Hola from Argentina! Once again it´s been far too long since we last updated this, so prepare yourselves for a biggie. In fact, go and put the kettle on, then come back with some rations…

First things first, I have a terrible confession to make… i´m married to a criminal. A downright rotten scumbag, who thinks nothing of making a mockery of the laws. The New Zealand laws to be precise. Yes folks, my darling husband has reached new lows, as we´ve just discovered that the little blighter manager to pick up a speeding ticket in New Zealand. Apparently he was caught whizzing along the country roads like a bat out of hell, at the shocking speed of 76km per hour, rather than the required 70km. Tsk tsk young man! Aside from the fact that he´s a law-breaker, this is mainly shocking for one big reason - just how did he manage such a feat, when we could rarely get more than 50kph out of our campervan? Did he inject go-go juice into the tank when I wasn´t looking? Ah well, the travel pot has now been depleted by a further 120 dollars, so i´ll be reduced to wearing potato sacks and living off scraps when we get home. Humph.

So aside from Mike´s little foray into the criminal world, we´ve been having muchos fun as we´ve hopped from one country to another. Our last stop in NZ was Christchurch, which provided us with our biggest hangover to date. In light of the fact that it was absolutely freezing and piddling with rain (what a surprise - rain in New Zealand. Who would´ve thought?!) we headed for the town centre and made quick work of the sights. A stop at the art gallery kept us entertained for a couple of hours, as we marvelled over some of the barmier modern art creations. A particular favourite was a spooky dummy in pyjamas, who kept moaning ´I´m so sick. I´m so poorly.´ I´ve told Mike that the similarity between this and his previous man-flu incidents is uncanny. There was also a rather lovely 18th Century painting that I took a particular shine to, but alas the mean security guards didn´t want to let me take it home. What rotters!

And then came the hangover - we nipped into the local Irish pub for a ´quick´drink on the way home, then ended up propping up the bar til the wee small hours. We blame our childish activity on three main factors…

1)It was our last full night in New Zealand, and we owed it to the country to go out with a bang.

2)There was live music. I love live music.

3)The New Zealand beer - Speights - is really rather delicious. It´s like a little slice of sunshine in a glass. It´s just a shame it makes your head feel like it´s being pounded by Mike Tyson on ´roids the next day. Ouch.

Still reeling from our hangovers, we spent the next day returning our campervan (yay!), telling the customer services team just what we thought of their shoddy vehicles (all three of them), and booking into a hotel in order to prepare for the following mornings 6am flight… Goodbye New Zealand, hello Argentina!

The day started with a bang, as we were upgraded to a swankier class than we´d paid for (oh how I love Quantas), so after countless hours in the air, going back in time and thoroughly confusing our body-clocks with a copious dose of jet lag, we finally arrived in Buones Aires, and checked into our hotel in San Telmo. This is one of the oldest areas in BA, and is just lovely. The streets are narrow and cobbled, the buildings are beautifully intricate, and there´s a bar, restaurant or café on every street corner - it´s my kinda place!

After a few hours kip, we hit the streets to do a spot of exploring, and quickly fell in love with the place. Mike was additionally chuffed, as our hotel (The Circus) was very comfy and we even had an en suite bathroom. After seven weeks of trekking to campsite toilets in the rain, he really is in heaven! His mood was also spectacularly chipper, when he realised that we were back to backpacker prices - a large beer costs around one pound each, and we´re therefore working to the philosophy that it´d be just rude to deny the Argentinian economy our hard-earned pennies. We´re very selfless like that. We then went in search of a steak restauarant that our friends, The Shaws, had told us about. Luckily we found it just a couple of streets away (on the corners of Peru and Chile streets - what names!), and Mike was soon whimpering with pleasure as he tucked into the biggest piece of beef that i´ve ever seen. We washed it all down with a bottle of Malbec, and the bill came to just over 10 pounds - i´m sure you can understand why we love this city! The next few nights followed a similar pattern, and i´ve now hit red-meat-and-wine-overload. I´m actually craving a piece of fruit, or maybe a salad, or even some vegetables - BA is truly a veggie nightmare…

Aside from eating copious amounts and drinking far too much of the cheap-as-chips local plonk (yup, The Cheethams will be fat when we get home), we spent a fantastic day mooching around the antiques market in San Telmo. The stalls are full of costume jewellery, leather belts, original soda syphons and retro handbags, so I have BIG plans to return here and spend some pennies before we come home - there´s a golden urn that practically has my name on it. I just have the small issue of getting it past customs at Heathrow… We also took in the main sights such as the palace, the statues and the parks - and then we ate some more. Oh my poor waistline.

Which brings us to the here and now - Mendoza. We arrived here after a very comfy overnight bus journey, complete with padded leather seats that turn into a bed, a steak dinner and some arthouse films on our personal DVD players (where were the blockbusters I ask you? Give me a chick flick!) It also gave us the perfect excuse for a spot of detoxing, as we turned down the champagne, wine and whisky that the stewardess was trying to force-feed us. I felt mighty smug about this when I spotted the frankly bedraggled state of our travelling companions the next morning. I´m such a good girl - practically pure, I tell you!

Mendoza itself is very pretty - more lovely architecture, and four incredibly intricateplazas that flank the main square. We´ve spent some time exploring the streets and coffee-shop culture, but yesterday was the highlight - we went on a full day of wine tasting. It´s such a hard life. Admittedly the first tasting wasn´t entirely great - it was 10am, and I was drinking a slightly pokey red blend. I even manager to exercise some self control, and used the spit bucket - i´m no wino! But by the second boutique vineyard, my restraint had slipped due to a particularly luscious Malbec. Damn those juicy red grapes! Next stop was a liquor factory - I tried a sour cherry number, while Mike opted for nutty chocolate vodka - then onto a restaurant for a lovely meal (can I please have some veggies? Nope? How about a salad then? Nope again. Oh all right, load me up with your yummy beef ribs…) and copious amounts of red wine. Good grief, does the fun never end?! Our last two stops were an uber modern vineyard (yucky sweet white wine and a horrible red - the spit bucket was back in play) and finally an organic winery where we treated ourselves to a 30 pesos bottle of wine. That´s a whopping five English pounds. Yippee-i-aye! It´s clanking in our backpacks as we speak…

As I write this, i´m once again waiting for another overnight bus, this time to Salta at the top of the country. It´s a mere 20 hour journey, but Mike and I have now got these buses down to a fine art - we always pack fluffy bed socks (yup, even Mike) and our toothbrushes, and i´ve even learnt to part with my beloved eyeliner. Admittedly I probably look like i´ve got a bad case of swine flu without my usual lashings of mascara, but it´s better than arriving at the next destination with pee-holes-in-the-snow in place of my eyes.

It´s just another two and a half weeks til we see you lot, and we´re counting down the days. Right, now where is my steak sándwich…

Susie and Mike xxx

ps - apologies for any random spelling and grammatical mistakes. The spell check on this computer is set to Argentinian Spanish, and it keeps tinkering with my typing. Bad computer, naughty computer…