In the still humid evening, little kids (only ever one with each couple) are led by doting parents. Everything is different here — the chef in white uniform sitting on a step in the shadows, eating a white ice lolly, the restaurant where a pampered child is choosing a fish to eat as if choosing a pet, the sex shop with the careful Chinese writing that makes it look charmingly decorative rather than seedy. Then there are sellers of meat, makers of food, everything piled high, everything out in the street.

One of my companions in flip-flops began to move restlessly from side to side, no longer so enamoured of the landscape of Indian Canyons. The canyons lie to the south of Palm Springs, a place more famous for its celebrity mansions and golf courses than its natural wonders. But it is the wonders that first lured celebrities and golf out into the desert. Two hours from Los Angeles and encircled by mountains, the region is still part-owned by the Cahuilla Indians, and has dry desert air that keeps people alive well after their time.

Taking a tango lesson at the dancers’ flat wasn’t, perhaps, the behaviour of a cautious person, but Buenos Aires invites a spirit of adventure. It is a city on the edge. The wide, confident avenues explode with blossom, but if you look closer, the pavements are disintegrating. The central Obelisco on the Plaza de la Republica thrusts up into the sky, a symbol of Argentinian machismo, but on the grass beneath it, a group of police officers stand over a spread-eagled man. He is face down and handcuffed; and one policeman has his foot on the man’s back.