Cachi is 2,300 metres above sea level so apart from being very cold at night the air was also thin which made breathing quite difficult, so it was quite a relief to leave and head downhill to the larger town of Cafayate, a whole 500 metres lower. Brian was even more relieved to be leaving the cloistered confines of our luxury hotel and starting to look forward to cheaper rooms and non-stop Champions League. Unfortunately, as we started on the 180 km, 5 hour drive to Cachi Brian began to feel unwell, and he quickly started to run a fever and demonstrate many of the symptoms that had wiped me off my feet for 24 hours a day earlier. Even more unfortunately for him of course, he is our only driver, so he was forced to drive the entire sandy, rocky, bumpy distance whilst feeling very feverish and out of sorts. Remarkably the whole experience, driven no doubt by the urge to reach our destination in the shortest possible time, reversed his normal cautious driving style and so we hurtled along through gullies and canyons, our tyres throwing out clouds of dust and small rocks.At a couple of points I'm sure our wheels bounced off the ground entirely; he drove like a man possessed, narrowly missing scuttling rodents and leaving startled dogs in our wake.

Cafayate is a wine producing area, so after a night in a small local hotel for Brian to recover we headed out to one of the vineyards to spend the night. Strangely they only conduct wine tours at 10.30 in the morning, not the best time of day for us to start knocking back large quantities of alcohol, but maybe that's the idea. Not so remarkably, we're the only two who volunteer for the tour and the tasting so we get a tour of the vineyard, a history of the winery and finally the chance to knock back a couple of glasses, er, I mean sample a couple of sips of their finest wine. Suitably fortified we headed off to the ancient and sacred site of Quilmes to wander around another reconstructed pre-Columbian fortress, dating from about 1,000 AD that came under Inca influence in the late 15th century. The Quilmes Indians fiercely resisted the Spaniards who finally defeated them in 1667. Unwilling to let them stay and cause further trouble they deported the last 2,000 survivors to a southern suburb of Buenos Aires. Now an industrial area it is now best known for its beer of the same name, the classic Argentinean beer, Quilmes.

Back for our last night in Cafayate before leaving for Buenos Aires the next day we checked into a hotel run by a woman who goes by the name of Martha Chocobar.Really. You couldn't make up a name like that, but now I know of it, I rather fancy it myself. How exciting, to be a Chocobar in real life.

A last trawl around the shops, a last bottle of locally grown wine and we packed Lottie the fluffy llama away for the plane ride back to Buenos Aires and our last week in Argentina. The holidays are almost over. Gulp. Wonder what it's like in the real world?