Pablo, our minivan driver while we were in Mendoza, became a bit of a legend to all the travellers we met. He accompanied us on our sunset horse trek and joked with everyone and shared his sugary mate (tea) with us. So we felt a bit sorry...

Our mountain guide in Mendoza was called Marcelo and he was a lovely Argentine with a smile as wide as a bus. We instantly liked him and he showed us a great time in the mountains around Mendoza, where he grew up. We set off with Marcelo and...

Mendoza is a university town in Northern Argentina and it is packed with adventurous tours you can take in and around the Andes. If you go there, make sure you put aside at least four days as we ran out of time to do everything. Mendoza is a...

We braved Buenos Aires traffic to tour the city on a bright orange bicycle. It was part of a fun package we had booked through our hostel. It didn't feel like much fun the first time a bus roared beside me and I could only close my eyes...

If you ever go to a futbol match in Argentina make sure you take your Spanish-English dictionary. You will want to look up all those dirty words the fans will scream at each other. At the futbol match we went to in Buenos Aires I very...

Buenos Aires has a way of making you do things you don't want to do and we ended up having a Tango lesson pretty much by accident. With Tim's fragile ankle still strapped up, we booked a Tango Dinner and Show, explaining to the lady...

Buenos Aires is a magical city. Its architecture is stunning, its statues are fascinating creations and it's the sort of city where you encounter 10 piece bands performing with passion on street corners. On our first night out I was...

The people of Montevideo are very good at a lot of things: honouring their war heroes, cooking steak to perfection and having efficient public transport. But they are not so hot at building, or maintaining, footpaths. The city is not alone....

We had just set foot in Buenos Aires, Argentina and we were involved in a scene straight out of a Jason Bourne film. Our slightly loco taxi driver was doing his best impression of a rally car driver in rush hour. He would accelerate like a...

A year ago I might have struggled to locate Uruguay on the globe but this morning I woke up and it was rolling past the bus window. I felt a little relief at getting to a new country because I was keen to sink my teeth into Spanish and learn...

I've met a few tea-obsessed Brits in my time, you know the ones who want to engage me in a debate about when to add the milk before I've had the chance to say that tea makes me wanna gag. But I didn't know a lot about South...

We only went to Porto Alegre, in Southern Brazil, because it was half-way to our real destination - Montevideo, Uruguay. We made a quick decision to stay two nights mainly because I didn't think two nights could be too long in any new...

It was going to take something spectacular to make the Brazilian side of the Iguacu Falls as mind-blowing at the Argentine side, so we decided to opt for something extreme. I was allowed to pick because it was my birthday, so I chose...

On our first day of worshipping the Iguacu Falls we discovered that the sights of these insane waterfalls never got boring. Tim and I spent the entire day climbing up trail after trail, looking at the falls spill madly down and we never...

The one thing I will probably tell everyone forever about the Iguacu Falls is that you absolutely have to visit them! Our three-day trip to the network of 275 waterfalls was without a doubt the runaway highlight of our trip so far. The falls...

When we were preparing for this trip, everyone who'd ever been backpacking was forthright with their stories about horror hostels. At the time I thought staying in hostels was just something Tim and I would have to put up with in order...

The Lonely Planet guide we are using as our bible called Curitiba, a city of 1.2 million people south of Rio de Janeiro, a 'nice little stop off'. This didn't fill us with a lot of hope about the University city, but it was a...

When it came time to leave the crazy city of Rio de Janeiro, we did so on an extremely fancy bus which had us acting like kids at Christmas. I had heard the rumours about the luxurious Brazilian bus travel and we soon realised why the...