For once staying up was a good idea for most of the night as the common room remained busy right up until my departure at 4 in the morning when I was met by an unshaven elderly gent driving a taxi through the middle of a quiet Buenos Aires.

Isn�t it funny the way that big cities are so different and splendid in the middle of the night when there�s no-one else around?!

After checking in at the airport, Aeroparque, the smaller of the city�s two, I had �breakfast�, pepsi and cake, yum.

The flight seemed to go by in an instant as I dozed right through it, including my morning snack before waking as we flew into Trelew airport.

As we started to descend, I could see the plane flying in off the coast towards the airport with nothing to be seen other than scrubland for miles around. I can�t quite imagine what the colonists must have been thinking when they first arrived in area nearly 140 years ago.

After touching down and having my baggage checked for, well, something, but I�m not sure what and they were wearing white coats and plastic gloves and looked official, so I let them get on with it, I went through and was met by Brenda and Diego from Gwesty Tywi where I�m staying. It was the first time that I�ve been met at the other side of customs by someone with my name in big bold letters. I liked that feeling. Me important!

Diego and Brenda drove me back to Gaiman, bypassing the outskirts of Trelew, explaining a little bit about themselves and how they came to be running a �Welsh� hotel.

I got myself settled in and went for a nap to get over the lack of sleep the night before.

Unlike the hostel, there was heating in Gwesty Tywi, which was nice. The only problem? Well, I couldn�t work out how to turn it off and went to sleep in a hot, cosy room waking up three or four hours later in a warm sweat and a boiling hot room. Still, beggars can�t be choosers, can they?!

After getting up again, properly this time, I made my way out of the hotel and took my first steps into Gaiman.

First of all, I walked up the street, Miguel D Jones if you�re interested, and took a quick look at Coleg Camwy, which proudly boasts of being the first secondary school in Patagonia.

Following that, I headed down to the main street, Avenida Eugenio Tello, walking past a few shops, and reaching somewhere called Parque El Desafio on the corner of the street. El Desafio is apparently a huge, totally unique �amusement� park made entirely from recycled materials. It looks fascinating.

No time for that yet though, and I went back into the village to have a look at Av. Juan C Evans, Plaza Roca and take a quick detour around the Tea Houses.

Everything was unusually quiet, save for some tourists having their photo taken. It was just like those Marlborough cigarette ads with one car and the headline �Rush Hour�.

The shops were closed (siesta-time, although why you need a siesta when it�s dark by the time you get back to work is beyond me) leaving only me and a stray dog wandering along the street.

Five thousand miles from home and my best friend has four legs and thinks I�m a meal ticket. He looked at me with imploring eyes. I gave him a cake. He ate it then left me. Heartbreaker.

After that, my tour of the street took me to the tourist office where I went in and asked for some information. They weren�t very helpful, probably because I�d already seen half of the place by that point and the other half was still closed for lunch.

One place which was just opening up, though, was the Welsh Historical Museum.

Located in the old railway station just off the main street, the museum is a collection of Welsh items and garments dating back from the colonisation, with photographs, newspapers and all manner of often random pieces of Welsh culture curated by an elderly Welsh speaking woman. She asked me where I was from and went on to rattle off half a dozen familiar names of Welsh speaking Barry families. Small world.

Having wasted a few hours trying to get the Barry v Swansea result on the sluggish internet at the local caf� I found myself making a distinct change in my diet and having a pizza at a place called Gustos which doubles as a pool hall. It felt more like a takeaway with the tv on the counter showing the Argentinian midweek lottery results. Their way of deciding the winner, throwing all the tickets up in the air and then catching one, seems so much fairer than our system.

Sadly the Welsh theme pub, Y Tavarn Las, wasn�t open by the time I walked past at twenty past nine, on the hunt for somewhere showing the football.

Eventually I found Bar Espanol which was filling up nicely with gentlemen swigging from litre large beer bottles. I asked for my own �Cerveza Grande�, picked a table and cheered with the locals (I was too scared not to) as Argentina wrapped up a 3-0 win over Colombia in the Copa America semi-final and a comfortable route to the final.