Peru has more ancient civilisations than really seems decent for any country. It makes Western Europe look like the plump kid at the school races, barely off the starting blocks. The Incas were the last and the shortest-lived, yet they remain the best known. What about the Nazca, leaving incredible designs in the desert that defeat modern attempts at analysis and interpretation? And the Moche, with tombs only recently discovered but that rival Tutankhamen’s in terms of the information they convey about the people of the time? And the Chimú, with their vast adobe city and multiple palaces at Chan Chan? Yet even these headlines barely scratch the archaeological surface of this Egypt of the Americas; they only cover those civilisations whose sites I managed to explore. I saw nothing of others that also left their ... read more

I love vast open spaces. With no people. Preferably with some wildlife, though that’s negotiable. When Jo and I first looked into overland trips in South America in the chill grey of late December, Dragoman’s JQB120312 expedition jumped off the screen at me because of the big emptinesses it offered. Patagonia was one; the Bolivian Altiplano another. Yes, sorry Mum, you know I’m a culture-cretin at times, but these beat Machu Picchu hands-down on my wish-list. I reckoned I could always visit an Inca ruin or two under my own steam, but how often would I get the chance to drive across this extraordinary landscape? As I had found with the Gobi Desert and the Tibetan Plateau, the Altiplano is something which can really only best be tackled by overlanding. (It’s paradoxical, but the thing I ... read more

When staying on the fringes of Los Glaciares National Park and contemplating a 4-day trek the next week, you can do one of two things: rest up, or warm up. Jo did the former; I did the latter. On my own. For a blissful and fantastically scenic, and gratifyingly energetic, eight hours. Welcome to El Chalten, gateway to the northern side of this dramatic national park in Argentine Patagonia. We had been driving across eastern Patagonia for several days, and, before that, the Pampas. We had just about had our fill of endless flatness, whether cultivated and lush, or increasingly barren and wind-blasted, so we were childishly excited to see the first hints of Andean peaks. The approach to El Chalten is very dramatic, the rocky pinnacles of the Fitz Roy Range fairytale-like in their snowy ... read more

The Paris of the South. A city whose name, literally translated, means ‘good atmosphere’. Envy writ large on the faces of friends who have been, or who yearn to go. Buenos Aires had a lot to do to live up to its press... …but it did. By the time we dragged ourselves away on a sunny Thursday morning, finally boarding the Truck to head south, I was starting to think of it as another one of my homes around the planet. We’d twice come and gone and come back again. We’d stayed in Microcentro and Palermo, and explored San Telmo, Recoleta, Congreso and La Boca. We’d taken the ‘Subte’ and the local buses, chatted to taxi drivers and shop-owners and waiters and tangueros, dined on steak and pizza and pasta and icecream, and supped our first ... read more

It was only an hour’s boat ride away. With ten days in Argentina’s capital before we joined the overland trip that should take us from Buenos Aires to Quito via Patagonia, it would have been rude not to spend just a few of them on the other side of the Río de la Plata. Uruguay would be Jo’s third new country in little over three weeks; at this rate, she was racking up destinations faster than I have ever done. “Montevideo” has an air of romance that I can’t quite place – as a setting for one of the Bond movies perhaps, or in sounding fictitious, not a real place in this world. For me, it’s up there with “Timbuktu” and “Mongolia” as somewhere I want to see for myself, to see what lies behind the ... read more