settled in, but as a) we could hear every word from our room and b) the 'music' was shit, we decided not to bother. The festival didn't finish until about 1am, which went down really well with us both, especially as this was meant to be our first proper night's sleep after a 26 hour journey.....

We took the next day as a 'rest day', making time to visit the local Laguna Nimez, a pretty nature walk around a couple of lakes which are home to a family of flamingos and various other birds. We didn't get quite as excited about the wildlife as a lot of our fellow visitors (many of whom, armed with binoculars and notebooks, seemed to be proper birdwatchers) but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It also gave us an excuse to get out of the hostel and escape its owner, a young and at first seemingly friendly girl who quickly started to unnerve and then terrify us both. It seemed we could do nothing right - we took the key outside the hostel with us when we weren't supposed to, we stored food in the fridge and then had the audacity to try and cook ("You aren't really supposed to, but I'll make an exception this time" she said, with a smile that could freeze the blood in your veins). Creepy.

The main event here was predictably our visit to the glacier. Perito Merino has special status amongst the world's glaciers as it's the only one that's still advancing. It moves forward at a rate of 2m a day, but at the same time pieces break off from the glacier's face, and so overall, it pretty much stands still. Everyone who'd been before had told us how fantastic it was, but were still blown away by our first glimpse. Even partially obscured by swathes of mist, it was absolutely spectacular - an 18 mile long river of ice. Our bus stopped to let us get off and take pictures – right from the get-go, I was a little trigger-happy. By the end of the day, we had taken some 470 photos between us! Whilst we were taking photos, our guide told us a bit about the local flora and fauna - the firebush, so called because the plant's bright red flowers look like tiny sparks, and the calafate bush. The calafate bush has a berry which locals use in everything from jam to sandwich cookies to ice cream. As you'd expect in these mysterious southern parts, the berry also comes with its own legend. Those that eat the berry are fated to one day return to Patagonia and, if unmarried, likely to meet and marry a local girl. I kept James well away from the fruit, but I later tried a sample of the calafate ice cream - it had a slightly odd taste, like a bitter blueberry.

Next we took a boat ride, right to the south face of the glacier. I'd heard horror stories about boats crammed with 300+ tourists, and although our boat wasn't small (about 130 people on board), it had a viewing deck that ran all the way around its outside, meaning everyone who wanted to got a great view of the glacier. From here, we could appreciate just how enormous it is - some 60m high, it towered over us, its pointed peaks glinting menacingly in the sunlight like teeth. As the light changed and changed again during our hour-long trip the colours in the ice changed too: from flat white, to turquoise to bright blue and back again.

I could happily have stared at the glacier for hours. Luckily, that's exactly what happened next. Flush from the exorbitant entrance fees, the National Park authorities have actually done something useful with the money and built a large network of wooden walkways in front of the glacier - close enough for you to observe it from several different levels, but far enough away that you don't get hit by pieces of falling ice. Every 20 minutes or so, we'd hear an almighty rumbling like thunder directly overhead, and a chunk of the glacier would sever off and splash into the icy cold waters below. The noises were deafening - often out of all proportion to the small pieces of ice that made them. In 2004, a piece of ice broke off causing an explosion so loud, it could be heard some 10km away! No one can predict exactly when and where the next 'big one' will happen, but anyone planning a Patagonian holiday in 2013 could be in luck......

We managed to catch one of the chunks falling on video - sort of.  James would particularly like to draw your attention to the 'atmospheric' water drops on the lens in the following clip:

Puerto Madryn, another Welsh settlement an hour north of Gaiman, was our next stop. Unlike Gaiman, the city has little need of tea shops to attract tourists - it is the de facto wildlife capital of the east coast, famous for sightings of species of penguins and dolphins that exist nowhere else in the world. Being, as I often remark to James, “pretty good at nature now,” and having a particular penchant for cute little penguins, we decided to take a few days to properly explore the area.

The most famous place to spot wildlife is the Reserva Faunística Penínsular Valdés, a large and surprisingly dusty piece of land linked to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The day after our arrival we headed off on a full-day tour to explore. Our group was a lively one: along with us and a trio of French and German friends, our bus was filled with a gregarious group of five ladies from Buenos Aires, one hen-pecked husband, and a very cute little girl. They quickly started getting to know us, rapidly firing questions our way which we did our best to respond to in Spanish. Once they were satisfied, they inducted us into one of the most famous Argentinian rituals: drinking mate with friends.

