As we flew over Misiones state to reach Puerto Iguazú, it felt like we were about to land in a new continent. Acres and acres of lush green forest lay beneath us, and only at the last minute did the trees open up to reveal the runway. Technically this was still Argentina, but the scenery felt closer to Borneo than to the megalopolis of Buenos Aires we'd left only a few hours before.......

This sense of being Somewhere Else only increased once we reached Puerto Iguazú proper (which I suspect would be a rather nondescript border town, were it not for its close proximity to the Iguazú Falls). The roads and pavements were covered in the same fine red dust which coated our clothes and faces in Phu Quoc. Most of the restaurants offered patrons plastic garden chairs to sit on, just like in Vietnam. And the oppressive heat and humidity, which left us instantly damp with sweat, took us right back to our early summer in South East Asia.

I guess this dramatic change shouldn't have come as so much of a surprise: you can see both Brazil and Paraguay from Iguazú's waterfront. So it's only natural the place should be a bit of a melting pot. One really positive consequence of this (from our perspective) was that the cuisine on offer here was a little more varied, and our first lunch consisted of a Paraguayan specialty for me, and a Brazilian one for James. Neither slice of ham nor piece of cheese in sight.

The main purpose of our visit was of course a trip to the Iguazú Falls. The Falls consist of some 275 individual waterfalls, stretching on for more than 2km, which crash at several thousand cubic metres a second into the Iguazú River some 80m below. They were first seen (by Europeans) in 1542 when Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his crew came exploring. Now of course, they're a little busier.

The Falls lie across the border between Argentina and Brazil, which means you need to visit both countries in order to see them properly. Although our next stop will be Sao Paulo, we decided to base ourselves in Argentina and just do a day trip to Brazil – having heard horror stories about how expensive Brazil is, we are keen to keep our days there to a minimum!

The morning after we arrived dawned bright and sunny, and so we got one of the first buses of the day to the Argentinian National Park. The build up was pretty impressive: first the bus takes you the 15km to the park through lush green rainforest similar to the tropical Amazonian jungles further north. First impressions: it's a lot like Jurassic Park here. Next, you get to wander through part of the forest along a narrow winding path, on the look out for toucans and other exotic birds. And then you enter the Park proper. Just like at the Perito Moreno Glacier, the National Park Authority has created a series of walkways to enable you to get close to the Falls, and see them from several different perspectives. They have clearly designed the walkways to keep you in suspense for the longest time, keeping the falls hidden until the very last moment But even from the start of the trail, the noise of the water gushing is huge – it sounds like a busy road in the middle of the national park! We interrupted a coati, a cousin to the raccoon with an incredibly long and flexible snout (think Cyril and Cedric Sneer from The Raccoons, though brown not pink), prowling around on an early morning stroll. And then finally, we turned a corner, and there they were.....

The Falls were absolutely spectacular – I've never seen waterfalls on anywhere near the same scale before. Some of the waterfalls we specifically drove to see in New Zealand were mere trickles by comparison. There are individual falls as far as the eye can see, ranging from small trickles to absolute monsters. The water is a dirty muddy colour, apparently the result of significant deforestation in the region – 40 years ago, the water ran clear. This seems a real shame, although it does add to the other-worldly feel of the place. Butterflies in almost every colour, from orange, to yellow, to blue, to purple, flitted around, and we even saw some condors soaring overhead. Wow. It's really difficult to do the Falls justice in words, so perhaps this will help:



We wandered around the walkways for a couple of hours to get our fill of the Falls, one of which you're able to walk almost right up to. James and I stowed our bags and then walked towards it hand in hand, getting absolutely soaked in the process. Fortunately it was such a sunny day it was pretty refreshing! We finished our day at the Garganto del Diablo, or Devil's Throat, a concentrated torrent of water. The viewing platform is perched right at the top of the falls, so you can watch the water disappear over a ledge into the abyss, occasional plumes of spray bouncing upwards to obscure your view completely.

The following day, we were less lucky with the weather – there had been an enormous electrical storm the night before, and the rain continued well into the afternoon. Not to be discouraged (and having already bought our bus tickets for the 8.10 journey to Brazil) we donned our rain coats and decided to make the best of it.

