Well, this was it, our last stop: Rio de Janeiro. The 8 hour drive from Sao Paulo to Rio was apparently pretty spectacular, lush and green – but I slept through most of it. Clearly 10 months of travelling has started to take its toll. We agreed as we arrived that we would take it easy during our last few days, focus on soaking up some sunshine and enjoying some capirinhas. An eminently sensible plan.

After 3 months in South America we had become pretty used to speaking Spanish and whilst not perhaps as fluent as we might have wished, we could definitely make ourselves understood. We'd naively thought that with the words for 'hello' and 'thank you,' we'd be able to get buy in Portuguese – because after all, Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, right? Wrong. Actually, Portuguese sounds like a cross between Russian and Arabic, with lots of phlegmatic sounds and pronunciation bearing little resemblance to the letters on the page. We've had to resort to sheepish smiles, pointing (picture menus are a godsend!) and the kindness of English-speaking strangers.

Rio, like Sao Paulo, has a reputation for being dangerous, although our hostel host soon attempted to put us at our ease: “Don't worry, the area's perfectly safe, the dealers only sell pot around here, there's no coke anymore.” I love that this was a good yardstick of safety in the area. As in Sao Paulo, I prepared myself for the worst. Actually, Santa Teresa, the bohemian area of town in which we were staying, was lively and full of families having dinner in street cafes on the Friday night we arrived. We got stuck in to the capirinhas – well, it would have been rude not to.

We were most excited about a visit to the Christ the Redeemer statue. Our second morning dawned sunny and clear, and so off we headed to the Corcovado, or Hunch Back Mountain. The most famous way to get to the top is the cog train, but, facing an hour-long queue just to buy our tickets, we decided there had to be another way. Enterprising locals have created a mini-van service to the top, which has the advantage of stopping at a viewpoint halfway up to the summit. And air conditioning, which in 36 degree plus temperatures was a definite benefit. We opted to take the van. The viewpoint was spectacular – we could see across to Sugar Loaf Mountain and Guanabara Bay, and also the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer looming in the distance. It is possible to take a helicopter flight around the statue, and although tempted, we couldn't quite bring ourselves to get into another small aircraft at this stage of the trip. Watching the super-rapid descent of some of the helicopters later in the day, I think this was a good decision.

From here we continued up the Corcovado, bought our tickets and then took another mini-bus ride to the very top. We popped out right at the base of the statue, which was ENORMOUS. Opened in 1931, the statue is nearly 40m tall, the largest Art Deco statue in the world. I wasn't quite prepared for how big it was going to be. Neither was I prepared for the crowds. The area at the base of the statue was teeming with people, including a Father Christmas in full costume and six teenagers in Michael Jackson regalia, all trying to squeeze into the best possible spot for a photo with Christ. We didn't stick around long. Instead we headed on to the sandy beaches of Leblon, Ipanema and Copacabana, for which Rio is famous. It was actually too hot for us to sunbathe, so we settled for a walk along the shore to watch the beautiful people and soak up a little sun. We saw a lot of women clad in thong bikinis, but very few were as buff or as beautiful as I was expecting. The men (mostly in very tight shorts) looked a little better, although the majority clearly indulged in heavy doses of steroids. Sexy it wasn't.

The other highlight of our stay here was a visit to the Museu do Republic, a very grand 19th century mansion which was built by a coffee plantation millionnaire, but later became the seat of the Brazilian government, home to several presidents. The rooms were spectacular, “renovated but still maintaining all original features” as most houses in South America seem to be. Most of the explanations were in Portuguese and therefore lost on us, but we were able to appreciate the room of Getúlio Vargas, President from 1930 to 1945 and 1951 until 1954, when he committed suicide in his bedroom at the palace. The room has been kept exactly as it was on that day, which is pretty macabre in itself. Worse still is the glass case in the corner of the room, containing not only the blood-stained pyjamas worn by Vargas when he did the deed, but also the gun and a replica of the bullet.

We spent our last couple of days visiting local attractions in Santa Teresa. This seemed to involve sitting outside lots of cafes and drinking copious beers. It also enabled us to stick close to the internet, watching and waiting to see whether we would be making it back to the UK at all, thanks to the heavy snowfall over Heathrow. I am sure spending Christmas on the beach (under the shade of an umbrella) wouldn't have been so bad, but after 10 months away we were really desperate to get home to our families. Lady Luck was smiling upon us – we flew home as scheduled on 22nd December.