We'd already seen lots of Argentinians drinking mate during our adventures. Initially, in Salta, we thought it was some kind of ancient bong, but when a policeman took the contraption from someone in the main square, only to take a couple of sips and pass it back again, we realised we must be mistaken. In fact, mate drinking, originally the preserve of the gauchos, has taken on almost cult-status here in Argentina – rarely is someone to be seen without a wooden gourd filled with mate in hand, sipping away through a silver straw, known here as a bombilla. James and I found ourselves slightly saddened that we don't have any similar 'sharing' traditions back in the UK – none that are alcohol-free anyway.

The drink is made from yerba mate, the chopped dried leaves of a type of holly bush. The gourd is almost filled to the brim with the yerba, and then hot water is added. It tastes pretty bitter, a lot like Japanese macha, although generally a lot of sugar or sweetener is added – no real surprise considering the Argentinian sweet tooth. James was not a fan, but I took to it instantly (much to the delight of our new friends), and enjoyed taking a few hearty sips every time the gourd was passed my way throughout the day.

Anyway, back to the wildlife. Our day consisted of a few stops at various points along the coastline to simply admire and take pictures. We saw a lot of lazy elephant seals, enormous fur-covered beasts up to 5m long, who were lazing about on the beach close to the shoreline enjoying the sun's rays. Orca (killer) whales are regularly spotted beaching themselves in order to snack on seals in these parts but (un)fortunately there were none to be seen. We had to content ourselves with the very cute black and white Magellan penguins instead, that are currently ashore in order to hatch their little 'uns. We were due to visit a whole colony the next day, and this first glimpse definitely whetted our appetites for what was to come.

But the highlight of the day was the boat tour that we took in the afternoon in order to spot some southern right whales. These whales settle in to the shallow waters around the peninsular for a few months each year in order to give birth to and wean their young, before heading out to deeper waters to hunt. Having never been on a whale spotting tour I didn't really know what to expect. Whatever those expectations were, this trip definitely exceeded them. Almost as soon as we were afloat (having been driven to the shoreline by a converted tractor) someone spotted a whale's tail in the corner of the bay, and we were off, 50 or so cameras at the ready....to see a mummy whale and her calf splashing about. At one point the baby whale jumped right out of the water, glinting in the sunlight for a few seconds before creating an enormous splash as he landed. It was a proper Free Willy moment.

I thought that was pretty good, but there was more to come. As we moved further out to sea, cries went up around the boat as people kept spotting tails splashing in all directions – the experts think there are more than a hundred whales that come to rest here each spring. We attracted the curiosity of a couple of them, who came swimming over to our boat and took turns raising their ugly faces to take a closer look at us. I say ugly, because their heads are covered in a crop of whitish natural growths, known as callosites, which are made up of whale lice. Nice. We started to think we were goners, especially when one of the whales went charging across in front of the boat and the other dived underneath, creating an enormous wave. But they were only playing, thinking the boat was another potential friend. It was amazing to be so close – I think the Argentinian restrictions are a lot more lax than elsewhere, but it doesn't seem to do the animals any harm at all.

The next day was our penguin odyssey – we were heading down to Punta Tombo, the largest penguin nesting ground outside of Antarctica. But first we had another little extra thrown in for good measure: a boat ride to go dolphin-spotting. Having already seen a fair few dolphins in New Zealand I was more excited about seeing the penguins, but this ended up being my favourite part of the day. Commerson's dolphins, henceforth to be known as panda dolphins for their black and white colouring and slightly pudgy physique, are completely unique to Patagonia. They came motoring up to the boat (more of a dinghy really, with only about 30 people on board) and ran rings around us as they investigated, popping up and disappearing again before you really knew what was happening. We took a lot of photos of water as we raced to try and keep up with them. They were really inquisitive – at one point I got splashed fully in the face by the exhalation from a dolphin's blowhole, he was that close to the boat. A little gross...but pretty cool all the same.

Slightly giddy with excitement, we headed on down the coast to see the penguins. The colony is home to over one million penguins during peak season (in January / February time, when all the chicks have hatched and the young penguins come ashore to shed and re-waterproof their feathers ready for another season at sea), but even when we were there, just before the eggs were due to start hatching, there were some 200,000 pairs of penguins. Penguins mate for life and have a very 21st century approach to parenting: they each take it in turns to sit on the egg, whilst the other goes to sea and fishes for a few days at a time. So we got to see both the penguins nesting and the penguins heading off to or back from the sea. As you might expect of a colony accommodating so many penguins, it was enormous, and it was very bizarre to see the stark black and white creatures set against a desert brush-like background.

