Unsurprisingly, the past three weeks have been pretty quiet. When we left off last time, we had just arrived in Cordoba. This is Argentina’s second city and is home to nine different universities. We spent five days here, and the majority of that was spent exploring the city through various walks. We found five days was more than enough here, so at the end of our stay, we decided to head to a town called Villa Carlos Paz which is situated about an hour to the west of Cordoba.

As this town overlooks Lago San Roque (a pretty big lake), we had high hopes for a few days of watersports and swimming. In reality, however, the water was an interesting brown colour and the only thing we could do on the lake was hire a pedalo. Nonetheless, determined to find something to do, our research paid off when we found a river nearby which was recommended for swimming. We walked for an hour to get there in almost 40 degree heat and were rewarded by a section of the river which had a flat, grassy bank shaded by trees, two natural pools resulting from a weir and even several lifeguards on duty. Fortunately, it wasn’t overly busy so we were able to find a great spot on the bank and took it in turns to cool off in the pleasantly warm water.

After a lazy afternoon by the river, we headed back into the town. The main street didn’t feel too dissimilar to Torquay or Ilfracombe, but certainly much nicer than the latter and definitely much hotter than both! We also found a large cuckoo clock which was one of the most highly recommended tourist features of the town… We happened to pass it a few minutes before 6pm so thought we would stick around to see what made it so special. An audience had gathered around it, and many of them had their phones out, ready to film the upcoming spectacle, while a large TV screen loudly advised us to prepare ourselves to be enchanted. We waited with bated breath as the screen counted us down, wondering what all-singing, all-dancing scene would greet us. As the clock struck six and the crowd cheered, a lone cuckoo peeped out of a door and chimed the hour. It was a complete waste of three minutes but we walked away having ticked off one more of TripAdvisor’s Top 10 Things to Do in Villa Carlos Paz.The next day, we left for Mendoza, a city famous for its wine region, and our home over Christmas. Having spent a few weeks just the two of us, we were greatly relieved to meet some new people on the city walking tour on our first day there. The city was designed on a grid layout and, being in the middle of a desert, required an inbuilt irrigation system to allow the town planners to plant trees along all of the streets, providing the much-needed shade. This did mean that other than the squares, there wasn’t a huge amount to see, but our guide made a point of showing us the street where the best bars were, which were the best ice cream shops, and where we should eat, so we felt it was a morning well spent! After the tour, seven of our group decided to go and get some lunch together which allowed us to continue chatting.The next day was Christmas Eve, so the two of us and three of the others decided to go on a wine tasting tour. It is what Mendoza is famous for, so we decided it would be rude not to! The tour took us to two bodegas, an olive oil factory (fourth best in the world, apparently!) and a family-owned chocolate factory. While we knew we would enjoy the wine tasting, we were pleasantly surprised by the olive oil factory where we learned about oil and balsamic vinegar is made and then tasted the samples. The chocolate factory was possibly the biggest surprise, though, as the tasting consisted of various jams and conserves, most of which were heavily flavoured with different wines and alcohols, and then a shot of their homemade liqueurs. Tom chose an orange-flavoured limoncello (orancello?!) while I selected the absinthe. Being the sensible people that we are, we shared with our newly acquired friend, Melissa, so only had one third of a shot of absinthe each. Her rose and grapefruit shot provided the perfect way to regain a sense of taste. We rounded this tasting off with a couple of tiny squares of chocolate.

Christmas Day dawned bright and sunny, but a much more bearable temperature of around 30 degrees. We took our traditional Christmas walk to the local park and around the lake while debating the pros and cons of turkey, then headed back to our apartment. Our AirBnB owner had kindly invited us over to eat with them, but we had asked some new friends to come over and drink wine and eat cheese with us. We spent the day overeating, drinking lots and playing games, resulting in a fairly traditional, enjoyable Christmas in a non-traditional setting.

We decided it would be remiss of us not to partake in a little more Mendoza wines, so booked on to another wine tour: this time, we would be on bikes. This tour took us to three bodegas and a beer garden, so we were pleasantly merry by the time we finished. It was a great way to round off our time in the Argentinean wine region, but we were both ready to leave the city and head down to Patagonia for the next part of our trip!