But actually, seeing the Falls in both sunny and wet conditions made for a good contrast – and being on the Brazilian side mostly involves getting absolutely soaked at every opportunity anyway. If anything, this second day was my favourite: seeing just how many falls there are in the area really takes your breath away. Jostling for room amidst the visiting Brazilians and snap-happy Japanese tourists, we managed to take a few pictures ourselves.

The Brazilian walkways generally give you the more panoramic view, but again, at one point you can walk right into the heart of the falls – surrounded by water on every side. Looking over the viewing platform at the edge of one of the Falls, you realise there is no way you'd survive being swept away. Luckily, James kept a tight hold on me and I didn't blow away in the gusting winds.

I love ice cream. I have no qualms about that. It has been a long-standing love affair, starting with neopolitan and gino ginelli's toffee flavour when I was little, progressing to the flavour of the week and late-night brownie sundaes at G&Ds during my years at university. Now I have a particular penchant for Haagen Daaz Cookies and Cream, which I have been known to eat half a tub of (oh, ok then, more like two-thirds) at one sitting.

I have always found that I liked to eat ice cream more often than most other people I know, and in larger quantities. I had resigned myself to the fact that I was probably just a little bit greedier than most when it came to gelato.

But being in Argentina has been a revelation. I find that I am not alone. It seems, in fact, that ice cream is an Argentinian obsession, much like mate, football, and steak. Most major cities in Argentina have ice cream parlour on every street corner, like Starbucks in New York or London. They are open all day and late into the night – in short, there to help whenever that ice cream craving should strike you.

And as for the portions, well. Here is a picture of me about to enjoy a 'scoop' of strawberry sorbet. Bear in mind, if you will, that this was the SMALLEST portion size available. Most people were ordering a minimum of two flavours, piled high atop wafer cones, then dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with nuts. Others went for ¼ kg pots of the stuff, crammed with four or five different flavours.

Ice cream production here is something of an art – the old secret recipes brought over from Italy and then honed and perfected to incorporate local flavours like dulce de leche and calafate berry. The regular flavours too are outstanding – banana tastes like real banana, chocolate is full of flavour and even vanilla is done very well, made using real vanilla pods.

Ice cream heaven is definitely here in Argentina.

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.

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!

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.

The bus pulled up into Cafayate on a sleepy Saturday afternoon. The dusty square was flooded with sunlight, the grassy area in the centre filled with locals and tourists alike, whiling away the day sunbathing. We decided that perhaps it was finally time to give ourselves a few days' rest and that perhaps Cafayate was the place in which to do it.

We were staying in a hostel called Rusty K, which had a gorgeous suntrap of a garden, and after a quick trip to the corner shop for crisps and beer, we sat in the sun and planned the next few weeks of the tour, stopping occasionally to pet the two adorable dogs belonging to the owners. This was starting to feel like a regular holiday!

Our gastronomic explorations continued here in Cafayate. Northern Argentina has some traditional dishes, and so we tried tamales, balls made of corn filled with minced beef and vegetables (writing this down makes it sound disgusting but they were actually very good!) and humitas, a mushy paste made up of sweetcorn, onions, and bits of melted cheese, which I was considerably less keen on – it's what I imagine eating baby food would be like. But the best thing was dulche de leche, an Argentinian-wide obsession, which is essentially a sweet caramel spread, eaten at every possible opportunity, but especially at breakfast time. It was too sweet for James, but I loved it – took me back to my youthful obsession with Nutella. Yum!

Cafayate is best-known for producing the best torrontés wine in Argentina, and so we were obviously keen to sample a glass or two. We had high hopes after having such a good time in the Marlborough region in NZ, but we were to discover that the Argentinian approach to wine tasting was generally a little more...low key. There were a few small bodegas in the centre of town, which we decided to have a little wander around first. Our first and favourite stop was Bodega Nonni, which we arrived at straight after lunch, ready for the 3pm tasting. We were early. As we sat in the little sun-filled courtyard, awaiting our tour, we realised this wasn't the first time we'd waited for a winery to open....we probably shouldn't make a habit of it. The tour was conducted entirely in Spanish, and although we did our best to follow what was going on, we spent most of the time nodding, smiling and saying “si” whenever occasion seemed to demand it. We got to sample a few wines, including the lovely torrontés, which is a lot like sauvignon blanc, only fruitier. They also gave us a rosé which smelt like strawberries and cream, but tasted more like syrup – apparently rosé wine is not yet very popular here in Argentina. I am starting to see why.