Again the regulations governing human interaction with wild animals seemed to be virtually non-existent, and whilst we were given strict instructions about not getting too close, and not petting the animals, we were able to get a lot closer than I'd anticipated. When a penguin is waddling past you, it has right of way, as if you block its path it can get disorientated and lose its way. We were enchanted as a few of these little creatures waddled across right in front of us. The nesting penguins had their own little routines too, getting up off the eggs every few hours in order to stretch, shit and have a little wander around – pretty similar to a human morning really!

Being close to the sea also had the advantage of offering a break from the unofficial national cuisine (ham and cheese) and indulge ourselves in fresh seafood. Not that this seems to be a benefit for the locals: 95% of the seafood caught here is exported, and one of our tour guides proudly told us she only eats fish once a year, at Easter: the rest of the time, it's carne, carne, carne. Her loss is our gain, and we indulged in enormous prawns, calamari, scallops, salmon and a new one for me, spider crab. It seemed there were only a few good restaurants in town, and so we found ourselves spending two consecutive evenings next to the same couple from Buenos Aires on a tour of Patagonia. They were very keen to chat to us, and the husband became my friend for life when he told James he was “muy suerte” (very lucky) to be marrying me!

Fresh from the moving experience of 'Welsh afternoon tea' in Bariloche, we were keen to repeat the experience in Gaiman, known as the Welsh capital of Patagonia. The idea of a “little Wales beyond Wales” had been mooted since 1862 by Professor Michael D. Jones, a Welsh nationalist preacher from Bala. He wanted to create a Welsh-speaking colony free from the corrupting influences of the English. In 1865 his vision was realised, as some 153 Welshmen travelled on the good ship Mimosa from Liverpool to the river Chubut in Patagonia. From there the new arrivals moved up the valley, settling in Gaiman, Dolovan and Rawson.

Mr Jones couldn't really have picked a better spot to achieve his ambitions – this area of Patagonia was at the time completely desolate, inhabited only by the local Teluelche tribe. Unfortunately, it was also pretty inhospitable, with awful weather and difficult crop-growing conditions. However, with the help of the natives the community eventually started to thrive, along with those Welsh traditions they were so keen to preserve, including the annual Eisteddfod singing and dancing competition, which continues to this day. In fact, it's probably more Welsh than parts of Wales are!

Today, Gaiman is a pretty sleepy town, with a sunlit main square and lots of rose bushes everywhere. For us, it was pretty bizarre – it felt like we'd somehow teleported back to Wales overnight. Also a lot of the people looked vaguely familiar. We expected them to be speaking English, or Welsh at the very least, so it was quite a shock when they began talking in Spanish. This mix of Welsh and Argentinian was obvious in the street and business names we passed on our walk around town – the bookshop was run by a Ricardo Jones Berwyn, and the main street was called Avenue Jones. Like parts of Wales, it seemed that nothing opened until after lunch, and so, tired after an overnight bus ride from Bariloche, we headed straight to our hostel. It was more like a B&B, and was again disorientating in its familiarity – with the floral bedspreads, pink lampshades and crotcheted placemats, I felt once more like I was back at my Aunty Enid's.

After a little rest, we headed back into town. We seemed to be the only people sightseeing that day, but that didn't deter us. We visited the oldest house in Gaiman, a stone building made by one David Roberts who seemed to spend his life travelling the world, never settling properly in one place – although he managed to stay in Patagonia long enough to sire several children. Again a lot of the furnishings were eerily familiar – am pretty sure my grandmother had the same sideboard. We also went to the Gaiman Welsh Museum, where the curator seemed inordinately pleased to see us (or perhaps, to see anyone in his museum at all). There were a lot of Victorian era pictures of Morgan's and Griffiths' here, along with the original 'town plan,' dividing the area into plots of land for each of the immigrants. I think I counted about 20 Davies' in total.

The town came to life a little more in the afternoon – it seems the main source of revenue is catering to tour parties, from Wales and elsewhere, keen to experience a little bit of Wales on this side of the Atlantic, mostly in cake form. We headed to Plas y Coed, the self-proclaimed oldest tea shop in town, and were delighted when our afternoon tea arrived complete with Welsh cakes, bara brith and strong Welsh tea. Yum! We also befriended our waitress by explaining we were both Welsh – she had lived in Swansea for 2 months a couple of years back, and took great delight in telling us she'd been through Bridgend (where I was born) on the train every day on her commute between Swansea and Cardiff. Small world.

