"I had been struggling to learn Welsh for two years through a work-based class and had finally passed my Welsh GSCE with a grade B! I'd also decided that my life's ambition of becoming a writer needed to be worked on and so I made plans to quit my job and travel abroad to write my novel, Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons.

When the world is your oyster, there suddenly seems to be far too much choice. "You speak Welsh," said a friend, "go to Patagonia!" So I did.

As I packed all my belongings into my attic and made preparations to rent out my house, I had thoughts about me working in a Welsh tearooms chatting to the other waitresses or pulling pints in a Welsh bar.

I had read about little cottages and woollen blankets similar to the ones that could be found near my own home.

I made it my aim to reach the town of Trelew and have a proper cup of tea in a tearooms and then send my long-suffering Welsh teacher a postcard to tell her I had made it and that her efforts hadn't been in vain.

As I realised when I got to Argentina, I hadn't thought a great deal about what might happen between the plane landing and that cup of tea; it was a lot more difficult than I had thought.

I got lost, got on wrong buses and got attacked by men, dogs and mice. Whatever I ordered seemed to come back as a cheese and ham sandwich and I could never make anyone understand my pronunciation of "ice cream".

I walked for days over the Pampas with my rucksack and tent, stopping behind bushes to camp. I drank from streams and ground my feet into blistered messes.

I arrived in Trelew two months later at about five a.m with not a tea shop in sight. I hunted around a bit and found a Welsh flag, but decided it was too similar to the other Argentine towns I had been to and so moved on to Gaiman.

This was more like it. Gaiman was a smaller town, less regimented than the traditional grid design. Signs for "Rodriguez Tomos Motors" made me smile and roads called Juan Evans and Michael Jones showed how well the Welsh community had blended with the locals. I eventually saw a teapot sign with an arrow.

Tea is something I drink several times a day. It's drunk as part of a ritual and the best thanks is someone saying, "oo, that's a nice cup of tea."

In South America, tea is given on a tray as warm water in a cup with a teabag on the side and a little jug of UHT milk. I used to try and tell the waiters, to show them how to do it properly, but I would get a smile and a shrug of the shoulders. I soon gave up and drunk coffee.

I set out to follow the teapot signs and walked for a number of miles along a dusty track. As soon as I started getting disillusioned, there would be another teapot and I would regain strength. Then there started being references to "Lady Di" and I knew I was near! I finally reached my destination, there was large coach park, a teapot in flowers and more pictures of Lady Di.

I was quite excited as I walked in and was looking forward to saying, "s'mae", but the reality was very different. Although I was used to people not understanding my Welsh (and by now my Spanish too), it was usually because my Welsh was poor, but here it was because all of our Welsh was poor.

I think we managed bore da to each other and lots of smiles and then I was ushered into the tea rooms and stuffed in a corner out of the way.

It was fantastic to see what the South Americans thought was typically Welsh. Teapots came with MASSIVE crocheted tea cosies and there were lace doilies everywhere. Pictures of Lady Di when she was still Lady Di covered the walls and the waitresses wore little black dresses and white pinnies, but in a much smarter way than we would.

I ordered my "afternoon tea" and was so excited to have my own teapot and a tray of about eight cakes (at least, I thought they were all for me?). It tasted fantastic. I drank my first cup just sitting smiling and with my second cup, I wrote my postcard to my teacher, Elin Jones.

I don't know whether Elin ever got my postcard: I hope she did. And if she did, I hope she could understand what it said on it...

By Lorraine Jenkin, author of Chocolate Mousse and Two Spoons.