WHOA, PHWOAR AND SORE IN CORDOBA

The lively streets and blue cloudless skies of Cordoba were a welcome sight as we got off the bus and made our way to our hostel where, within a few minutes, we had booked ourselves onto a horse-riding trip for the following day which made Emma very happy and Duncan's balls slightly concerned about their welfare.

We spent the afternoon wandering around the streets of a city which seemed to have a disproportionately large number of women - shame we're not staying here longer, thought Duncan. We visited the oldest cathedral in Argentina which had fewer gory statues than other churches we'd visited in South America, and the Museum of Fine Art where the building itself was much finer than the art it housed. As we hadn't slept much on the bus, we dozed in the park for a while before heading back into town for dinner.

Next day was horse-riding day and we had an enjoyable two hours of riding led by a local polo player who had spent some time playing in England. We were given the option of going for a gallop at the end of the ride which Emma keenly accepted but Duncan decided to take the opportunity to give his manhood a rest and allowed his horse to lead him back to the stables. The rest of the day was spent in the woods eating a large bbq and salad washed down with wine.

Later, back at the hostel, it was 'free empanada night'. We helped to make the little pastry pockets which cover the filling (in this case made from minced beef and vegetables) before they are baked or fried. They were supposed to look like mini Cornish pasties but our folding was pretty cack-handed (to say the least) and the locals looked on at us pretty disparagingly. We also failed to realise that there was a different folding technique required for the super-spicy ones, so someone might have had a few surprises that night… Don't think we'll be invited back in a hurry to help with the next cookery session. While we were waiting for the empanadas to cook we got chatting to a bossy, patronising woman from New Zealand, who had pretty much cycled round the world on $20, and told us off for getting private rooms rather than dorms - how frivolous of us! She rattled off an itinerary that we 'simply had to follow' during our trip to her motherland, which we tried to take note of and failed - mostly because we were a bit shell-shocked by her general approach. At the same time, we met a much nicer girl from England called Siobhan who was also heading to Mendoza like us that night.

We stuffed our hot empanadas in our bags as we had to rush for the bus, and exchanged email addresses with Siobhan before boarding our separate buses. Emma was very pleased this time with the film shown on the bus as it was "Como perdir un hombre en 10 dias" (How to lose a guy in 10 days). Duncan groaned and tried to count the number of times he'd been forced to watch it…but probably secretly quite enjoyed it behind his grimace. Or maybe it was just the yellow dress at the end that got him through it…