It seemed entirely logical to us to continue our eastwards journey around the world from Auckland. Given that we were already so far south, our next stop was South America. We had been lucky so far in avoiding jetlag – travelling for six months to nine countries in as many time zones, we had hardly been affected at all. That was about to change.

It wasn’t so much the length of the flight from Auckland to Buenos Aires (just shy of 13 hours on a rather comfortable Air New Zealand plane) but that we saved a whopping 15 hours. We landed four hours earlier than when we took off, on the same day, because you fly over the international date line. So Wednesday 8 January will, for all four of us, probably be the longest day of our lives. The girls found it hilarious that we had at least two lunches and three dinners on the same day!

We were in for a shock regarding flight prices too: Asia had been so cheap in comparison. Our initial plan was to go to Chile, Argentina, Peru and Columbia – we even toyed with exploring the salt flats of Bolivia – but when we saw how expensive it was to fly from one country to another we decided to go to four places in Argentina over two weeks and then Peru and leave the other countries for another time…whenever that will be.

On the plane I was suddenly struck by the fact that I had never spent a whole month in a Spanish speaking country before. This was precisely what we were about to do (longer if you agree that Spanish is spoken pretty widely in parts of California). The girls had been collecting a few phrases from different countries at the back of their diary, so we began with the basics. We didn’t make enormous progress, I basically just get by anywhere speaking some Italian. There was one awkward moment where a waiter asked me to try speaking in Spanish when I thought I was…

Buenos Aires is of course a major international city – the Paris of the South, and the buzzy, cosmopolitan atmosphere hit us straight away. We had four nights there, staying in a lovely bed and breakfast in Palermo Viejo, our room a duplex off a courtyard. Upon arrival we had a lengthy, slightly confusing conversation with the owner who was off away for the rest of our stay. Money was the main issue discussed – getting hold of the cash he wanted us to pay for our stay with was quite problematic, but we managed to get away with a rather good deal due to a slightly shady currency exchange place who give you more pesos for US dollars. The trick is to come to Argentina with as many US dollars you feel safe traveling with.

We were looked after well in the b&b by Marta, who enjoyed teaching Molly marble solitaire. We managed to convince her to waive the 10am finish time for breakfast by an hour, but still only made it to breakfast two of the four mornings we were there due to our jetlag. Once I lay awake all night until 5.30am, when I decided to go for a run around the city, sleeping for a couple of hours when I got back. Unwittingly I had slipped into the way of the porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) who are notorious insomniacs and night owls.

The local neighbourhood, Palermo Soho, consists of a series of elegant, tree-lined streets with plenty of interesting boutique shops and cafes and inventive graffiti on most surfaces.

Being the largest neighbourhood in the city, it was quite a walk down these avenues to reach Plazoleta Julio Cortazar, where we found a playground and plenty of lively dinner spots. Clara became our favourite, eating on the second floor terrace our first night and returning for a brunch on our final morning. The drink Limonata was a hit with us all – cold and refreshing real lemonade, a good alternative to all the delicious (cheap!) red wine.

There was a larger play area in nearby Plaza Imigrantes des Armenia, but we had to stick to parts in the shade as the sun was very strong.

One afternoon we walked down to the Botanical Gardens and Ecopark for an ice cream and coffee, enjoying seeing capybaras and peacocks strolling about. We never actually made it onto the public transport system, using our feet and cheap uber’s to traverse the city.

Despite feeling a long way from home, we had quite a few friends to meet up with in Buenos Aires during our few days there. First off were Craig and Wei, running buddies from Dubai who were also taking some months out and traveling the world before settling back in Scotland. We thought we might just miss them, but their flight plans changed so we overlapped for a day and were able to meet for lunch and dinner. It was great to catch up and hear what they had been up to (dodging erupting volcanoes on ultra marathons, hanging out with penguins in Antartica, that kind of thing).

One of Tom’s oldest friends and a best man at our wedding, David (Goz to us), had taken a sabbatical from his teaching post in London to travel round South America with his girlfriend Louisa. Again, we thought we might miss them as they had spent New Year in Buenos Aires. However, as luck would have it, they arrived back in the city from Uruguay to meet Louisa’s brother Nick just as we arrived.

I also had a host of friends in the city from my days working at the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice, so catch ups with them were arranged too. Connections were everywhere, we ate a delicious steak dinner with Craig, Wei and Gos at Cabernet, a restaurant owned by the father of one ex-guggie friend, Irina.

Irina is an artist from BA – walking down the street with her was wonderful as she knew every other person! We met for a coffee in a gorgeous private bookshop, Falena. It was lucky to catch her as well, as she was leaving the city the following week for an artist residency in Lyon.

Another ex-guggie Dani works in the art department at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella where Irina was planning an exhibition. A third, Lucia, an artist who lives in London, and is from Montevideo, happened to be in town so we managed a group dinner all together.

Molly and Joanna were not overly impressed (Tom pleasantly surprised) with the vegan offerings with a mushroom theme that week at Donnet but considering how much steak we were going to eat during the next two weeks it was probably good for us!

I stayed out and went to a fun party in an artist studio – sampling the local fernet con coca and happily getting a handle on the artsy vibe of the city.

There were so many art spaces to visit, I had to force myself to be selective. A trip to Ruth Benzacar Galeria de Arte was fun, reconnecting with a gallery who had participated in Art Dubai. Artist Ernesto Ballesteros was up a ladder creating intricate pencil drawings directly onto the gallery wall as part of his upcoming solo exhibition. We were also given the chance to have a sneak peak at gallery stock artworks in racks.

I grew dizzy working out the differences between MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art), MAMBA (Modern Art), PROA and others – managing to get a look in most of them.

Ernesto Neto is a Brazilian artist whose large-scale installations I was familiar with from biennials in Sharjah and Venice, so a visit to his solo exhibition at MALBA was essential. We loved climbing in and out of his works, feeling the weight of materials on our shoulders and lightness under our feet.

There was also a fun installation of a swimming pool by Leandro Erlich that you could get in to without getting wet.

Fundacion Proa was taken over by the solo exhibition ‘Surge’ by Anish Kapoor, the spaces perfect for the selection of 9 iconic works playing with his signature materials of wax, paint and mirrors. The quite shocking ‘Shooting into a Corner’ made an impact, I had seen it and others before at London’s Royal Academy.

There was an interesting children’s activity box that kept the girls going before we broke for lunch at the museum’s colourful rooftop café.

MAMBA and MACBA were mercifully next door to one another so we tackled them together, Ivan Navarro taking over MACBA and we were particularly drawn to the works of Andres Alzicovich, Sergio De Loof and Ad Minoliti in sprawling MAMBA.

Runs had taken us round Plaza Vicente Lopez, the Recoleta cemetery and close to the coast of this vast metropolis.

We had to spend a few hours in tourist trap La Boca, the coloured houses on El Caminito selling diverting street art and all kinds of knick-knacks accompanied by live music and tango dancers.

It is home to the football team Boca Juniors. When we eventually found friends Gos, Louisa and Nick there, they were decked out in the sky-blue and white Argentina national team jerseys.

Our best times were spent in San Telmo, the oldest and most atmospheric barrio (neighbourhood). The markets were wonderful to explore and sample empanada’s, alfajora’s and ice cream.

The squares just calling out for us to stop and absorb the atmosphere.

We did just that in Plaza Dorrego, Gos and the girls entertaining the crowd with their individual take on tango dancing (shamefully the closest any of us got to having a go).

Of course, there were things we didn’t do, such as visit the Museo Evita or try a maté tea, but as our first stop in South America, Buenos Aires was pretty fantastic.