The southern part of Chile is composed of hundreds of tiny islands, and only a small strip of mainland. One of the best ways of travelling up the coast is via the Navimag ferry, a big cargo ship that has been adapted slightly (and I mean slightly!) to allow tourists to make the trip too. Other cargo included food, scrap metal, mattresses, and sheep! We bid a fond farewell to my (almost) namesake town Puerto Natales (which has the attractions of the best pizza restaurant we've encountered so far in Latin America, and a dried fruit and nut shop blasting out 70s rock 12 hours a day), to hop on the boat on the evening of Thursday 6th March. We spent the night moored in Puerto Natales and were off at 6am the next day. The ... read more

Amigos! This is going to be mainly a photographic blog as we've spent the last three days hiking in the north part of the Parque Nacional los Glaciares, seeing landscapes pretty much more stunning than I thought possible - and which I'm not feeling nearly poetical enough to describe...best leave the piccies to do the talking! We've been staying in a small town called El Chalten which is very odd - it just grew up mainly as a centre for hiking and climbing and feels strangely temporary, even though its been there over 40 years. It is very dusty but the setting is just amazing, and perhaps as you would expect from a town where everyone goes to exercise, there are some amazing restaurants (any visitors, check out Malbec, one block away from the main street) ... read more

Our first stops in Patagonia were the towns of Puerto Madryn and Trelew, in Chubut province (a 17 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires!) Puerto Madryn was founded in 1865, when a group of Welsh settlers were given land here after fleeing Wales due to religious and cultural persecution by the English. They landed at Puerto Madryn, and gradually moved west, founding Trelew, and a few other towns and villages on the way. The area is surrounded by scrubland - the Patagonian Steppe is the fifth largest desert in the world, covering 673,000 square kilometres in the south of the country. It is perfect land for grazing sheep, which is maybe what attracted the Welsh settlers there - other comparisons with Wales are few and far between - it is flat as a pancake and it ... read more

Scientific Fact: It´s actually mathematically possible to measure your exact distance from the Caribbean sea by counting the number of times you hear Shaggy being played. For this and other reasons I´m throwing my lot in with the Pacific, if you force me to choose. There´s less rain, better surf, and everyone isn´t so stinking grumpy! The Caribbean has perfect white sand, azure blue sea, boiling sunshine, yet everyone walks round with a face like a London Bus driver when you´ve asked him for change from a tenner. Maybe it´s over exposure to Shaggy? Anyway, I digress. We´ve left the Caribbean now... Perhaps for the last time on this trip. Fittingly we escaped from Bocas Town (officially grubbier than the street outside ChickKing on Tulse Hill) in a boat that was about 2 trips from splitting ... read more

Well, it's January, and you're all probably at work, having visions of Nat & I drinking cocktails served by Monkey waiters in the cloud forest, hating our guts... Well, prepare to engage the schadenfreude portion of your brains, as the travelling backlash starts here. I'm not going to write anything about the brilliant two weeks we spent with Sarah and Aoife, as hopefully they're doing that right now (ahem, you're late guys!) However it's fair to say my impressions of Costa Rica went down a fair way, firstly after someone tried to nick Sarah's bag on the beach at Mal Pais, then after a nasty case of food poisoning and/or gastric flu, then getting my wallet nicked (complete with all my bank cards but thankfully only about $6 in it). 3 days and nights lying flat ... read more