Back in Buenos Aires, and if anything it's hotter than when we left. Every day the temperature climbs a little higher. Our dingy brown headquarters is no more enticing than before we left, although it does have the advantage of an aircon unit which we have cranked up to 11 as we lie under it every night roasting like little potatoes in an oven and dreaming of snowmen and frosty mornings. How ungrateful we are. And oh, how very, very hot.

Meanwhile Hollywood beckons, so filming continues - as well as the estancia promotional video we are making a documentary about Dave and his complicated property/business/ estancia/love-life/tea-drinking empire which he struggles to keep solvent in the face of the arduous complexities of day to day life in Argentina. Not to mention his butterfly-like attention span - watching him operate on a daily basis is like trying to keep up with one of those arcade games where you have to keep hitting the small rodent like creatures as they pop out of their holes. As soon as one problem is dealt with, up pops another one.

Now, just to add another strand to an already convoluted filming schedule of property machinations and estancia concerns his relationship with Maria, which for all sorts of reasons has been rocky for the past few months, is 'on a break'. Lots of reasons for it, of course, but one of them is Maria's inability to not interfere with the day-to-day running of his business. Of course Dave is as much to blame for allowing it to get to this stage, but it appears that she is driving away both customers and staff. Last week his two office staff handed in their notices, unable to work with her any longer and are both leaving on Friday, and apparently the estancia staff are all similarly unhappy.

Dave has declared that this break will last a few weeks if not months. I suspect his resolve will crumble long before then and we will re-enact this scenario quite a few more times.In his own words he's not very good at walking away. He prefers the yo-yo approach to moving on.

Meanwhile we've had a hectic couple of weeks posting ads on craigslist for prospective employees and interviewing a number of weird and wonderful people before finally settling on an Argentine bloke called Bruno and a Columbian girl called Constanza. Dave has decided to tell them nothing about the current problems faced by the outgoing staff for fear it will scare them off. Naturally enough they found out within their first few hours of employment. Cherchez la mole…..

So Dave has left Maria, for now, and moved out from 2 floors above us and into a little studio flat, affectionately nicknamed 'The Shed' around the corner. It has internet, cable television and a kettle and it turns out he has been using it as a bolthole for the past couple of years. Why Sherlock? Well as it is just around the corner from his office he has been using it to watch football and eat empanadas whenever there was an Arsenal game on, saving himself a trek half-way across town to get home. At least that's his story. Now it has become his very own des res. Bri looks round it with a mixture of envy and admiration in his eyes. Particularly as 2 doors away there is a little take-away shop serving chicken and chips and cans of coke. It's getting more and more des.

So Dave's ongoing crises are keeping us busy with filming, and now the weather in Peru looks bad, heavy rain has washed out the Inca Trail and hundreds of people are trapped at Macchu Picchu. So much so that our plans to fly north have been curtailed, and we have decided instead to travel to Cordoba and Mendoza for some exploring and wine tasting and then take a bus over the Andes to Chile. Yes, a bus. I think the heat must be addling my brain.