We flew into Mendoza ready for some serious wine tasting, which Brian is really looking forward to as he has become something of a connoisseur of all things alcohol since we arrived in Argentina. It's the annual Wine Festival in Mendoza at the end of February/beginning of March so the hotels are precipitously putting up their prices and looking forward to counting lots of cash in the next few weeks.

Mendoza is a sweet little town, it rarely rains as it's practically desert here but it's surprisingly green.All the streets are lined with trees and they are watered via a complex irrigation system of canals that run alongside each road. You do have to be a bit careful at night not to fall into any of the canals after drinking a little bit too much of their delicious wine though. (take note Bri)

We headed out of town to these hot springs at Cachueta where you spend the day bobbing around in ever increasing temperatures. Luckily the day we went was quite a bit cooler than it has been of late and the sky was overcast, otherwise I think we would have burnt to a frazzle, never mind been unwilling to get into any form of hot water at all.

They also have 'fangotherapy' there, which is a posh way of saying mud. You slap it all over your body and then stand around waiting for it to dry. The drying process takes about half an hour depending on how much mud you put on and how thickly, and as it dries the mud turns from dark brown to white. So whilst it is drying everyone stands around looking like scarecrows with nasty skin conditions.

As befits the wine capital of Argentina they have some great restaurants in Mendoza but the prices (which are about 20% more than we have been paying in Buenos Aires) have unduly agitated Brian, who can't understand why he has to pay a premium for a nicely turned table napkin. Things come to a head when, unprompted, the waitress brings us two tiny little savoury things on a plate. Bri curls his lip and pushes them contemptuously in my direction. 'I'm not eating this' he declares.

Apparently Brian has a pathological dislike of amuse bouches and, look, I never realised. All the more for me then.

Everywhere we go in Argentina we cannot help but fall over ice cream shops selling some of the most delicious ice-cream this side of Italy. I think it's because so many Italian immigrants came out here in the last century. At just over a pound for a mountain of ice cream it's pretty hard to resist, and as I have never knowingly resisted anything with either chocolate or dulce de leche as its prime component, so it is with their ice-cream, which always comes in a comfortingly wide variety of dulce de leche options. Bri always carefully selects his two flavours for variety, compatibility and flavour.I just go for a double dulce de leche having long ago established that I'm not really interested in any other flavour.

Wandering the streets of Mendoza we stumbled across a rather grand looking ice-cream emporium and I determined to sample their dulce de leche. A little later and I was starting to regret my impulsive greediness as I contemplated the squidginess of my stomach.'Am I getting fat?' I asked Brian, expecting of course nothing but the brutal truth. 'No, I wouldn't say that' he kindly replied. Only to follow it up swiftly with 'More like you are expecting an ice cream baby'.