Well, here I finally am! At the end of the long long road. I started off in Buenos Aires, and now, thousands of miles, a good few beers, and many many avocado sandwiches later, I am in Quito, an hour from the ecuator, preparing for my flight home in a matter of days.

When I look back on the person that left england its a wonder anyone ever let me on a plane. I was straight out of school, pale, naive, and unsure even of how to wash my own clothes. I was sheltered and extremely privalaged, but all too conscious of how much there was out there to see, and ready as ever to see it. Since landing in Argentina, that same pale 19 year old has been published in spanish, learnt to cook awesome empanadas, danced salsa, watched condors soaring over the second highest canyon in the world, taught the hokey-kokey to children in an amazon village, seen seals teach their cubs to swim, slept in a brothel, sandboarded down some of the worlds highest dunes; argued with, laughed with and sweat blood for the street chidlren of Trujillo, swam in caves in the jungle and sipped wine in Limas finest restaurants. And by this, I dont mean to boast. Every person I have met along the way has a similar list to bore the grandchildren with. Trust me, its unavoidable.

I have made a million mistakes along the way; done things I regretted at the time, escaped sticky situations by rather too short a teather, shown my vulnerability. But the overall experience was not just unforgettable, it was the happiest 5 months of my life. I wanted to write this blog to help and inform other young gappers. I hope this makes it clear. There is nothing more valuable that you can do for yourself than throw yourself out there into the unknown. You learn more than at any school, university or college, and you learn it now while you can still deal with the odd cold shower and sleep on a bus floor if necessary. Has it changed me? Well, I am certainly not as pale now, and I am pretty confident tackling the washing machine, some of that naivity may have taken a well needed battering, and the thirst to see the world is grown threefold, but essencially I am exactly the same, just loaded with stories.

I am itching to get home now; for the soft bellowing hills of wiltshire, for fires, for my family and my puppy Archie, for peanut butter and decent veggie food and first and formost, the great photo review. But even if now I ache for home, in a couple of months when I am sat at a desk with an essay title on South American literature staring blankly up at me and rain running drunk down the windows, I have one million and one imagines of this incredible continent to make me smile right through to old age…