I've spent the last 2 weeks in the northern Argentinian provinces of Salta and Jujuy. The city of Salta is known as "the beautiful one". It has well preserved colonial architecture, luxurious churches, exuberant parks set to the backdrop of the Andes. Jujuy province, although it is the poorest part of Argentina has the Quebrada de Humahuaca. A valley that stretches from the city of Jujuy to the Bolivian border. The Quebrada de Humahuaca has striking indigenous Quechua speaking towns set against stunning multicoloured mountain sides. It has been a major trade route for 10,000 years, so it has archaeological remains from hunter gathers and the Inca´s empire. As a result the whole area is a world heritage site. At the end of the last blog,... read more

It took five hours to fly from Santiago to Easter Island. The name of the island is Isla de Pascua in Spanish, but was known as Te Pito O Te Henua (navel of the world) to islanders in the past, and is usually called Rapa Nui today. As we approached Rapa Nui we circled around the tiny island, giving me a panoramic view. Then we landed. As the plane turned around on the runway, I noticed that the runway seemed to go on forever, disapearing over the horizon. I thought to myself; "Welcome to the Space Shuttle emergency airstrip." I am not joking. NASA built the runway at Mataveri airport, Rapa Nui, so that the Space Shuttle would have an emergency landing strip in the middle of the Pacific. That would be quite a picture - ... read more

As promised at the end of the last blog, I've been on pilgrimage to Welsh Patagonia. Or, at least my stomach has, as I visited a number of Welsh tea shops. For those of you that don´t know, my mother was Welsh. When I was young ( I know that´s difficult to imagine), our parents used to take us down to visit the Welsh relatives in the school holidays. A highlight of those childhood visits was our Aunt Olive´s teas. The Welsh teas in Patagonia though, didn't live up to my memories of the huge spreads that our Aunt Olive used to put on. Even if my mother would always accuse us of having hollow legs, it would have been rude not to have done justice to the effort that went into Olive´s spreads. The Welsh ... read more

"I have the feeling that Patagonia is the most desolate of places...a land of exiles, a place of de-territoriality" (Jean Baudrillard) was right. El Calafate is now the worst type of tourist trap. But it wasn't always that way. Mass tourism in Patagonia is a recent thing. Once upon a time it was very different. The old Patagonian Wild West was a land of Pirates, outlaws and rebels. (Maybe its their pirate past that explains the desire to empty the tourists wallets!) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were the most famous of the outlaws who made Patagonia their home. When things were getting too hot for Cassidy and Sundance they settled down for 5 years as respectable stock farmers. The neighbours had no idea that the polite gringos were criminals. But the rural retirement couldn't ... read more

"I'm the last of the Wollastan race. There were five Yahgon tribes, each from a different place, but they owned the same word. Before I could walk, I had travelled with my mother all the way up to Cape Horn, tied to her back. She used to take me uphill to camp and eat some birds that fly over the sea and answer from their nests on land whenever someone whistles." (Rosa Yagan - the last link. The story of a Native American woman from the End of the World; Patricia Stamuk.) I've reached the end of the world, Ushuaia. The most southerly city in the world. It was only officially founded in 1884. There was an indigenous population in the area before the Spanish arrived. They've been all but wiped out. Ushuaia is now a ... read more