From this point on I was on my own, and had to brave the harsh european-like Argentina solo. Shiv had gotten ill and had had problems sleeping for a while, so took the decision to head home (she's fine now).

My border crossing was a bit of a pain, the guys in Bolivia saw me off at the bus station and jokingly enlisted the help of a middle aged Bolivian woman to baby-sit me. Unfortunately she seemed to take her responsibility seriously and chatted to me the whole journey while I was in a fairly uncaring hungover state, when we got to the border town she insisted I should follow her as she had made the crossing many times. After a lunch with her (which left me ill for a few days after), we took a small boat across a river to the immigration offices, however they were only for Argentina and I needed an exit stamp for Bolivia. Thoroughly annoyed, I left her there, took the boat back, a taxi 5 miles back up the road to the Bolivian office, waited there 30 mins (where she later appeared), taxi back, boat, then Argentinian immigration. From the border I took a bus and collectivo taxi to Salta, and ended up stuck with a far too chatty Argentinian guy who wouldn't take no for an answer when he wanted to go for a drink when we arrived at 11pm.

Salta was cool, I spent almost a week at a friendly chilled out hostel, aside from some horse riding (including a thrilling race a the end which was incredibly fast) I didn't really do much apart from relax, explore the city, eat huge steaks, and drink. It was nice to be back in a place with a few more luxuries, like decent showers. I met a couple of Italian girls who stuck with me until I got into colder climates in the South, but we're going to meet up in Rio later on.

From Salta, I had a brief stay in Mendoza where I'd visited on my previous travels, then went further south to Bariloche in the Argentinian lake district. It's like Switzerland was imported across the ocean, including swiss chalets and restaurants set up by swiss immigrants. It's a beautiful place, with a lot of activities to do including bike riding, hiking, kayaking, rafting, fishing and paragliding. After a lot of drinks with some Londoners the night before I went paragliding, great fun, but I gradually felt more and more queasy, finally re-decorating someone's roof during the tight final turns of the descent.

One of my plans for south america was to visit the southern region of Argentina, Patagonia, particularly the Patagonian Andes. I'd come to a point where I either had time to do that, or to explore a bit of Brazil before Rio. I decided to push on South. Foolishly choosing to take the bus down the apparently picturesque Ruta 40, I was stuck on it for 2 days down a road with very little of interest besides at the start and end. The final destination was El Chalten, a wierd small place that calls itself the trekking capital of Argentina, which might be deserved. The town has a number of good day treks leading out from it, with the possibility of doing a variety of multi-day treks. During a particularly steep section of a trek up to the stunning Laguna de los Tres I started to feel some pain in my left knee, after the descent I was in agony and had to hobble another couple of hours back to the hostel. After a few days of rest, stretching, and untrained massage it was feeling better, and by that point I'd made it to Puerto Natales in Chile, the base for treks into the Torres del Paine national park.

I figured I'd be sensible and wait a couple of days before doing the 120km hike of the full circuit, however after getting into the hostel I met a German guy called Marcel who was planning on going solo the following day, after a bit of discussion I gave in and quickly ran around the shops buying everything I needed before they closed, including the rental of a pair of walking poles to help with my knee. I spent a couple of hours that night sorting out my backpack, which after a few essential clothes, sleeping bag, part of the tent, and all of the food for 7 days was absolutely full and weighed about 20kg. As Marcel was short on time, we'd decided to push it the first day and did a 9 hour walk at a pretty fast pace. We went past some great scenery, but had to deal the most powerful wind I'm ever likely to experience, which had marcel on his hands and knees crawling forward at one point, with his only warm hat blown over a mountain, and me getting blown over into a spikey bush and almost losing my sunglasses as they were whipped off 30m behind me.

We got to our first campsite tired, with blistered feet, it was raining, and the site was full of mosquitos. Neither of us had inspected the tent he'd borrowed from his family, and it was a little bent, with several slightly broken poles. A fairly depressing night, particularly as neither of us could sleep from the freezing cold. The next day we had planned an entirely brutal 12 hour trek, including hard uphill and downhill sections either side of a pass, but thought better of it and hiked to the base of the pass instead. Most of the people doing the same trek had thought the same thing, so we got to know a few in the campsite that evening. Normally about 8 people per day do it, but there was also a group of 7 British Navy guys doing it too, so there were quite a few of us.

By the third day, both Marcel's knees and my bad knee were painful, so we were hobbling quite a bit, using our walking poles as crutches as much as possible. We ended up walking with the Navy guys over the pass, it was nice to know we had backup if anything went wrong in the snow, wind, and steep slopes, but they were really cool friendly guys too. At the top of the pass we were rewarded with a great view of Glacier Grey and the huge ice field feeding it stretching off miles into the distance. The downhill section was brutal on all of us though, and the Navy guys were looking at our walking poles with jealousy, though they didn't help much when I accidentally slipped down a natural snow slide for 30m before scraping a few layers of skin off my leg on a metal pole.

We pushed on past the first two campsites we came to in order to reach the luxury campsite at refugio Grey. At that site were hot showers and a nice warm building for food and drinks. Marcel and I bought our first pisco sours (they'd run out of beer), then the Navy guys kept buying round after round and called it my tax refund. One of the guys put on his skimpy sailor fancy dress outfit that he kept with him at all times, and started carrying around one of the girls who worked there. We finally got kicked out at midnight, but most of them carried on drinking boxes of wine for a few more hours while chatting up a couple of German girls. In the morning an irate american women who'd been kept awake spent a while bashing their tents with her walking pole to wake them up, and offered to pay them not to turn up to her next campsite.

I'll stop describing days, because it'll take too long, but we saw some cool stuff (see the photos for poor representations) and experienced most of the weather types every hour, but in general we got very lucky with the weather. Our final day involved a 4am wake up to be up to the Torres (3 huge rock towers) viewpoint for sun rise. Apparently only half the people who go get a good view because of the clouds normally covering them, however when we got up there they were perfectly clear, a very rare thing, and as the sun rose the towers turned red, a perfect postcard view.

5 Paragraphs on the trek is probably boring you all, but it was a really cool experience, if a little hard at times. We had a couple of days relaxation in Puerto Natales, then we headed our separate ways. I went back into Argentina to El Califate where a huge glacier regularly drops house sized chunks of ice into the water.

From there I took a flight to Buenos Aires for a bit of city life after all that time appreciating nature. I ended up in a huge party hostel, and from the moment I arrived I was drinking with a group of english and irish lads. We ended up at Club 69, the hostel's choice for the night, which was a gay bar with skantily clad men and transvestites dancing on stages and performing simulated sex act, different, but a lot of fun. I quickly got into the hostel routine of getting in early in the morning, getting up late, doing something cultural for a few hours then getting back on the drink. A highlight was an incredible theatre show on brutal force, which involved ladies sliding around in a giant water tank above your head and a guy walking and running on a treadmill having a very bad day (google Fuerza Bruta for a partial idea of what it is).I stayed in Buenos Aires for 6 days then took a flight to Rio de Janiero for a final 2 weeks of sun, sea, sand, drinking and dancing.