Argentina

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We arrived over the Andes and down into Mendoza, capital of the wine region and home to many, many vineyards. The weather was cool but the sun was high and there was barely a cloud in the sky so what better way to be introduced to Argentina than on a wine tour! It was so much fun we did it twice!

The best way to sample the vineyards is to hire bikes and cycle between them. Given my usual habit of falling off a bike when only slightly inebriated I was a might concerned but there was no other option except for a tandem which could have been utter carnage. In Mendoza we had one of those really freaky 'oh my God what a small world it is' experiences, we bumped into a guy, Lee, that both Hils and I used to work with. Lee 'persuaded' us to join him and his mates on the wine tour. We hired the bikes from Hugo who is the main man on the wine strip and set off.

The tour is really well set up and had a great balance of different styles of vineyards and restaurants to visit. Most people begin at Rutini where you are given a free tour which takes in the history of wine making in the region through to the modern day processes they utilise now for keeping us Brits so well watered. Us Brits apparently are the test bed for all things wine orientated, e.g. if a new cork is developed they test it on us, if we like it then they sell it by the bucket load. We are the most wine sensitive folks on the planet, so there Mr Frog!

Next on our list was a visit to Trapiche which is a very grand vineyard. Here the tours are not free but for a small cost you are shown round a fabulous chateux and treated to some lovely wines!

We took in a couple of more vineyards, had a plate of local stew and then stopped at Hilary's favourite - the chocolate liquer shop. By now it was freezing cold, the sun had set and the weather was reminiscent of an icy cold February evening. The chocolate liquers went down a storm. Finally we headed back, a little wobbly, to Hugos with great intentions of catching the next bus into town. Instead we got truly Hugo'd as he produced bottle after bottle of his own plonk! We couldn't resist and only left when Mrs Hugo got the right hump with us all disturbing her telly watching.

We spent a few more days wandering around and taking in the sights of Mendoza, it's a great city. However it was time to move on and we were itching to go skiing again. We headed off to Bariloche which is South America's biggest resort via the very pretty town of San Martin de los Andes. San Martin is in the heart of the lake district and where the well-to-do Argies head. It sits right on the banks of a beautiful lake and is surrounded by mountains. The weather was not brilliant whilst we were there so we made the most of the Irish coffees and had our first complete Parilla - a mixed grill. All sorts of things turned up, some recognisable and tasty looking, others most definitely not! One curly wurly shaped bit of meat turned out to be intestine. We both left that one well alone until Hils thought it would be amusing to slice it open and inspect the inner tubing, gross. Utterly, utterly gross!

Off to Bariloche and boy was it cold! We were staying in a fab hostel right on the lake. The view across the lake and off to the mountains was truly stunning. It was here we were to celebrate Hils birthday so we headed into town to check out the restaurants and bars. We were not to be disappointed.

. Birthday this year felt very odd. I can safely say my birthday has never been so cold! The day started off well with breakfast in bed, present opening and and a home-made birthday card ... creatively designed using a beer mat from our local irish pub! :-) We stepped out of the hostel for lunch and decided to get straight out of that cold wind and go into the restaurant across the way which, with a bit of luck on our side, was fabulous. I'm not sure that special bday lunch as well as special dinner was on the menu originally but it certainly seemed to work out rather well! We didn't gorge too much mind, as we wanted to save ourselves for evening dinner at a Parilla, that came highly recommended by our hostel. As Argentinian restaurants don't even begin to get busy until about 10pm or midnight we began our evening with a little snooze, then spruced up and got dressed into our smartest jeans and my birthday pressie of a Northface bodywarmer. Ben then presented a red rose and bottle of pre-dinner champers .... the perfect way to wait for Bariloche to get going. I had such a lovely birthday, maybe even the best one yet I enjoyed it so much. The boy did very well!

Our hostel was a really friendly and buzzy place, everyone who worked there seemed to be a musician. They were all great except for the owner who persisted in trying to play the recorder! Why the recorder I do not know, I binned mine back when I was 8 as it was such a horrific sounding instrument?! Downstairs was a funky bar where they held regular jamming sessions and on the whole they were really good. We also met a very entertaining Scotsman, Ken, who in his 49th year has decided to cycle from the tip to the top of South America. I think we may have been culpable of causing Ken a slight delay by taking him out for a couple of great dinners and a few post dinner beers back at the hostel.

We had high hopes of skiing for 5 days or more in Bariloche but despite it being July the snow just hadn't arrived in enough quantity to make it worthwhile. We skied twice including the opening day of their season and it was good but a lack of open lifts and runs made it a little disappointing. Reports of much better conditions in Las Lenas (back up nearish to Mendoza) were coming in so we packed our bags, frigged the budget and treated ourselves to a 5 day package in Las Lenas.

We were really spoiled in Las Lenas. We had a hotel, not a hostel, which meant we had the ultimate in luxury - a bath!!! This was no normal bath either, this was a full on spa bath. Safe to say I could hardly drag Hils out of that bath! It is the only place we have stayed in 9 months that has had a bath. The hotel was great and the manager spoke great English having lived in Brixton for 4 years. He took great delight in having us stay with him and arranged for the chef to cook us curry to order! Brilliant.