The next day it was the turn of the bigger vineyards: both Diageo and Pernod-Ricard have bought wineries in the area. Our first port of call was Diageo's Bodega El Esteco, a sunny 2km walk down the road. Diageo has clearly invested a lot of money in the area, as all of Cafayate's street signs are branded with the bodega's logo. The vineyard was suitably impressive: the vines sprawl over 400 hectares, and the wine-making equipment is housed in a huge white building, built in 1892. The tour was again in Spanish, but we'd picked up a bit of technical vocab by now, plus what we saw was interesting enough not to require much explanation. I couldn't believe how close we were allowed to come to actual production. We wandered amongst workers washing out barrels, operating the bottling line and packing the finished product ready for shipment. Very cool. The tasting was a little less impressive – despite paying for a tour, we were only allowed to sample one white and one red, both from the most basic range. We weren't impressed, especially when we glanced outside and saw another group enjoying a private tasting. Damn them.

But all was redeemed by Pernod-Ricard's Bodega Eckhart. This was a little way out of town, and so we hired bikes from our hostel and cycled along quiet roads flanked by bright green vines and the peaks of the Andes beyond. A pretty spectacular place to grow wine. The bodega itself was pretty industrial, with huge metal vats filled with litres and litres of torrontés and cabernet sauvignon, but the tasting room, in the oldest part of the building, was beautiful – all old oak panelling and wooden casks. They also still have about 40 bottles of the first wine they ever produced, in 1938. Can't imagine it tastes any good now.....

The tasting was fantastic: our group of ten (all Argentinian except for us) gathered around an old cask, cut in half and varnished to become a table. We shared glasses between two, which is apparently the norm here, and were given in turn a delicious torrontés, a malbec, a fruity cabernet sauvignon and a late harvest torrontés. Fans of the late harvest already following our stint in NZ, this was our favourite. In each case, James and I passed the glass between us until it was finished. It was only at the end of the tasting, as we looked around the table, that we realised we were the only ones to have done so: all the other glasses were at least half-full. Clearly 'tasting' really does mean just that in this part of the world! With a cheeky smile, and a joke about “los borrachos Ingleses” we made some instant friends. One of the guys started trying out his English language skills on us. He'd mastered about 5 words, after which he resorted to the names of his favourite English musicians (the Beatles featured prominently) and all the Argentinian footballers currently playing in the Premier League.

It was in Cafayate that we also met one of the weirdest people we've encountered on the trip so far, a man from one of the Hebrides (I forget exactly which) who was celebrating his retirement with a 6 week trip around Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. We happened to be having lunch at the table next to his one day, and using the merits of the Rough Guide (his choice) vs. the Lonely Planet (ours) as an opening gambit, invited himself to come and join us and quiz us on our recent travels in Bolivia. He only wanted to visit “non-touristy, authentic places” and on these grounds, was thinking he probably wouldn't go to Machu Picchu at all! He also boasted about having stayed in the most dangerous part of Buenos Aires at the start of his trip, recommending we do the same. Since he was wearing what I can only describe as a bright green smock during this conversation, I find this hard to believe, but will take him at his word. So it seems we have discovered a new breed of traveller: the Gap Yah Retiree.

An odd thing started to happen as we drove south from Tilcara to Salta. The dusty roads gave way to tarmac, which later gave way to multi-lane motorways. The landscape, brown for so long, became greener, and suddenly, we spotted trees. As we got closer to the city, petrol stations and advertising billboards appeared. It seemed we were re-entering civilisation!

This was confirmed later that day, as we found ourselves sitting in a cafe overlooking Salta's Plaza de Mayo, sipping ice-cold Quilmes and enjoying the last of the day's sunshine. Bolivia felt a very long way away already....

Salta is the 4th largest city in Argentina, and the biggest city in the Andean northwest. It was originally founded by the Spaniards in 1582 to grow crops which simply refused to prosper in the harsher Bolivian climes – essentially, it was the bread basket for the rich silver mine owners. More recently, it's become a magnet for poor Bolivian and rural Argentinian families, seeking their fortune in the big city. As a result, it's a bit of a melting pot, which we caught a glimpse of from the variety of faces we saw whilst people-watching in the square: Argentinians have a more diverse heritage than most of their South American neighbours, as a result of immigration from across Europe in the last few centuries.