Gaiman also has a mini-claim to fame in that Princess Diana stopped here for afternoon tea once in 1995 (or thereabouts). Our Lonely Planet claimed that the tea house in question, Ty Te Caerdydd, had kept her table exactly as it had been on that day, and had never washed the cup and saucer she'd drunk from. We decided to check it out. However, what the guidebook neglected to tell us was that the tea house was situated about 2km from town, in the middle of nowhere. And thus it was that we found ourselves on an inadvertent Diana pilgrimage. On arrival we were a little disappointed – although there were plenty of pictures of the People's Princess in the lobby, there was no sign of the cobwebby table, and we weren't allowed in without agreeing to consume another full afternoon tea. Big fan of cake that I am, even I couldn't stretch to another 7 pieces of cake, and so we had to return to town with our pilgrimage unfulfilled.

Bariloche is in the heart of the Lake District in Northern Patagonia, about a thousand kilometres south of Mendoza. I think Sarah was in denial about how cold it was going to be there. She stood shivering by the baggage carousel wearing shorts and sandals, surrounded a crowd of Mammut and North Faced tourists.

To be fair to her, it was a bit of a shock flying from 30ºc Mendoza to 6ºc Bariloche. Driving into town surrounded by snowy mountains made us feel like we were back in New Zealand again. This feeling was soon dispelled as we discovered that Bariloche is an almost exact copy of Geneva. Just like its Swiss twin it's a lakeside town crammed with faux-chalet buildings, and specialising in chocolate and fondue. To be honest I was surprised they hadn't gone the whole-hog and installed a flower clock and a jet d'eau.

The hostel we had booked was out of town, a 15 minute lakeside taxi ride away. The lake is bigger and meaner than Lake Geneva, a menacing bullet grey colour streaked with wind-whipped white caps. Perfect for kite-surfing, we saw several surfers tearing along the water. The hostel when we arrived was a lovely place, kind of like a timber lodge / air-raid shelter hybrid that was run by a young couple and their dog. Javi, Natti and Lolly made us very welcome during our stay and were a great help in our getting the most out of the area – Lolly especially, who made a point of saying hello to us each morning, and showing off whichever mini ski sweater she had decided to wear that day to keep out the cold.

Like the Lake District back home, outdoor pursuits like hiking, sailing and cycling are the main event here. Our first outing was a 30km cycle ride around the many lakes that lay to the west of town. Sarah competed in the 10th Annual Tour de Libourne race, but it seems that the cycling prowess she demonstrated that day was purely alcohol-inspired. She fared less well in Bariloche. She didn't want to cycle uphill as it was too hard, or downhill as she felt out of control; didn't like cycling on gravel as it was too wobbly and would only cycle on the roads as long as there were no cars. All of which made for pretty slow progress. But it did give me a lot of time to enjoy the scenery, which was stunning.

As a reward for Sarah's manning-up towards the end of the cycle ride, we stopped for tea at a guesthouse we spotted on the way back to our hostel. We were waved inside by a jolly red-faced man by the name of Alexander Gough. As he introduced himself it came to light that his family were Welsh immigrants to Argentina, one of many families that moved to Patagonia in the 1800s. This went some way to explain the décor of the living room, which bore an uncanny resemblance to Sarah's great aunt Enid's house in Porthcawl. When he learned that we both had Welsh heritage too, that was it – we were soon enjoying a fresh pot of tea with an assortment of seven different types of cake, whilst a CD of the Welsh National Anthem played on repeat in the background. It brought a tear to my eye.

The next day we hired a car from a friend of Javi's and drove out to see the Seven Lakes – one of the 'must-see' day trips in the Lake District. We hired the car with a cool young couple from just outside Brisbane, Andrew & Megan, who were off to Peru the following week. We were lucky to have such great company as the incredible views that we were promised were hidden behind a thick curtain of rain and mist for most of the day. We didn't mind much; we had a great time chatting away about Australia, London, Peru, and weddings. I think this wedding chat may have distracted Sarah from her map-reading duties, as we accidentally ended up driving to the Chilean border. The border guard did not look amused as we did a rapid u-turn and motored back into Argentina.

