Crossing the bloody dateline - so confusing. Our Tahiti excursion resulted in a Weds-Weds-Thurs-Sat, and by flying to Argentina we've had a whopping 39hr Friiiiiday. Our biggest to date, and not even an interesting one at that.

Having crossed sufficient time-zones to lose 15hrs, our first few days here were somewhat hazy with jet-lag - awake most of the night, knackered most of the day.

We´re now slotting back into ´travelling mode´ - not cleaning our teeth with the tap water, constantly amending our travel plans, doing desperate mental arithmetic to convert the local currency into dollars into sterling - that sort of thing.

In the week we´ve been here so far we´ve managed to nip briefly into and out of Brazil (J&K - 1, Brazilian Bag-Snatchers - nil: but give the banditos their due, we were only there a few hours), and we´re about to head into Paraguay this afternoon for a few days.

Argentina has been really good (not that cheap unfortunately), very hot mixed with torrential downpours, and friendly locals. Saying we´re American seems to go down better than being British ("don´t mention the war"), and J´s rusty Spanish is becoming better oiled by the day.

As we´ll be coming back to Buenos Aires for our flight home, we didn´t hang around too long, and took a 19hr bus north to Puerto Iguazu to see Iguazu Falls - maybe little known as the world´s largest (Niagara - a mere trickle). If it´s not a Wonder of the World, we think it should be. Huge spectacular rows of 70m falls dropping off a plateau as far as the eye can see AND it divides 3 countries - Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay - and that´s good enough for us.

Having checked out the falls from the National Parks of both Brazil & Argentina without meeting any of the resident jaguars (park advice - stay calm, appear bigger than you are!), we headed to San Ignacio Mini. This is the site of Jesuit mission ruins dating from the late 1600s, previously home to 4000 people, which was pretty good too.

The 2 main things we´ve learnt about here so far are:

1) A South American inability to own up and say "I just don´t know". Even the simplest request of "Where is the bank?" generates 6 conflicting answers from helpful´ locals, and degenerates into a wild goose chase. Something to do with not losing face...

2) Carnaval in Rio costs $100 each to witness roadside, plus the food and accomodation prices double! As we´ve now found out that it is celebrated throughout the country, it seems a different destination will be on the cards!

Adios gringos.