"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 ship was crushed by the pressure of the pack and sank - a distressing moment for all, especially the ship's cat, which was shot to prevent unnecessary suffering in the coming days. After several more ... read more

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 at the beginning of April as, according to their flawed business plan, that's when the season has ended. It's possible to do the run from El Calafate to Ushuaia via Rio Gallegos in 1 day, ... read more

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 least at the present) and no tout hassle, it's by no means an unpleasant tourist trap. My hostel was a vast improvement on the two I'd stayed in in Buenos Aires, though this one had ... read more

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 not tied in to my work (and in fact my work was preventing me from achieving them), there wasn't much point in staying either in the firm or in the city. Cue this current career ... read more

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 activity and permitting only sweaty forays out for lunch and dinner. Regular monsoonal downpours created cataracts down the stone stairs of the guesthouse's gardens - at least their coming brought with them a blessed breeze ... read more