Our journey to Sao Paulo didn't predispose us to like the city. After 19 hours on the bus over the border from Iguazú, we arrived to find the city laid low under a grey drizzly sky.

Sao Paulo is home to 17 million people – the largest city in South America – and is known as the creative centre of Brazil. Unfortunately Sao Paulo was also once known as one of the most violent cities on the planet, racking up over 700 murders a month in the mid '90s. So whilst I was looking forward to seeing some of the amazing art and architecture that I'd heard about in Wallpaper over the years, Sarah was terrified that we would end up a crime statistic.

The art and architecture we saw was pretty impressive. The city reminded me a little of Beijing in that the town planners, if there actually are any, seem to have given the architects free reign. The most obvious examples of this are the stunning Edificio Italia and its wavy neighbour the Edificio Copan, but Avenue Paulista, the financial centre of the city, was similarly avant-garde.

Touring around theses sights I don't think I quite grasped the level of fear Sarah was harbouring until we were walking around the area near our hostel the first evening. Suddenly Sarah grabbed my arm and hissed at me to put the camera away, after observing a teenager standing at a bus stop - minding his own business and sheltering from the rain in what Sarah clearly regarded as a suspicious manner

This paranoia peaked when we took another James-patented 'scenic route' down a busy road under an underpass to get to a museum. First of all we saw a gang of young girls who were 'clearly prostitutes', that is, wearing short skirts, and shortly after Sarah nudged me in the ribs and whispered that we were being followed. I stopped by a busy shop to let whoever it was go past us: it was a clean-shaven young man wearing a polo shirt with his name badge pinned to the front on his way to work. Another criminal mastermind.

To be fair to her, the city does feel a little more edgy than most places we've been. Even the supposedly risky centre of Lima felt less dangerous. Walking through the CBD at lunchtime we saw genuine prostitutes soliciting biz in bras and denim hot pants, and derelict skyscrapers home to hundreds of homeless people. We clambered over dug up pavements down empty streets. All those cues that tell you that you should maybe be watching your back a little bit were there in abundance. Shuttered shops, broken windows, bad graffiti and cardboard nests in doorways.

Once we got into the shopping district it was all different though. Christmas clearly means something here, and the just-a-pound shop equivalents that seem to predominate were doing a roaring trade. As we got further into the xmas frenzy we came across the Mercado Municipal, an incredibly grand building housing what is probably the finest market we've seen on our trip thus far. Cured meats, spices, fish, poultry and all manner of exotic fruit tumbled from a thousand well-tended stalls. Given the general level of wealth we had seen up to that point I'm not exactly sure who could afford to buy all these things, but nevertheless the market was crowded with shoppers. I think this is my main impression of Sao Paulo; the very physical division between rich and poor. The public spaces and infrastructure seem dirty and best-avoided, and the rich stay inside their gated communities, armoured cars and body-guarded restaurants, living their lives apart.

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.

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.

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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.

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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...

Before heading back to Argentina, we thought we'd spend a day in Colonia, a World Heritage Site described as a must-see day trip from Buenos Aires. It's a pretty little place, with cobblestone streets and lots of flowers, founded by the Portuguese in 1680 as a look-out to keep an eye on Spanish activities, and also to smuggle contraband across the water to the Argentine capital. So quite a chequered past. The main problem today is....there simply isn't that much to do. Even 24 hours is a stretch to fill – much like in Melaka in Malaysia, we spent most of our stay waiting for it to be time to leave again.

We did pay a visit to the lighthouse, which somewhat bizarrely is in the middle of town, attached to the ruined walls of an old convent. No explanation why. I like to think it was to catch escapee nuns, but I am sure the reality is based on geography, eroding rocks and whatnot. There was a nice view from the top, although not masses to see......The Lonely Planet talked glowingly about the city's 8 museums – we stuck our heads into a couple but they didn't look very good, so we decided to save our remaining pesos for nice coffee at “Colonia's best-kept secret,” a little cafe run by an Argentinian woman who had lived in Shepherds Bush for about 6 years during the economic crash in her homeland, returning a couple of years earlier. We reminisced about London and admired the enormous collection of English books lining her shelves (unfortunately not for swap or sale).

