Our return to Buenos Aires might only have been distinguished by more steak, shopping, a severe stomach bug for George and severer haircut for me, had it not been for George's insistence that we do something Polo related, whether that be watching or playing it. Apparently the gauchos all took to the sport with enthusiasm when it was introduced by British settlers in the 19th Century. I hadn't really appreciated the game´s popularity in Argentina before. Possibly that's because my connection with Polo is limited to ill-advised use of a Ralph Lauren aftershave aged 17.

There were no matches to watch that weekend, so we ended up traveling to a peaceful estancia outside the city for a lesson. We were in the company of two middle-aged American ladies and a couple of young London City lawyers. Apart from George, none of us had really ridden a horse at all. Naturally, this meant she was in her element.

Our teacher was Fernando, a slightly peculiar Argentinian, who insisted on warming up his horse before starting the lesson. This consisted of us having to watch him gallop back and forth up the Polo pitch, wresting the horse this way and that, before heading back towards us at full pelt and making the horse jump to a stop. I note that none of our horses required warming up.

George took to the game immediately, and was soon cantering up and down the pitch, knocking forward the ball with confidence. The rest of us found it rather less easy to master, our horses wandering around in disarray, mallets swinging chaotically. For me, the difficulty may have been caused by Fernando´s insistence that Polo can not be played left-handed. This put me at a bit of a disadvantage, something that Fernando failed to appreciate, telling me not to "invent things" when I complained to him that I was finding the mallet grip unusual.

However, I think my main problem was the bloody horse I was sat on. The trouble started when I tried to turn him in a particular direction. He simply refused - if I wanted to go right, I would shift my weight to the right, while kicking him with my left leg. In contemptuous response, he would head left. I would stubbornly persist with my "right command" pulling madly at the rein, with no consequence whatsoever. This was nothing however with the trick he decided to start pulling later in the day: stopping dead and refusing to move. I think I could have got into the Polo thing, had I not been sat on a stationary horse, a couple of metres away from the action, frantically and vainly hammering my legs up and down like an angry girl from a Thelwell cartoon.

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We took yet another overnight bus to the north-east corner of the country. On a map, Puerto Iguazo is tucked into Argentina in a way that suggests that it's trying to squeeze through into Brazil and Paraguay.

Moonraker conveniently illustrates our reason for visiting the town. In that often underrated classic, Roger Moore, at the helm of a large white speeboat, idles along a river in the depths of the Amazonian rainforest. Without warning, a handful of smaller boats emerge behind him. Henchmen on board open fire and a chase ensues along the river. Perhaps the most threatening hazard to Rog´s afternoon cruise is posed by the boat containing Jaws - or so he thinks. Suddenly we become aware of an enormous waterfall, towards which Roger´s boat is speeding. With a barely perceptible twitch of his eyebrow, he pulls a lever, and ascends from the water on a glider, while his boat crashes over the falls. Jaws, following close behind, wrenches the wheel of his boat in an attempt to avoid the cascade. In his panic, he has once again underestimated his super-human strength: the wheel comes off in his hands, and he looks at it, stupefied, as he disappears into the foaming water.

The waterfalls concerned are the Iguazu falls, actually a series of huge and violent curtains of water that crash down with such force that, at the highest point, "the Devil´s Throat" you have no chance of seeing the river below. We visited this point, via a long walkway that takes tourists over the strangely placid Rio Iguazu. The noise and spray is almost overwhelming, the natural force on show stunning.

The falls are in the middle of a National Park, in which we spent a couple of days. We visited other parts of the falls themselves, including taking a mad boat ride along the rapids on the lower part of the river and under fierce barrages of water. It was like entering a flash storm: the weather is bright and dry, suddenly the rain drums on your face and the boat whirls around in the spume. Of course we got soaked. We also took an early morning walk along a trail in the rain forest, and were excited to spot huge spiders on webs set across the path, a gang of coatis scurrying through the forest, and best of all, a long snake that we caught sunbathing on the trail, before making its escape up a tree. Our excitement at seeing the coatis lessened somewhat when we discovered that they are ubiquitous through the National Park, and can be found hanging out at most restaurant spots, searching for scraps, nosing around in people´s bags, even climbing up the back of occupied chairs. The trees above were often frequented by Capuchin monkeys and toucans.

Puerto Iguazu is about 20 km from the National Park, and we stayed in a hostel about 5 km out of town. It had a great swimming pool out the front, and there was no problem with our room. However George and I marvelled slightly at some of the other guests, particularly the young men self-consciously swaggering around as if it was their first week at university. I was particularly amused/infuriated by one chap who constantly wore a woolly hat. This in a place so hot and humid that you jumped in the pool to dry off and drank coffee to cool down. Being a grumpy old man in hostels is a benefit of staying in them that I didn´t foresee, but am enjoying.

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We wanted to go paragliding in La Cumbre. I say that, but what I mean is that George had read that it was an ideal place to do it, and I felt pressurised to go along with it, despite a clumsily hidden terror, so as not to appear weak and cowardly.

La Cumbre is a peaceful little hillside town, set on the edge of the beautiful Sierras Chicas, rolling verdant hills, the launching point for said paragliding. It´s about 2 hours from Cordoba, and we spent a lovely 3 days there. Despite misgivings about the paragliding plan, my enjoyment of La Cumbre wasn´t disturbed - by the night before I had genuinely worked myself into a state where I was looking forward to it, albeit apprehensively.

