Just before Christmas 2002, we were having drinks on the terrace of the Hilton in Mendoza. Thanks to the Argentinian peso crash, the Hilton bar was our local, even though we were cheapskate backpackers. It was a sunny 30C and an Argentinian skated past in hot pants and a Santa hat. Jane, my then girlfriend, now wife, looked at me and said: “It’s too warm. This is all wrong.”
We’d been planning to meet friends anyway, so we brought our flights forward. A few days later and 2,000km further south, the climate felt far more Christmassy. We were close to the edge of the Patagonian ice cap, the temperature was about 5C and snow flurries were common. The only off-note was the weirdly long days – it was near austral midsummer.
