... with a last tango in Argentina

When travelling for a long period, the prospect of spending much time in frantic, sprawling capital cities is not always a welcome one.
So the vibe in Buenos Aires came as a pleasant and unexpected surprise.
The three-hour night flight from Ushuaia had already proven quite spectacular as below us the clouds were lit up by a lightning storm.
And when the capital came into view, streetlights turning its grid system into a giant circuit board, it was staggering to see the area it covered.
Only when we approached for landing did the skyscrapers start to emerge and the city take shape.
And what a city it is.
The French and English-inspired architecture of its main avenues and cobbled streets of historic San Telmo knit with La Boca´s run-down homes to create a city greater than the sum of its parts.
Amid the poverty of La Boca, cowering under a rusting transporter bridge fit to make any travelling Teessider homesick, the pastel blue, yellow, pink and green art stores give a clue to the district´s vitality.
And around the bowl-shaped Bombonera, home to Boca Juniors football club, neighbours have daubed their walls with images of past greats such as Diego Maradona.
Behind the ground, we found a large park full of kids of all ages kicking around footballs - no doubt dreaming of being the next Lionel Messi.
Among them was one silver fox - aged 70 if he was a day - dressed immaculately in full Argentina strip and showing as much enthusiasm as the primary school kids around him.
Roaming the streets was as enjoyable as anything in Buenos Aires, which boasts the world´s widest avenue. With 16 lanes, it certainly took some crossing.

Our stay is Buenos Aires saw us bid a final farewell to The Two Anders and we chose a restaurant close to our hostel for the occasion.
A perfect steak was accompanied by live music and a couple dancing tango brilliantly (at least to my untrained eye) feet away from our table.
Their spellbinding footwork and seductive routine - conducted entirely poker-faced - made for a really atmospheric occasion.
The following night saw our two-and-a-half week adventure with the Drinking Man´s Bill Oddie draw to a close and he had certainly earned his hostelling stripes.
At our base in the capital, there wasn´t space for all three of us in a dorm and so I went in a larger room upstairs.
The One With The Common Sense and her dad, however, drew the short straw, landing a dark and poky dorm next to the common area.
They were awoken at 4am one day to the sound of an English girl screaming about a rat in the kitchen. She was apparently yelling at the top of her voice that the management must promise to bring in the exterminators in the morning.
(I don´t know what she was whinging about, I´d have had it skinned and on the grill quicker than you could say "a portion of deep-fried tarantula on the side, please".)
Unfortunately, the One With The Common Sense then had to contend with two serious snorers for the rest of the night - one of them being her father.
During our Patagonian adventure, she had taken on the role of "prodder-in-chief" to stop her dad´s disconcertingly rapid rasping growl from the top bunk.
Us unfortunate room-mates had certainly endured the odd sleepless hour but one swift jab to the mattress generally solved the problem.
However, on this occasion, the Drinking Man´s Bill Oddie was across the room, rather than above. She had to resort to throwing a range of missiles including a pac-a-mac, travel towel and pair of shorts, with limited effect.
Meanwhile, upstairs, I wasn´t fairing much better as an American guy below me - who had insisted on hanging around in some eye-wateringly tight underpants all day - was snoring in a kind of prolonged retch.
After about an hour, I had to resort to the old trick of dragging his pillow to one side, causing his head to loll the other way, and it finally stopped.
Unsurprisingly, freyed tempers greeted the morning but by evening we were able to share a nice drink and reflect on the success of our adventure.
We bade the Drinking Man´s Bill Oddie a farewell as he overnighted in Montevideo - cue much fretting about his safety on the part of the One With The Common Sense - and we headed for a 21-hour bus ride (our longest yet) north to Salta.
At this point we discovered that the Argentine capital not only has probably the world´s widest avenue but also its biggest bus station (even bigger than Northampton´s).
It must have had about 120 bays for buses to pull into. Nonetheless, I did feel a bit daft taking a photo.

Set beneath the 1,458m Cerro San Bernardo, Salta is a bustling provincial captial with a pleasant central square - where we watched some live blues and jazz - and a pretty park around a lake.
It was the perfect place for us to chill our for a few days.
Although it was a tough climb up hundreds of steps to the hilltop, you could look down at the chairlift carrying people over part of the city and up the steep hill and feel satisfied about your efforts.
At the top a statue of San Bernardo pointed to the clouds, as though commanding them to cover the sun´s rays. Miserable sod.
The town had a laid-back air, with groups of kids hanging around and couples smooching in full public view in a way that only Latinos know how.
Our hostel had a similar atmosphere, although there were a few drawbacks. With no communal area, people would sit outside the rooms and one night I had to listen to one girl bleating on about a miserable relationship with an ex.
Also staying there was a hippyish Australian mum, who had her six-year-old daughter in tow. At one point, the child came to sit on my knee as I used a computer, making me feel intensely uncomfortable.
I waited for the mum to tell her to get off but she didn´t seem bothered as the girl then forced me - frozen in terror as I was - to take part in a computer game which involved designing a fairy outfit.
As if that wasn´t bad enough, when she´d finished her design she insisted I try one.
I set about creating a stylish yellow and blue number, only for the child to disappear and leave me mulling over the appropriate earrings as two serious-looking Scandinavians gave me funny looks while checking in behind me.

One of the pluses of hostelling in this part of the world is that most places offer a free breakfast.
We had some brilliant spreads in Chile, with tea, omelette, fresh and warm bread, fruit juice and little croissants called medialunas (half-moons).
However, in Argentina the standard fare has been stodgy rolls topped with jam or the sweet caramel spread called dulce de leche (hmmmm), with weak tea or bitter coffee.
I tend to view anything as a bonus but when cornflakes appeared on the menu, it seemed a real boon. However, on our second day in Salta, I opened the cereal jar to find a little cockroach crawling around inside.
I fished him out and launched him across the room but after some consideration decided that bread and jam wasn´t such a bad thing after all.
We had more bad luck in the bank, where I tried to cash our US dollar travellers checks.
We´d read that banks don´t often use them but I didn´t expect it to take one hour and 50 minutes for HSBC to process them, as a crowd of angry locals glowered at us for delaying the queue.
We did have some success, however, at a museum dedicated to the discovery of the bodies of three perfectly preserved Inca children offered as sacrifices to their gods over 500 years ago.
Brought down from their resting place 6,000m up in the Andes, their presence in the museum is controversial.
I can sympathise with the view that these mummified remains should have been left where they were but to study up close the face of a seven-year-old girl who last walked the earth five centuries ago was fascinating.
Apparantly, the Incas selected the children deemed most perfect specimens of their race before giving them a strong alcoholic corn drink to put them to sleep and burying them alive high in the Andes.
They believed the children did not die but rather joined their ancestors in watching over their lands.
So, as we cobbled together our last few pesos before leaving Argentina we decided to eat as the locals do and try a couple of national staples.
The panchos (hotdogs) and empanadas - little meat-filled pasties - aren´t the healthiest of snacks but we may be living off rice and beans for the next month as we head into Bolivia and Peru, so I think we´ll be okay.