'Fin del mundo'.

After a very early start and an oddly exhausting four hour flight, we and (thankfully) our luggage arrived at Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego. A friendly face met us at the airport holding a Fathom Expeditions sign. 

En-route to our hotel we saw in the harbour the M/V Ushaia, the ship that will take us to the White Continent. And at the hotel we met Dave German, the trip's tour leader. So far, all very good.

At the foot of south America, Ushuaia's other name is 'Fin del mundo', and it certainly has an end of the world feel about it. 

Even in good weather, this can be a foreboding place; backed by high, jagged snow-flecked mountains and forests of southern beech, it overlooks the cold, choppy Beagle Channel and further high mountains. It's a spectacular but rather bleak location. The airport runway is built on the only flat land, an island in the channel. Stein was struck by how much like Norway it is, where his family are from.

We have a tour dinner tonight and a trip to Tierra del Fuego National Park in morning, before we set sail at 4pm tomorrow.

Three BA nights with only three hours sleep each and the flight down here have knocked us both out - but the thought of where we're soon heading is incredibly exciting. 

Antarctica has been on my wish list of places to visit for such a long time, that I can't help but feel a bit overwhelmed. 

Sunday street life in San Telmo, BA.

San Telmo is the area of the city where Tango was first created. It's famous for its cobbled streets of grand but faded buildings and mansions, and its Sunday markets.

We went there today as sunglasses buying was on Stein's To Do list.

BA has done us proud.

The Portenos enjoy going out and they hit the town late. They dine from 11 onwards and the clubs don't open until 1, getting going around 3. 

We've had a great time, eaten out well (Cluny; Mott, Cafe Petanque, Gran Bar Danzon), and enjoyed the nightlife (Bahrein on Friday, GLAM last night), meeting some really fun people on the way. Kind people too. 

BA's an extremely fun city, which we've enjoyed hugely. But at 05.45 tomorrow we leave for the flight to Ushuaia.

BA.

Buenos Aires is a vast, proud and exciting city. 

On a river plain with near limitless space, laid out in a loose grid with a core of leafy parks, monuments and grand avenues (with nine lanes of traffic, Avenida 9 de Julio must be one of the world's widest), BA's districts are all very distinct. 

Some areas feel like upscale Madrid or Paris, others could only be in South America. But throughout, the European influence is strong. This may be Latin America - with all its energy and sexiness - but BA doesn't really have the edginess and semi-chaos of, for example, Sao Paulo and Rio.

Grand 18th and 19th century palaces are evidence of the city's spectacularly prosperous past, as are the parks and grand gesture monuments - but as you'd expect from a place that has been through such massive social, economic and political upheavals, poor barrios and shanty towns also abound. 

The divide between the rich and the poor is enormous and evident. Virtually overnight the middle class became poor and the poor had absolutely nothing. At night the poor comb the rubbish bags of the wealthy for stuff to recycle or sell on...

And that's what's a bit odd; despite severe economic issues and having defaulted so many times on its massive international debt, the city puts on a strong, proud face, conveying an impression of upbeat prosperity. Here, it's all about appearance - and this applies as much on an individual level as a city-wide one.

But cosmopolitan and magnificent Buenos Aires is an exciting one-off and you can't help loving the place.

The bitch is back.

I almost forgot, Elton also put on a heck of a show - as you'd expect. 

Opening with the above, he bashed out some new stuff (yawn) and tons of the old (fantastic). In fact, he just went on and on and on.

He was still going strong when we left at 1am.

"Andy, this is James..."

What a night. It ended in us meeting up with Paul and the band after the concert.

On a perfect BA evening we cabbed over to La Boca, the BA suburb famous for football and its stadium, which was the concert venue. It certainly wasn't the O2 (our seats - ten rows from the stage - were of the plastic patio kind, tied at the legs) but it had an up-for-it crowd of about 20,000.

James B came on. The crowd loved him. 

Some wildly over-excited teenage girls across from us mouthed the words to the songs then pulled out a banner reading: "I want to have s*x with you". A few minutes later, when JB crossed the stage towards us, one of them was off in his direction like a rat up a drainpipe, thrusting her romantic words in his direction. 

It was all the funnier when, as she was coerced back to her seat, she lit a cigarette in a languid, post-coital fashion.

Throughout, Paul - our ticket meister - did his thing brilliantly on keyboards.

Afterwards we cabbed it back to the city and joined the band for drinks. They were a great group of fun, down-to-earth guys who clearly loved what they did and the opportunities it provided to see the world. They were off to Santiago de Chile the next day.

Got home at about four. It was a great, great night...

Hit over the head with a Blunt instrument (in a good way).

Wow. What a fantastic night. (More to come).

Dead interesting.

A beautiful day in Buenos Aires. 

We're staying in Recoleta, a central location that looks superficially like Paris and is famous for it's cemetery. In death, Eva Peron, the great and good (and sometimes bad) of Argentina, call this place home.

A chance encounter.

On our flight from Rio to Buenos Aires we got chatting to the guy sat next to us:

- "Have you been to BA before?"

- "Yes, once, a few years ago. Loved it and really glad to be back. It's a great city. How was Rio?"