Alas, that night brought a violent and very wet thunderstorm, and the next morning we were told that the thermals were all over the place, there was a chance of rain, and, in short, there would be no paragliding today. So, we went horseriding instead, being driven to a tiny homestead overrun with chickens and puppies. We rode for 3 hours through the most beautiful and varied countryside - heathland, pastures, through rivers, along a disused railway line (overgrown rails and sleepers still intact, like all over the country). Along the way we saw condors and parakeets up above, while on the ground a skittish fox crossed the path in front of us, and we stumbled across an iguana contentedly munching on horse poo. It wasn´t paralgliding, but it was nearly as good, and this despite George initially complaining about the "dobbins" we had to ride, and talking in horsey terms to me, knowing full well that I didn´t understand a word she said.

At certain points we roused the horses into bursts of energy, and I cantered for the first time ever, holding on for dear life. George seemed to find it extremely funny. I admit, flapping around like that, I did feel a bit like a teddy bear strapped onto the exciteable family dog by a child.

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I really like Mendoza. Its centre is leafy and has a very pleasant feel. Plane trees grow at intervals of a few metres along both sides of every street. They flourish, no doubt, as a result of the irrigation channels, which also line the roads.

However, any tourists worth their salt, and a good many who aren't, head out of the city to one of the surrounding wine-growing areas. We hopped on a bus one sunny mornng, getting off in Maipu. Huge Andean mountains stood on the horizon. Round there various bicycle hire outfits hawk their wares, but the place to go is Mr Hugo's. We, like dozens of other backpackers that day, grabbed a couple of bikes from him, and set about cycling around the vineyards and bodegas, with the help of a leaflet directing us to various points of interest.

I haven´t drunk red wine in around 5 or 6 years, in the belief that the tannin does funny things to my head. But I felt compelled to do so on the bike tour, and started with the free beaker proferred at Mr Hugo's. I had a little more at the region's wine museum (where a bat flitted around the huge barrels in the cellar). But I remained cautious and kept my intake to a minimum and balanced up the wine with plenty of water. However, any equilibrium I maintained was ruined by the shot of absinthe I had at the next place we visited, and then the 2 pints of strong white beer I drank in a lovely bucolic beer garden, while chatting to other wine bikers.

Through the afternoon we visited both huge upmarket operations and little family vineyards. But it was a miracle that we made it back to Mr Hugo´s to return the bikes. Not because of a tannin malfunction, nor any general drunkeness. In the time I have known George, she has always represented that she is a proficient cyclist. Indeed, I understood her to be a London to Brightoner. I now know this not to be the case. First, I had to give up my bike to her, and pedal around the region on a girl´s bike with a basket on the front, as it was apparently "too hard" for her to ride. Then, once the swap had been made, she caused the chain to come off, twisted the handlebars and fell off twice. It should be noted that both falls were on a very flat, very straight road.

A final note about Mr Hugos: It is the place everyone goes, all the antipodean, American and European backpackers. It is advertised in the Lonely Planet. It must make a fortune - there is a very good reason for its success. Mr Hugo himself serves wine, shakes everybody's hand, and in our case, as we didn´t have the right coins for the bus, walked with us to the bus stop, paid with his travel card and waved us off. Thoroughly nice bloke.

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Puerto Madryn is a sunny Patagonian seaside town. It was originally settled by the Welsh, but they´ve gone now, leaving behind only the name as an indication of the town´s roots. Other towns, a little further south, still retain the Welsh language in schools and have tea rooms. Puerto Madryn is dedicated instead to aluminium (there´s a big plant that provides most of the town´s employment) and lounging about on the seaside. As fascinated as I am by aluminium, we opted to enjoy the town´s laid back beach atmosphere, and wandered along the beach eating huge ice creams. We took a kayak out onto the choppy sea, bouncing over the waves. The highlight was a huge wave hitting the canoe side on and lifting George completely in the air. She landed deftly back in the boat, rather than in the sea, which might have been more amusing. Despite not capsising, we both got drenched. Unfortunately, on getting back onto the beach, I discovered a wodge of now very sodden pesos in my pocket. We laid the notes out individuually on George´s legs, and she sat in the sun drying them.

Puerto Madryn is also the gateway to the Pensinsular Valdes, a large stretch of dusty scrubland sprouting out into the Atlantic. It is home to one of the world´s most important ecosystems (it says here) and, in the right season the water is choca with Right Whales and Orcas. Sadly, we weren´t there in that season and saw neither. However, we were greeted by a hillside of penguins, patagonian desert foxes trotting along the roads, prone elephant seals and sealions, the latter with dozens of oily black pups, tripping over each other and squealing in the surf. In the circumstances maybe its best we didn´t see any Orcas, which would have created a bloodbath out of the new-born. We also saw more llamas (properly guanacos) and emus (properly rhea), as well as the strangest creatures of all, the armadillos. These things reminded me of huge cockroaches, with their curved back and habit of scuttling out of holes in the sand to sniff around for toutists´ discarded food.

However, the higlight of our trip to Puerto Madryn was swimming with sealions. We squeezed into wetsuits and took a boat out to a sealion colony. Jumping off the boat about 40m from the rocky shoreline, I was gripped with that atavistic fear of the sea and the ghoulish creatures lurking beneath me. However, this soon disappeared as I looked through my mask to a seabed only 3 to 4m below. At first we floated around while the sealions completely ignored us, clumsily grunting around the rocks. However, one guy swam off to the shore, and seconds later came back with a sealion swimming alongside. Soon we were joined by about 5 more. They are inquisitive, playful creatures, and I had great fun with one, which gently bit my arm and darted around as I petted her, just like a puppy. At another point I swam in circles as one weaved around and around me. I swam over to George to chat to her, and suddenly felt a pulling at my feet. I looked under water, and caught a sealion nibbling my flippers. Amazing animals, great experience.

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