We had the car for one more day, and used it to drive out to see the 'Black Glacier' in the Nahuel Huapi National Park. Now the roads around the Seven Lakes were pretty ropey, but those in the National Park were ridiculous. Once we got into the park the road disappeared altogether and we had to drive for over four hours along a bumpy dirt and gravel track through the forests to get to the glacier. It was pretty eery – we were so completely alone in the wilderness the whole time it was a relief to see other people when we eventually arrived at the glacier. The glacier itself is black due to the rock and sediment mixed up in the ice when it formed thousands of years ago. Bascially, it's dirty ice. Nevertheless, the sight of the dirty glacier shunting down into the milky meltwater lake filled with icebergs was very nearly worth the bone-shaking drive to get there.

Tired after the second long day of driving, we walked to a local Parrilla – grill restaurant – that Natti had recommended to us. To the left of the door walking in were stacks of cooking meat sizzling over red hot coals, tended to by two serious looking chefs with large knives. Encouraging! We tried a steak cut that we hadn't tried before called entraña – again a recommendation from Natti – that has only been on menus in Argentina for the last couple of years. Apparently when meat prices went up recently, everyone started frantically experimenting with cheaper cuts for their barbeques and entraña was one of the more popular innovations. What else could they do? Eat less beef? Like that's going to happen! Entraña is a skirt steak – a little chewier than filet but much more tasty. And it goes very well with a strong malbec like the Patagonian Intimo which we drank in record time. We meandered home stuffed, ready for the next leg of our journey down the Chubut valley to Gaiman to visit more of our Welsh brethren.

In Córdoba we figured out that nice as the buses are in Argentina, they're only a bit cheaper than flying. The choice between a budget 1 ½ flight and a luxury 15 hour bus was an easy one, and we booked our plane tickets to Mendoza. Anyway, it was fitting that we arrived in Mendoza by plane. Unbeknownst to us at the time, we were about to embark upon a 3 day flashpacking extravaganza - the flight was just the start.

Mendoza is another desert town, but aside from the heat you wouldn't know it. Aquifers originally dug by the Huarpes tribe babble along the sides of every street, and the trees and grass of the many plazas are all well-watered and green.

Like Cafayate, the town and its wineries sit to the east of the Andes, just over the border from Chile. The mountains absorb any moisture that would otherwise rain in the region, leaving them just 220mm a year. The heat, low moisture and stoney soil make the area perfect for growing intense grapes like malbec. The only weather that the winery owners have to worry about are strange hailstorms that ride in from the mountains in late summer, with potentially disastrous results for their vines. We saw many vines growing under netting to protect them from hail.

Having dumped our bags at our hostel in the north of town, we managed to get halfway to the centre before stopping for a leisurely lunch – the sun and the number of nice cafes set out on the wide pavements sucked us in. The cheapest menu del dia came with a house malbec, so we made an early start. And after the stresses of the big city, didn't we deserve another break? No, is the answer, but we took one anyway.

Feeling full and happy, we rolled on to the centre of town to take a look around. Mendoza seems to be a favourite vacation destination for Americans bored of trips to the Napa Valley, and most of them seemed to be staying at the enormous Hyatt casino hotel built next to the central square. We wandered in to see what all the fuss was about, and found an extremely well kitted-out gym. They also had a deal on for a day's use of their facilities that included a free massage. Thinking back to when we last visited a gym – July – we panicked and booked ourselves in for later that week.

Our next task was to find a wine-tasting tour to go on. We had heard good things about The Amphora Wine company, and were on our way to their offices when we passed what we thought was some kind of comedy Argentine Abercrombie & Fitch rip-off – a very preppy, very expensive polo-themed clothes shop. On closer inspection though, the store turned out to be completely legit – there actually is a real polo scene in Argentina, and La Martina is the brand of choice. The window even had a poster for a local polo tournament. Deciphering the print, we realised that it was at the Mendoza Country Club, the tournament finals were tomorrow, and it was free! So having booked our wine-tour we had a three day plan of polo, wine then spa. As I said, flashpacking.

After lunch the next day we dressed up in our smartest clothes and caught a taxi out to the country club. After a little bit of confusion at the entrance gate of the club – 'Polo? What polo?' - our taxi was redirected to a couple of fields across the road. There was no-one there. We weren't sure we were in the right place but we saw a couple of horses running around in the distance so we walked on over, trying to look like we belonged. On one field we found a polo match in progress and a couple of very well-to-do looking mums pushing babies around the boundary in hi-tech buggies. I recognise a WAG when I see one – this was the place! Beside the field, there were a couple of well-branded stalls set up to serve drinks, with tables and leather sofas dotted around, but no-one on them. Clearly we had turned up a couple of hours too early.

