For Christmas we wanted to have our own space and to spend time settled in one place. We decided to rent an airbnb apartment for 10 days in Mar Del Plata which is a beach town about 5 hours south of Buenos Aires. It reminded me of the Gold Coast in Australia with its casinos, high rises and retirees, just smaller. Our apartment was across the road from the beach and was perfect for the two of us.

For Christmas day we wanted to create our own Christmas dinner with a turkey and all the trimmings but it wasn't possible with the small kitchen and the food available at the supermarkets. So we decided on pancakes and bubbles for breakfast and for our main meal we made garlic prawns as a starter, rib-eye steak, roast potatoes, asparagus, green beans and apple crumble for dessert, all washed down with the red wine we bought in Mendoza. Shopping for the food was another story, I've never seen a supermarket so hectic and we had to line up for 1.5 hours to pay for our food. The photo of the guy we saw resting on his trolley says it all.

After breakfast we went for a Christmas day swim, it was 30 degrees and very humid. Wellington never gets this hot on Christmas day so it was a strange feeling to be in tropical weather and swimming when we would normally be passed out on the sofa in a food coma, watching Christmas movies. We still managed to stream Elf and Love Actually but it didn't quite feel the same on the iPad. Although this will be a Christmas we will never forget we missed our families a lot and skyping them just wasn't the same.