From the coastline of Uruguay, Buenos Aires' skyline shimmers like a mirage over the Rio del Plata: A dream of tall buildings and wide streets, modern art museums and restaurants serving food where the main ingredients aren't ham or cheese.

Up close 'BA' is a city of Parisian buildings, on a New York layout, to a London-scale. There are 13 million living in Greater Buenos Aires – over ¼ of the entire country's population – spread over an enormous grid system around the open mouth of the Rio del Plata. Every block in every neighbourhood seems crammed with grand buildings, four storeys or more of high ceilings and ornate balconies built then abandoned by the rich as they fled the latest outbreak of yellow fever or moved on to more fashionable areas. So whilst every district has its own distinct personality, even the most run-down streets in La Boca have a faded grandeur that makes the city endlessly interesting to walk around.

And by God did we walk in Buenos Aires. Pondering why my feet were throbbing on Friday, I estimated that we had walked well over 10km every day for 6 days. We pounded the pavements from our hostel in San Telmo, up to the Microcentro, down to La Boca, west to the harbour development of Puerto Madero, and further north to upmarket Recoleta, Palermo and Belgrano.

In Palermo we stopped to visit the Evita Museum, as we were a little embarrassed how little we knew about this national icon. I can't say I left the museum knowing much more. After a promising introduction – 'Evita was a controversial figure...' - the rest of the exhibits were little more than propaganda, which seems to be a pretty accurate reflection of her time in power. I think we learned more from the imagery than the words: as we moved forward in time the graphics became more and more soviet communist ('Workers Unite!')...the PR stunts more and more shameless (Evita sponsors a free day out at the sea-side for all poor children! Look how happy these street urchins are!)...and the crowds of poor people ever bigger.

We continued following Evita's trail to her grave in the famous Recoleta Cemetery. A walled city of mausoleums in the centre of the most upmarket neighbourhood in town, the cemetery is a seriously spooky place to spend an afternoon. It's like an enormous terraced town; each house inhabited by stacks of coffins and rotting flowers. The mausoleums are all built in different styles and sizes – some new, some old – and most have glass doors that display the coffins resting on shelves inside. The newer ones tended to be more discrete with their contents – metal grates or staircases set in their floors leading down to dark subterranean catacombs. Sarah let out a gasp when we walked past an especially ancient mausoleum where the shelves had rotted away. The glass door had smashed and we caught a glimpse of a splintered coffin, spilling cloth and bones onto its marble floor. We walked away from that one as fast as we could without running, and continued our search for Evita. Her family tomb was actually one of the smaller ones in the cemetery, although it drew the biggest crowds. About 8 tourists gathered around the doors holding their official cemetery maps in one hand and cameras in the other.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Our first evening in town we took the metro (30p a trip by the way – makes you wonder what TFL are up to!) up to swanky Belgrano to watch a Sunday night tradition in the local park: as sun set, the old bandstand filled with smartly dressed oldies, shuffling a tango to the music from a small set of speakers. Sarah and I sat and watched, and with twisted arm I promised that we would go to a lesson before the week was out.

After putting it off for 5 days, on our penultimate night we went to a tango hall in the centre of town. When we arrived at the ridiculously early time of 10pm, we were shown upstairs to a grand hall with marble floored and a long thin dancefloor surrounded by pillars and tables. As Sarah fetched Quilmes to ease my nerves I watched as several other tourist couples sheepishly ascended the stairs. We were the youngest there by a good 20 years.

Our lesson was given by a professionally greasy pint-sized lothario in a black suit and a pony tail. He showed us the basic steps of a tango, training us up to perform a simply 'el ocho' (figure of eight) over the course of an hour. I'll admit it, I enjoyed it. The tango is at once a bit mincing and very macho – the lady has absolutely no idea what moves she has to do, and has to intuitively respond to the man's movements. Unsurprisingly Sarah struggled with this concept, preferring instead to try and lead me around the dancefloor. This drew the attention of one of the teachers – an elegant old gent who interceded on my part to show Sarah what was what.

As our lesson drew to an end, the tables around the dancefloor filled with local couples in their glad rags, ready for the real dancing to begin. So having finished mangling the art-form beyond recognition, we sat back down to our now warm Quilmes and saw how it was meant to be done...

To see the pros do it, the tango seemed to me to be a very slow and graceful dance: The men gently guiding their partners around the floor in seemingly random directions, avoiding the other couples, while the ladies did all sorts of twirls and lunges and feet pointing. The couples were very old though, so maybe we have a distorted view of the pace of the dance. My favourite couple's average age was 70 (he was around 80, she was around 60) and spent the whole hour we were there dancing, only stopping every 20 minutes to rehydrate and (probably) pop pills. He was wearing a crisp blue shirt with chinos belted up around his armpits, and she was wearing a very low cut purple dress that showed off her thin figure and large breasts. Actually, I think bony is a better description than thin. She looked like Skeletor with fake tits.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Aside from the spectacle of the tango, the real highlight of our stay in Buenos Aires was the food - no more ham or cheese! OK, so these ingredients were still present in abundance, but at last there were other options for us to try. During our week in the city we gorged ourselves on Japanese, Chinese AND Indian food. The last time we had a curry was in Kuala Lumpur with Zubin: a meal so good we worried it might have ruined all other curry for us for life. However after a five month break we were both craving some spicy food, and were delighted to find a 'British Curry House' two minutes from our hostel run by an expat Londoner and his partner. While there were no poppadoms, there was mango chutney, naan and a most passable rogan josh.

And so it was that we ended our week in BA with sore feet and full stomachs, slumped exhausted in a taxi that took us through the shanty towns to the airport and off to Puerto Iguazú. We're beginning count the days till we see friends and family again, but still have the adventure of the Iguazú Falls and Brazil ahead of us...