One of the things we were most excited about on arriving in Argentina proper was the food, especially after 2 weeks of Bolivian 'cuisine,' and it didn't disappoint. Salta is famous for its empañadas, which are scoffed in large quantities for lunch, for dinner, and at any time inbetween. We ate as many as we could get our hands on – I fear I may have a new addiction. We had both been dreaming about a proper steak for weeks and although the beef is allegedly best further south, we couldn't stop ourselves indulging in some red meat at the appropriately named Bifé del Rey, or King of Beef. Or at least, we tried to. The menu was divided according to cuts of meat, which was a little beyond our Spanish skills. Instead we opted for the 'point and guess' approach. This worked well for me, but James was less successful – he ended up with a chicken leg. I gave him half of mine out of pity.

Salta is described by the Lonely Planet as “smoothing ruffled psyches” and this was definitely true for us – we focused on eating, drinking, sleeping and enjoying the relative normalcy of our surroundings. But we did make time for a bit of sightseeing. Starved of modern art in recent weeks, we made a beeline for the small but delightful Modern Art Museum, currently showcasing giant inflatable bats, flowers and plasticine monsters. It was pretty surreal.

I also visited the High Altitude Archeology Museum, better known as the house of frozen mummies, like the one we saw in Arequipa. James decided one mummy museum was enough for him, and opted out. Salta's 3 mummies, a teenage girl and two six year olds (one male, one female) were found at the peak of Mount Llullaillaco, some 480km from Salta, during a 1999 expedition of the 6739m mountain. Of all the mummies discovered from the Incan era to date, they are by far the best preserved, kept in near-perfect condition as a result of the freezing temperatures, low pressure and lack of oxygen. The museum was a lot slicker than the one in Arequipa – though I almost missed the creepy guide leading us around. The mummies are displayed on rotation, again effectively in a large freezer. On the day I visited it was The Girl Struck by Lightning, kept in a quiet room under the watchful gaze of a guard. She still looked so perfect, I got freaked out she was going to open her eyes if I got too close. Eerie stuff.

We said goodbye to Swills in Sucre, and from there it was on to Argentina. After the awful journey from La Paz to Uyuni we contemplated sparing ourselves the anguish and getting a flight, but the prospect of 4 connecting flights and spending $500 USD didn't really appeal. So there was nothing for it but to travel the old fashioned way:

Stage 1: 11 hour overnight bus ride from Sucre to Tupiza

We left Sucre at about 5.30pm. About 20 mins later, the in-journey 'entertainment' started. Usually this consists of a film, or music videos, or sometimes documentaries about the area you're heading to. But in this instance, it was the Bolivian favourite: pan pipe music. And the speaker was directly above my head. Now I don't know whether James and I have a particularly low tolerance for pan pipes, but after half an hour we were both considering either ripping the speaker out or ripping our ears off. Nothing drowned it out. In the end I settled for the noise reduction offered by my ear plugs and tried to sleep, only to be jolted awake every time the singers shouted “Boli-via” at the top of their voices. It happened a lot.

The bus was mostly filled with locals, who I'd noticed had all got on clutching their alpaca blankets (de riguer in these parts), in anticipation of the cold Andean night ahead. We had one North Face jacket between us, James having packed his in his rucksack in the mistaken assumption that 'it can't get that cold.' Oh how wrong we were. The combination of the overnight temperature drop and the fact that the windows rattled open every 20 minutes or so meant it was bloody freezing. At about midnight his shivering got too much for both of us and we compromised with one layer of the jacket each and huddled together for warmth.

And it got worse. Bolivian roads have left a fair amount to be desired thus far: this trip was no exception. We thought we'd got away with it, but about 12.30am we left the paved road behind and endured another 3 hours of bone-shaking as the bus was driven over loose rocks at high speed. Not fun. Finally we arrived at Tupiza....at 3.30 in the morning, far earlier than we'd expected, and were cursorily dumped in the middle of town. We shared a taxi with another English girl to our hostel, and then stood outside for 20 mins whilst we rang the doorbell and tried to wake the night porter. With the help of some friendly Italians who happened to be smoking out of their window, we eventually roused him. Stupidly we'd only booked a hostel for the following evening, and unfortunately that night it was full. But the kindly night porter took pity on us and let us sleep on the sofa in the living room. He even gave us an alpaca blanket.