Each day we were picked up at 8am and ferried up to the mountain. It took an hour each way but the view was so stunning as the sun came up that we didn't mind the journey at all. In fact I should say that 'I' didn't mind the journey at all, it was not until day 4 that Hils actually managed to stay awake for the journey, in either direction!! Las Lenas was the best resort we visited. We had a great 5 days ripping it up with one absolute favourite off piste run we nicknamed Le Face. It was proper steep but always had perfect snow. The weather was beautiful and the resort big enough to keep us entertained.

Our last port of call was beckoning, and so off to Buenos Aires we headed where we were to celebrate my birthday and see what all the fuss is about. BsAs rocks. It's one of very few places we have ever been where we both reckon we could live. My Spanish would need to come on leaps and bounds but you never know! Using some inside knowledge, Hils booked us a table at a top steak house in Palermo, the Notting Hill of BsAs, and I was given some very cool sunglasses and dined on a Kobe steak which melted in the mouth. Delicious.

For the rest of our time in Buenos Aires, and for most of July for that matter, the budget went right out the window. We justified it to ourselves that BsAs was a place we really could stay a lot longer and that we should do all of the things that we wanted! We ate very well, all week, enjoyed a good share of red wine and partied hard. We also still managed to fit in a good few tourist sites, in the afternoon's mostly!

Ben and I were very keen see the Boca's play football, which is supposed to be an experience in itself, even before the football begins. Unfortunately, this time around the season has ended but we were in BsAs for the first game of the Rugby season. It was a fun day out but quite amusing to consider we were watching one of the best 14 league teams of BsAs. It was akin to watching a group of friends throwing the ball around in the park at the weekend, complemented by their wives and children selling home-made cakes and coffee from picnic stands around the grounds. Having arrived back to our hostel, we were amazing to watch the game being replayed in full, on ESPN!

Taxis here are very cheap indeed compared to London so we hopped about in a taxi to all the main sites including San Telmo to browse around the antiques shops and market and La Boca with it's colourful clinker built houses. La Boca in particular is a little like Covent Garden with street entertainers, musicians of all types and tango dancers performing in the streets. It's a lovely place to spend a few hours in one of the street side cafes watching the world go by.

In La Recoleta, a very up market residential area, we visited the famous cemetry with Eva Peron's grave. The cemetry is full of tribute signs, stones and dramatic statues that relate to person's lifestyle atop marble buildings housing the tombs of members of elite families. It is a fascinating and artistic place to visit and feels like a little village, with rows of terraced and gated 'tomb houses', many of which are still incredibly well maintained and glow with pride.

For our final few days we moved to the Palermo area so we could spend longer just browsing around the streets and relaxing. Palermo is like the King's Road / Chelsea of BsAs and very nice it is too. It's full of boutiques, cobbled streets and only a short distance from park after park to stroll around and feel a million miles from the city.

We went to see Phantom of the Opera ... in spanish, plus a Tango Dancing class and performance. Both were great! I have no idea how it is possible for the tango dancers to move so quickly with such grace. It was a very sexy performance indeed!

We decided to live and socialise like true Argentinian's for our last weekend, turning up La Cabrera (the steak birthday dinner restaurant) and wait at 11am and to queue and wait for a table to become free whilst drinking our free champagne in the queue. Of course, when it wasn't planned as a birthday treat the whole experience was 10 x better. This time we had perfect service, a table that wasn't in the door way with a gale force wind blowing through it, the wine turned up before the starter and the main meal arrived after we have finished our starters!! We had a laugh about it ...

Anyway, we sat down to dinner at midnight to the most enormous meal you could imagine, followed by a couple or espressos to help clear our tums and ready to hit the dance floor. We arrived at Crobar, the latest club in Buenos Aires, at about 3am and with my basic spanish somehow managed to jump two long queues - one for those on the VIP guest list and the other for those that had pre-booked discounted tickets through tourist programmes.

Once inside there was another long queue for the coat room so Ben set off the bar. In the time he was away several men who were not that easy to 'get rid of' came up to me and other girls in the queue. It was all very un-english. No need for excessive amounts of alcohol, a girl or guy standing on his or her own appears to be free game! In fact a guy or girl with their other half seem to be free game also. Back with Ben we wander across the the floor to find a spot to settle and overlook the manic dancing below. Some guy launches himself between Ben and me and starts yapping on (in spanish). Next thing I know he's disappeared, cool. What I hadn't realised at that point is that Ben, outside of his usual very chilled out self, had grabbed this guy by his hoody, choked him mid sentence and deposited him out of the way!

As you may imagine, Ben wasn't short of attention. Other than being his usual gorgeous self, he is also the only blond haired, blue eyed catch in the club. So we agree to turn our attentions to the skimpily dress stage dancers ... a safer bet I feel and Ben's clearly happy to oblige!

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