Our South American adventure started out even before our 5am alarm this morning. That was when I realised that I had not married my husband for his prowess in the kitchen, but rather for his mathematical genius (to give our unborn children a chance in life, and all). For some reason (ask me not what), I was utterly convinced that we were leaving Cape Town at 10am this morning, travelling for 9 hours to Buenos Aires (which is 5 hours BEHIND SA) and then landing in Buenos Aires at 2pm THE NEXT DAY – i.e. 24 December.

Thank God someone in our team has a functioning brain. At 4:30am this morning, hubby woke up with a start, declaring that the little travel itinerary I’d verbally relayed to him did not make logical sense. I mulled it over, frowned, drew a time-line, got our my calculator. No indeed it did not.

B*gger.

With no job, reports, no deadlines, basically NO responsibilities, except to book a frigging holiday – I still manage to c*ck it up.

Muy bien, Natalie.

The upshot of all this is that we had nowhere to stay on our first night – peak season in Buenos Aires. Fortunately, Father Christmas must have decided that I’ve been a good girl this year because when I got through to Santiago on the night shift, he said: “No problem, no problem. We see you later.” (Gotta love the laidback Latinos). Crisis (and divorce), averted. Who needs higher grade Maths, anyway?