Chris Oates

The other great area of granite towers in Patagonia is the Fitzroy and Cerro Torro group, north of El Calafate on the Argentinian side. The small town El Chalten sits right under the mountains so another early start on the public bus gave me a full day to walk one of the trails up to the Cerro Torro glacier. The morning started brightly and there were great views as I walked up through the town, wind and cloud built through the day, but I still caught tantalising glimpses of Cerro Torro through holes in the cloud. This is possibly the most stunning mountain of all, being a slender granite spire, dominating surrounding peaks and glaciers until the land again rises for the equally vertical but broader Fitzroy. These mountains may be little over 3000m, but they ... read more

In the rain Shadow east of the Andes the steppe reminds me of a cross between the tussock of the South Island High Country, a Yorkshire grouse moor and the Desert Road near Ruapehu. It certainly has the windswept feel of the Desert Road, but it's a genuine desert with only 250mm of rain a year. It is a land of wide open spaces, big skies and emptiness. El Calafate has a frontier town feel, there are roads and tin roofed buildings, some quite large, but the barren scrub continues through the town as if someone has scattered monopoly houses on the landscape. El Calafate is closer to the equator than London, but with only Tierra del Feugo between here and Antarctica the wind can be bitter, even in summer. A short drive west are the ... read more

The Orinoco Delta Caracas airport looks like an aviation museum. I flew in something from the 1960s with engines bolted to the back of the fuselage just in front of the tail. Given the warnings on government websites about Venezuela (frequent kidnappings, violence, armed robbery etc) I had booked all cars, tours and accommodation in advance. This helped as I was met at every location and got around the country in private cars that blended in with ordinary traffic. The drive to the port at the edge of the delta was through flat, featureless farmland with only one distinguishing feature, it was abandoned and not being farmed. My driver explained that a few years earlier the then president, Chavez, claimed that the price of meat, around 2000 Bolivars ( $3US on the black market ) was ... read more

Angel Falls My driver from the delta to the city of Ciudad Bolivar where I caught the flight to Cainama, was even more vocal than the last. We were stopped at a police checkpoint for 40 minutes while they went through the car and his papers with a fine tooth comb. He later explained that the police are paid the minimum wage, which is impossible to live on. They therefore routinely stop traffic and request payment in return for free passage. Failure to pay leads to the stop and search and 'fines' for anything that is out of order. I thought that Cainama would just be a place to catch the boat up to Angel Falls, but it's a great place. What is called the lagoon is really a wide section of river below a series ... read more

Santa Lucia Despite the carnage that is the Quito rush hour, most Ecuadorians get around by bus. The taxi to the northern bus station cost $8, and then the bus to Nanogal, $2.50, following the principle that bus fares equate to $1 per hour. The bus was fairly modern, and full. We left the densely packed suburbs of Quito and passed a series of modern housing developments that would have not looked out of place in Stonefields or Albany. Ecuador clearly has a middle class. Next came 'Middel du Monde' a tacky looking tourism destination where we crossed the equator. After this we started to descend into the cloud forest, and two and a half hours after leaving Quito I was dropped in the small town of Nanagol, from where a car took me to the ... read more