Stage 2: 3 hour bus ride from Tupiza to Villazon

We spent a day in Tupiza resting and recovering. The countryside around Tupiza is allegedly where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid came to a sticky end, and so there were all manner of tours offering horseback riding and adventure trekking. But we just didn't have the energy (plus, as I'd learnt in KL, horses move rather a lot when you're riding them). Instead we enjoyed hot showers, naps and lots of pizza, accompanied by more pan pipe music.

The next morning we wandered down to the bus station to pick up one of the many buses our hostel owners had assured us would be passing through from 9am, en route to Villazón, the Bolivian border town. They were wrong. Instead we had to wait almost 2 hours for the only bus heading in that direction to show up. The bus was rusty and falling apart: every time James moved, his chair did, and so did mine, and bits of the bus above our heads appeared to be held together with sellotape. As a result, we were pretty dubious about whether it would make it to its destination at all. Astoundingly, we got there with no breakdowns or flat tyres, just a few more bruises from the rocky road.

Stage 3: 4 ½ hour bus ride from La Quiaca to Tilcara

At first glance, northern Argentina was identical to southern Bolivia. The sleepy border town of La Quiaca used to be a railroad hub but now exists largely to serve the needs of passing tourists. We were just pleased because it gave us opportunity to withdraw some Argentinian pesos and enjoy the biggest meal ever (I ate the equivalent of at least 2 large chickens in escalope form), wincing all the while at the difference in currency. Bolivia really was cheap!

And then it was time to catch our bus. We'd been reassured by travellers coming the other way that Argentinian buses were fantastic, but there was not much evidence of that at La Quiaca. Another rickety old bus conveyed us the 4 ½ hours from there to Tilcara, but not before stopping in every tinpot village and at every random roadside bus stop in between. We were also stopped about half an hour across the border by the Argentinian police, who got everyone and everything off the bus, made us stand in lines and searched every bag, one by one. Except ours – clearly whatever they were looking for (Cocaine? Counterfeit pesos? Illegal pan pipe music?), foreigners are not under suspicion. A cursory glance at our passports and we were waved through.

At 8.30pm we arrived in Tilcara, in the heart of the Quebrada de Humahuaca, an enormous canyon which we drove through as the sun was setting – it was pretty spectacular, especially driving through as the sun was setting. We were astounded to find the town overrun with wealthy tourists, boutique hotels, and 4x4s. We had picked it because it was halfway between the border and Salta, but clearly someone, somewhere is touting it as a must-see tourist destination. I'm still not sure why.

The numbers of people (and our lack of a reservation) meant that we had to trudge between hostels looking for somewhere to lay our weary heads for the night. We tried everywhere from standard hostels to boutique hotels to cabañas, without success, but it was 5th time lucky. I am not sure whether it was tiredness, desperation, or both, but we found ourselves checking into what was effectively a hippie commune run by two brothers offering daily yoga, meditation and music therapy. They were nice enough, but the bongo music which continued into the early hours wasn't. Once again, it was time for the earplugs.

Stage 4: 5 hour bus ride from Tilcara to Salta (and civilisation!)

The next morning we made a sharp exit and headed straight for the bus station, in the hope there'd be an early morning bus for us to make our escape. Oh no. Not only was there no bus until midday, but the computer system was down, meaning there could be no bookings. We'd simply have to hang around and hope there was space on the bus in a few hours time.

I made an attempt to head to the local pre-Inca ruins, but the combination of hot weather and lack of inclination meant I soon turned back. James, much more sensibly, sat in the sunshine and read. We grabbed an early lunch of empañadas (mini Cornish pasties filled with mince and spices or chicken) and then headed to the bus station for the imminent arrival of our transportation. Fortunately the computer system was up and running again so we at least knew we'd be getting on it.

And we waited. And we waited. Finally about an hour late the bus showed up. But it was new. It had reclining seats. And air conditioning. And an in-journey film. And free super-sweet coffee. We were in heaven, especially when we stopped halfway and a guy got on selling fresh sandwiches. In fact, we were both almost a little disappointed when the bus arrived in Salta, a mere 5 hours later.