I’m in South America, a long way from family and friends, and not entirely sure what I’ll be doing for Christmas yet. It’s not really important to me – I miss my mates and my family all the time at the moment, Christmas won’t change that. I’m pretty glad to be out of the UK …

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Standard conversation between backpackers meeting for the first time: “So where have you come from?”“Peru.”“Oh wow, did you enjoy it? I´m going there next.”“Yeah, it was OK, but I much preferred Bolivia.”“How so?”“Oh, more chilled out, the people are lovely, and it´s so cheap. What about you, how long have you been travelling?”“Me? Oh, ten …

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I haven´t really given Chile the time I´m sure it deserves. After one night in Santiago I headed into Argentina with Sanita and Camilla who I met on Easter Island, to Mendoza, a hedonistic, relaxed little town (well, I say little, a million people live there but it just feels little) just over the border …

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I included Easter Island on my trip because I was so curious about it, and it turned out to be easy to do on the way to Chile, whereas for most people it´s an expensive flight or two to one of the most remote populated places on Earth. I knew about as much as most …

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Some places live up to expectations, some exceed them, and some just plain suck. Sorry for the poor English but you get my drift. I`ve found so far that the places that the guidebooks tell you to go to, the places that are `famous´, the places that come heavy with the weight of expectation, rarely …

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The first problem I have to tell you about is that I am using a French keyboard, which for some reason quite beyond me has all of the keys in the wrong places; they apparently don’t think that QWERTY is a sensible layout. As a result I am typing at the speed of someone who …

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