Our principle entertainment in Colonia came in the form of a couple of characters we met. The first was an American man called Robert, who judging by his appearance must have been travelling for some time: his dress sense seemed a little warped – lurid green wife-beater teamed with green shorts and a brightly coloured Peruvian-striped flat cap. He was also an environmental zealot, and proudly told us about the changes he'd made in his own lifestyle to minimise his carbon footprint – selling his car to use public transport and, more disturbingly, foregoing toilet paper for the old-fashioned “Indian method,” as he described it. That's hand and water, for you and me. Yuck. We resisted the urge to tell him that we were owners of an enormous carbon footprint, for fear of the consequences.....

Friendlier and better house-trained were the dogs we met in the centre of town. As those of you who've been following our travels will know, James has a bit of an affinity with dogs, and has made a fair few canine friends around the world. In Colonia it seems, stray dogs are more starved of attention (and food) than elsewhere. During breakfast we were befriended by one hungry mutt, who sat by our table the whole time, on the off-chance of receiving a titbit or two. James patted him on the head once, and that was it – friends for life. As we left, he followed us, and was quickly joined by a couple of others – a stately brown collie and a skinny black labrador. They followed us across town, making quite a grand procession walking alongside James, leader of the pack. I am not sure quite what the locals made of it, especially as at one point we were 5 dogs strong, walking down the busy mainstreet! The three loyal ones even waited outside for us whilst we went up the lighthouse, running off occasionally just to check we hadn't walked off without them. I don't think I've ever had such a friendly reception as I did when we returned – the black lab came scampering over, tail wagging frantically, and jumped right up on her back paws, front paws roughly on my chest, all the better to say hello. Very cute indeed.

It was very odd to hear the news of early snowfall in the UK – coming as it did, on the 1st December, when we were at the beach. Uruguay is famous (amongst Argentinians and Brazilians at least) for the quality of its beaches, and feeling in need of a bit of a tan before we head home, we headed east for a few days.

Our first stop was La Paloma, a little beach town about 4 hours from Montevideo. We did little but lie on the beach, nap and read during our 2 days there, although the timing of our visit was notable in that it coincided with the 'Day of the Gnocchi.' This occurs on the 29th of each month, the day before payday, when people were usually so poor that they couldn't afford to eat anything other than these cheap potato dumplings. Today, often gnocchi is only available on menus on this day, so we had to sample some. Coupled with bolognaise sauce and a 1 litre bottle of Pilsen, one of the local beers, it was absolutely delicious.

From La Paloma we headed west to Punta del Este, the “party capital” of Uruguay, where the beautiful people come to dance at the nightclubs and gamble in the casinos. Or at least, they do in high season, which, we discovered, only really lasts between Christmas and Carneval in February. James had a vague desire for us to go out but his plans were foiled: most of the clubs only open on weekends in low season (and we were there mid-week). Just as well really, considering a) our regular bedtime of 11pm is a good 3 hours before the clubs even open and b) after 9 months on the road, I am not sure even our smartest remaining clothes would pass muster with any self-respecting bouncer.

The centre of Punta is meant to be a little like Surfer's Paradise in Oz, so we decided to stay in Manantiales, a small suburb 20 minutes out of town which is home to Bikini Beach (sponsored by HSBC Premier). The upside of being here in off-season was there were no crowds: in fact, we had the beach pretty much to ourselves. The area is pretty good for surfing but our desire to hire boards for the day was quickly overpowered by a stronger desire to just lie on the beach and soak up some sun. I did rouse myself enough to go for a paddle in the sea a couple of times, but the water was so icy cold I didn't last long.

Away from the empty beaches Manantiales was a hive of activity, with lots of businesses preparing for the official 'seasonal re-opening' next weekend and lots more in the process of construction – we were very sad not to be able to pay a visit to “Glam Coffee” which offered take-away drinks, a fairly new concept in these parts. Presumably the 'glam' part refers to the models who will be acting as baristas. We were there however, for the opening of Cactus and Pescado, a gorgeous fish restaurant overlooking the beach. We only meant to stop in for a quick lunch before catching the bus into town, but the restaurant had a 3 course menu del dia which included a free glass of wine – clearly too good a deal to pass up. After washing the meal down with an additional bottle of wine, we realised that we had accidentally had another Quality Lunch, decided that the town probably wasn't worth the effort, and collapsed on the beach for the rest of the afternoon.

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.....

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.

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.