My Journey through Latin America

When I was a student at London University, my best friend, Tim was the son of the British Consul in Santiago. Tim spoke excellent Spanish. This fascinated me. Latin America was so far away and for a village boy from Hampshire, so exotic.

We made a plan that after we graduated we would spend a year travelling from Alaska to Cape Horn, hitchhiking. As Tim's Spanish was good, I concentrated on learning Portuguese. In the end Tim got cold feet or maybe he just had better things to do. He went to do research in Ethiopia, became one of the world's leading experts on the history of that country, and then died tragically young. I gave up on the idea. I met a girl and we went to live in Spain, where we had a little whitewashed house in a gypsy barrio and no money.

Well, last year, I decided to do the Latin American part of the trip (I'd seen quite a bit of Canada and the USA already.) I travelled overland, mostly using local buses, through twenty countries, from Mexico to Chile, in six months, and many times I felt that my best friend Tim was with me, and that I was doing it for both of us.

I wonder if you would like me to tell you the story of my journey?