Off to Dave's Estancia - La Margarita for a few days rest and relaxation in the countryside on a gen-u-ine gaucho ranch with Brian's mum, Sue. The Estancia is in a beautiful part of the country, just over 3 hours drive from Buenos Aires, lots of fresh air, horses, twittering birds and the occasional unidentifiable biting thing.

We spent the first night drinking lots of red wine with the estancia's other guest, an amusing American woman called Dolores, and Dave finally got his guitar out at about 1 a.m. for a rousing singalong, mostly consisting of Danny Boy, When Irish Eyes are Smiling and It's a Long Way to Tipperary at the request of the O'Toole family I seem to recall, but I could be wrong, we were on about our 6th bottle of Malbec by then.

The next day we had a swim in the pool before driving into the nearest town, Tapalque, for a wander along the main street, being looked over by the locals who aren't as used to tourists as the portenos (Buenos Aires residents). We did some light souvenir shopping in dusty old shops selling keyrings, ponchos and saddles alongside strange-smelling oil to rub down your horse, de-gelding equipment and toilet brushes - a veritable one-stop shop.

The following day we were joined by a very pleasant family of Venezuelans who all spoke perfect Queen's English, including the small children, (even the baby was burbling bilingually) and totally putting to shame our pathetic attempts to convey even the most mundane sentence in halting Spanish. Another late and drunken night ensued, with more carousing and more tales of an Irish childhood. Brian tried to regale us yet again with his tales of hardship and depravity growing up in a tenement in North London, where small children slept on landings and shared one bath between 20. Unfortunately for him his mother set the record straight and finally the truth came out, he had not only been to a private school but enjoyed vast pocket-money privileges, enough to keep him in Beano's and The Hornet, with change left over for a huge bag of gobstoppers and a small dabble on the stock exchange.

On our final day the Venezuelans and Brian went off horse-riding, whilst I comforted his mother, who had been mistaken for a lamp-post by one of Dave's unruly hounds. Unaware of his rider's early pampered upbringing lying on fur rugs in front of the fire toasting marshmallows and riding to hounds, Brian's horse soon bolted and he was hurtling along at high speed clinging on to the beast's neck for dear life. The watching Venezuelans looked on in horror at first, but then concluded that Brian must be an expert horseman when they noticed he had slowed to open and then close a gate on his gallop back to the stables. Later it transpired that what they had mistaken from a distance as the chivalry of a master horseman was, in fact, his desperate final attempt to slow the horse down by clinging onto anything solid and stationary in his path. To no avail. He arrived back at the ranch, shaken and trembling, necessitating the early opening of the first of that night's many bottles of wine.