- "Amazing, and brief - three nights. I fell in love six times. We've been travelling with work for 18months."

- "Wow. What do you do?"

- "I'm in a band. The keyboard player. Last night we were in front of 30,000 people - with Elton John."

- "Good God! Who do you perform with?"

- "James Blunt. I can probably get you some comps for tomorrow night, if you want to come..."

So, thanks to Paul, we've two 'VIP' tickets to see Mr Blunt and Ms Elton John tonight at the stadium in La Boca.

Our (future) base in Rio.

After breakfast, we went over to the apartment of Stein's friend's, Luis and Delphine, in Leblon.

They were incredibly kind and welcoming, showing us around their place - which, from early February for a week, we will call home.

And what a place! A two-storey light-filled penthouse set back a few metres from the beach, with a glass-bottomed pool and large terrace on the roof facing the Atlantic breakers. 

Spectacular, edgy, thrilling and sexy...

For the few hours we were there, Rio was hot, wet and enveloped in low cloud. 

At no point did the place look anything like what the guidebooks show, yet from glimpses I knew that everything I'd ever heard or read about the place was true. 

Nowhere else on earth is there a city setting like this. For drama, Rio beats hands-down Sydney, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Cape Town.

Tall mountains clad in rainforest and favelas; a coastline punctuated with bays, lagoons and legendary beaches; vast concrete fly-overs and tunnels ploughing through mountainsides. 

Between all this - on every buildable square metre of land - the city sprawls and climbs, a chaotic din of dirty and dishevelled styles and scales.

Rio is spectacular, edgy, thrilling and sexy, and I can't wait to return.

Returning to summer.

After five sensational weeks in Africa and five busy but cold, windy and mainly grey days back in London, my friend, Stein, and I are bound for S America tomorrow. 

First stop: Rio de Janiero, then onwards to Buenos Aires. From there, southwards to Ushuaia, Argentina's last frontier and the departure point for our ten day trip to the White Continent, Antarctica.

From what I've read and heard, no place on earth compares to this vast pristine wilderness. It's beauty, scale and majesty supposedly blows the mind. And it's somewhere that I have always wanted to experience.

It's been great to return home for a few days and to catch up with family and some friends - but I can't wait to get back to the southern hemisphere's summer and to embark on this incredible trip.

The last few days in Cape Town...

Apart from leaping off mountains with a parachute (plus, thankfully, a professional) strapped to my back, my last few days in Cape Town have been pretty quiet and very relaxed. 

The weather has settled down to clear, wind-free sunny days so the beach has been top of the To Do list. And recently the seas have also been unusually warm. 

Coming straight-up from the Antarctic, CPT's waters are famed for their year-round iciness and frozen, aching brass monkeys usually ensue after a dip of just a couple of minutes. But unusually warm currents have meant the water has been not just tolerable, but beautiful - and a relief from the heat of the beach. Plus, with a recent full moon, the waves are huuuge.

With it like this, and the prospect of returning to cold Europe, it would be rude not to make the most of the city's beaches in these days; so that's exactly what I've done, with some of the friends I've met since arriving here five weeks ago...

The best way to see Cape Town.

Yesterday I paraglided off Lion's Head in Cape Town. It was an INCREDIBLE airborne 17 minutes. 

New Year's Eve - with a splash of Italian.

A perfect and unforgettable NYE with great (and new) friends.

Around 8pm Howard and I headed over to Ariel and Veit's place. Ingredients for the evening included:

- 14 fun people from Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, SA, Germany and the UK

- perfect Cape Town weather

- copious amounts of Champagne

- a stunning dinner and wines by candlelight.

The evening was relaxed and fun. Everyone came from a variety of backgrounds and got on famously. We toasted our hosts and, of course, midnight. Heart-felt wishes for a wonderful year ahead were shared, fireworks were seen over the ocean and then the lure of the infinity pool kicked-in.

Laura, from Florence, dived into the pool fully clothed. Actually, 'dived' is an exaggeration. In her little black dress and high-rise Roberto Cavallis, she kind of teetered in. A quick succession of others followed.

I wondered how 2009 would play out.

At 4am a number of us headed into town for the remnants of the celebrations there. These were a bit sad, but the good looking (no, make that incredibly good looking) and up-for-it crowd was not.

Just after six, I took a cab back home to Camp's Bay with a crazy driver. Despite feeling lousy, it was an unforgettable Cape Town moment as we drove along the coast road, the sun rising over the Twelve Apostles. 

The blog is about to get out of date order (which for an obsessive like me is a bit of a problem!), but it's time to share some recent Cape Town days and events. 

I'll come back to Namibia.

La Grande Vue.

My friends in Cape Town, Ariel and Veit, have been incredibly kind and generous hosts. 

I always love staying and spending time with them, and am hugely grateful to them for helping make the first few weeks of my time off so wonderful and relaxing. Their company, the friends they've introduced me to here and what we've done together have helped make this trip to CPT the best I've ever had, by a long way.

Thank you, guys. Can't wait to see you in London soon. 

(Your pad - LGV - isn't bad either).