Wine, wow factor in awesome Argentina La Boca is arguably Buenos Aires' most famous district The cattle-rich plains of La Pampa are Ar...

Wine, wow factor in awesome Argentina

La Boca is arguably Buenos Aires' most famous district

The cattle-rich plains of La Pampa are Argentina's fertile heart

The vineyards around Mendoza are among the highest in the world

A smiling Maradona lookalike - all twinkly eyes and curly mop – is doing brisk business in the gloriously colourful, tumbledown district of La Boca, posing for photos with tourists and charging £5 for the pleasure.

‘Where you from?’ He asks me. It is the moment I’ve been dreading.

The run-up to the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War has not been pretty, verbal blows have been traded by both sides, and now on my first day in Buenos Aires, I am going to have to tell this friendly local that I am public enemy number one.

‘Ohhh, English’, he chuckles. ‘La mano de Dios - the hand of God!’

So taken is he with his reference to that painful defeat in the 1986 World Cup that he physically creases up, clutching his un-athletic gut, and joshes me good-naturedly – it seems politics comes a distant second to football in this sun-soaked city.

I receive a similar reaction from every achingly stylish Porteño (Buenos Aires resident) I meet. The predominant feeling in this most European of Latin countries - criss-crossed with British-built railways, and sharing a strangely aristocratic passion for polo - is far more than the bitter aftertaste of a lost war.

Its colonial capital positively drips sensuality, blood-red buildings crumbling with age and honey-limbed locals sashaying down cobbled streets as if ready to break into a passionate tango with any good-looking passer-by they meet.

At the weekend, crowds swarm the antiques market of San Telmo, buying lost treasures from the city’s 19th century glory days, when business was booming and French imports filled the elegant houses that have now become embassies in the upmarket district of Palermo.

Split into the strangely anglicised Soho, Hollywood and Chico districts, this is still where the great and the good gather. The city’s hippest residents shop in the independent boutiques of Soho – so popular that a special design trail has been set up to support local talent and guide visitors between the best stores.

And by night, both Soho and Hollywood fill with al fresco diners as crowds drift between stylishly run-down bars. Here, they quaff the old-fashioned Italian drink fernet (mixed with Coca Cola), and writhe to Latino beats until the early hours.

Walking around these secluded neighbourhoods, it is easy to forget that 30 per cent of Argentina’s population is squashed into this city, radiating out from the historic centre into seemingly endless built-up neighbourhoods.

But it takes me just over an hour to escape the colourful chaos of Buenos Aires, heading west to gaucho country - the cattle-rich plains of La Pampa, where locals joke that the highest thing you will see is a cow, and the Argentine cowboy reigns supreme.

Vast estancias (ranches) now take in tourists, some polished into five-star resorts, others still working farms with a more rustic feel.