We decided to settle in and watched our first match from some wooden bleachers. Even to the uneducated eye, the two teams playing were clearly second-rate – lots of swinging and missing – but it was nonetheless very entertaining to watch. Despite their inability to connect with the ball, the players' skill in handling the horses was incredible. One minute they were twirling in circles in a scrum of other horses, the next turning to gallop downfield chasing the ball – all with only one-hand on the reins as they used the other to wave their mallets around in the air ready to strike... or not, as the case may be.

Sarah and I soon found ourselves a little hot sitting in the sun, and decided to let the wallet take a hit and order some drinks. We sat ourselves down on some stools at the Chandon stall and ordered two glasses of champagne. When I asked how much I owed for the drinks, the bartender looked a little confused for a second, then replied, 'They're all free'. This changed things somewhat. We spent the next few hours watching several polo matches of increasingly quality, whilst sampling a lot of champagne from different local estates. To top things off, the polo club had employed a couple of waiters to walk around the field with plates of fresh empañadas for everyone. This polo crowd certainly know how to live!

Just as interesting as the polo itself (and the champagne sampling) was the people-watching. The crowd that was building as we approached the final games of the tournament seemed to be mostly made up of polo players, their pretty young wives and kids. Talking with our new friend Ramone from La Chamiza estate, we learned that while polo is a bit more common a sport in Argentina than in the UK, it is still the preserve of the rich – to play a match you need at least 4 horses, so you've got to be at least moderately wealthy! There's clearly a degree of status attached to playing the sport too: Those who had played in a match that day changed out of their tops and boots but swaggered around in their muddied white trousers on for the rest of the afternoon, just so that everyone knew that they were players.

The next day, with slightly fuzzy heads, we woke up and ate a big breakfast in preparation for the wine tour. Having been a little bit disappointed with the standard of the free tastings during our wanderings in Cafayate, we had booked ourselves onto a 'premium' tour which meant we would get to taste the best wines from each of the wineries we would visit.

They weren't kidding with the 'premium' label. When the van picked us up, it turned out that there were only four of us on the tour: Sarah, myself, Alan and Judy – two lovely Atlantians – and our guide Maria who gave us a fantastic introduction to Mendoza's history on the drive out to the Luján de Cuyo region.

We were treated like royalty the entire day. At each winery we were met at the gates by a rep, then taken on a completely private tour of their operations – from the vines to the fermentation tanks to the barrels and bottling – before finishing up with a comprehensive tasting. It was great to get to see the more industrial side of wine production that usually kept hidden behind the scenes in Oz & NZ – it felt like we got a feel for wine as a business as well as just a finished product.

The problem with any wine tasting is that there is a lot of interesting information to take in, but also lots of tasty wine to take on. And the latter tends to blot out the former. Despite this fact, we learned a lot about Mendoza, malbecs and torrontés grapes. The marketeer in both of us was very interested to see the number of wine-in-bags stacked up in the Piatelli factory: Their principle export market is the US, and bags now make up a significant proportion of their volume. Foil bags ('goon bags' for the Aussies out there) actually keep the wine in a better state than bottles do, and are ideal for a market where wine is mostly served by the glass. Consumers aren't quite ready for the modern ugliness of these silver bags yet though, so most restaurants put them inside twee little wooden casks that are displayed behind the bar.

The pinnacle of the tours' premiumness came at lunch, which we enjoyed in a private dining room at Bodega Ruca Malen's. Sipping aperitifs out on our very own balcony overlooking the vineyards, the chef himself came up to introduce each of the five courses and the wines chosen to match them. I think he must have thought we were a bit simple sitting there with dazed grins on our faces, dumbstruck by our good luck.

There had to be a downside to all this indulgence of course. The next day after a long lie-in we had to drag ourselves to the gym. We did have the gym to ourselves when we got there though – probably a good thing as we sweated out two days' worth of alcohol, limping along on the treadmills. It also meant we got control of the massive flatscreen TV, and so got to watch Ali with Will Smith. The motivational training scenes definitely helped us through the trauma of being back in a gym after so long. And the massages at the end of it all helped too.