"Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results." Thus said Sir Ernest Shackleton, leader of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition of 1914 (better known as the Endurance expedition) and star of one of history's most stirring tales of triumph over extreme hardship. There have been umpteen books written about the Endurance expedition but it's a story that never pales in the telling. The ambitious plan to cross Antarctica from one coast to the other via the South Pole came unstuck at the very beginning, when the Endurance froze into pack ice in the Weddell Sea. After about ten months, the [View Full Entry]

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Ushuaia has nicknamed itself "The End of the World", a fact with which you're bludgeoned over the head like an overly trusting penguin as you wander its streets, however it's difficult to justify such a title. At roughly the same latitude south as Belfast is north, and not even the most southerly city in the world (that honour goes to Puerto Williams in Chile, a fact acknowledged by both the Argentinian and Chilean governments, though purists may argue that Puerto Williams is more a naval base than a city), a population of of over 60,000 people lives amongst a colony of [View Full Entry]

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After leaving El Chalten, I returned to El Calafate for some much-needed laundry. Handwashing is discouraged here, yet laundry costs (at least if done via the hostels) are per load of 6-7kg rather than per item so, for travellers like myself with limited clothing, this is only good value for money if you wash pretty much everything at once. I had to wear shorts during this process as I had no other legwear. Despite there still being droves of tourists in El Calafate, my hostel was one of only two in the town (the other being its sister hostel) that close [View Full Entry]

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The ride to El Chalten passed through more Patagonian steppe and alongside enormous windswept lakes, with this time the animal life consisting mainly of guanacos, one of several similar creatures residing on the continent (also llama, vicuna, and alpaca) that are sufficiently indistinguishable to my eye that I'll just pick a name at random if I have further cause to mention one. The sullen grey of the Fitz Roy massif, its peaks specked with snow and partially obscured by patchy cloud cover, loomed closer. Nestled in a valley beneath its forbidding bulk was our destination. The first impression I had of [View Full Entry]

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The flight south from Buenos Aires took in a brownish landscape and occasional sea before, after nearly 3 hours, we passed over a green river wiggling off to the horizon and then we were in El Calafate, with more than half the country having been bypassed. There's only one reason for people to be in El Calafate and that's to visit the Perito Moreno glacier, so the town that has grown up around this industry is packed with souvenir shops, outdoor gear stores, Buenos Aires-priced cafes, and - most incongruously - a casino. However, with a crisp and sunny climate (at [View Full Entry]

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My memories of a visit to Buenos Aires at the end of 2002, when the peso was at its weakest, consist predominantly of steak and red wine being consumed in vast quantities at very low cost. I also remember a tangible European feel, notable architecture such as the Obelisco, an orchestral performance at the Teatro Colon, an evening seeing Senor Tango (a younger version of my Dad) wring every last milligram of emotion from his favourite songs while deft-footed tangoistas played chicken with each other's ankles, a visit to a trendy bar called Milion (a surviving picture of which shows me [View Full Entry]

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For me, the best thing about New York is that it's where I had my worst ever relationship and my worst ever job. The reason that's a good thing is because both those situations ended there, with me plenty the wiser. But even without my experience of the city being coloured by this, New York had worn me down by the time I left at the end of summer in 2005. I'd originally bought into the idea that living there would give me the best chance of forging a successful career, but once I'd realised that my ambitions in life were [View Full Entry]

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Crossing the Pacific from Bali to the Bay area gave me a 1st of March lasting for 40 hours, courtesy of flying through the International Date Line. Sadly, the majority of (literally) the longest day of my life was spent in transit, however it did give me time to ponder how Taiwan's Taipei airport could have the best wifi I've ever encountered yet the national carrier China Airlines could only provide an in-flight entertainment system seemingly from the 1970s, with just one screen in each aircraft section. My previous visit to San Francisco had been at the tail end of 2004, [View Full Entry]

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London, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Darwin, Sydney, Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Kunming, Macau, Kota Kinabalu, and now Ubud - that's the list of places I've been to twice since I began my travels, though only a handful were because of actually wanting to return rather than having unavoidable admin motives. Ubud required revisiting in order to meet up with LA Woman, whose itinerary for 2008 was otherwise rarely going to be coinciding with mine. Ubud in rainy season was a rather different prospect to when we had visited last September. An oppressive heat and humidity weighed on the town, discouraging [View Full Entry]

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London was, as usual, just a waypoint on my travels, this time a staging post between the cold drabness of Saltburn and the sultry laziness of Bali. It would not be the most disappointing fact about my life if I never had to live in London again, but visiting for a few days at a time is perfectly acceptable, the chance to sightsee the areas I deliberately avoided when I was a resident in the '90s and to catch up with assorted friends. The city appals me in several different ways. The sheer cost of everything is an affront, not just [View Full Entry]

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