The North of Peru is often overlooked but to the fault of many travelers who would be quick write it off as a remote and nearly inaccessible. Its charm comes precisely because of its remoteness and inaccessible it certainly is not. This is a place where dramatic valleys end in a bombardment of waterfalls, where the dark tannin stained waters are said to conceal the vengeful sirens lurking beneath. This is a place where the impossibly thick thick damp forest breaks only once in a while into sweeping vistas of green canopy seeping with ethereal mist.
 
Falling over 2,500 feet, the Gocta Water Fall is amongst the highest in the world, either 7th or 16th depending on who you ask. This dazzling drop of water was well know to the local people but only recently revealed as an international spectacle. Now tourism is taking a foot combined with the nearby ruins, sarcophaguses and awe-inspiring scenery. But beware - According to local legend there is a light haired siren that lives beneath the obscurity in the pool at the base of the fall and is rancorous about her secret being reviled to the world.

El Cajon Azul is a popular swim and cliff jumping spot a few hours up the canyon from El Bolson. This is the Northern edge of Patagonia, it’s lower and incredibly warm. So warm in fact that it finally feels like summer.  Although I had a ton of fun in the mountains of ice and glaciers and summer snow I welcomed the change - such a stark difference after just a 26-hour bus ride.
 
In such heat one just wants to swim all day long, so swim all day long is exactly what we did. This isn’t a wilderness trail, instead it’s a trail dotted with refugios selling artisanal beer and fresh baked bread. It's the sort of place where a group can quickly multiply. Our group of three tripled with new trekker friends, then split, reconvened and split once more as we continued on to our own destinations.

​El Cajon Azul itself is exactly as you’re imagining it now: the water is cool and sweet, the sun is beaming and warm, the cliffs are just high enough to give a thrill as you leap. Find yourself walking down the wooded path to get another beer, just to chill it in the river until it’s ready to be drunk. Newfound friends are in good humor and the sound of laughter echoes off the bare rock. At night the air smells of wood smoke and the trees flicker with the light of the fire as food and beer is past around, two friends strumming the night away on their guitars. Can anything be more summer?
 
I recognize that it’s winter in the North, but having spent the majority of the past year and a half in the Southern Hemisphere this has become my summer now, and wow what a summertime trip it’s been. 

I just can’t get enough ice in my life! And yet another opportunity arose to get out and have some fun. The Perito Moreno Glacier is massive, and I was surprised to hear that it’s largely considered to be stable – that’d be the first I’ve heard of in a world of dramatically melting ice.

Ancient blue, oh ancient blue, snow from a millennia ago. Free my mind from your depths, release me of my obsession with you.

This trip started with a couple hours on the boardwalks, where the glacier calved, cracked and dropped into the lake. The sounds itself was overwhelming, a tiny glimpse into the incredible power that lies within the ice.

From there we took a boat across the water to a terminus of the glacier, strapped on some crampons and trekked off onto the ice. Again, my newest obsession took hold; form and shape, color and hue, crevice and the purest of pure water pools - I was enthralled.

I love the ice and as I continue onward I’ll be putting as much of it as possible into my travel plans.

Patagonia is for trekkers, for climbers, for scenery seekers and for the outdoor enthusiasts of all kinds. Torres del Paine is famous for it’s dramatic landscapes of rock spires, but you got to spend some time under the high pinnacles to appreciate this park for all it has to offer. On that note, this is an excerpt from my journal just after returning from Valle Frances:
 
Pushing through the wind as the sharp gusts bring tears to my eyes.

Pushing past the rain as the frozen drops pound against my chest.
 
This is Patagonia where the weather is foul but the vistas remarkably grand.

Where the hope of a warmer hour manifests itself on the horizon as the outline of a cloud in the endless murk of grey.
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Where  the sun often penetrates the clouds to shine upon us, everything glistening with a magical sheen.

But true to the form of Patagonia these moments don’t linger but instead surrender once more to the biting wind and the whipping rain.
 
Even with all the wind, rain, sleet, snow and overall dreary wetness my spirits remain high and trekking is certainly still, as always, on the agenda.

​South Georgia was an unexpected highlight for me, and it is now hard for me to consider what this trip would have been like without our time here. I came on this trip to Antarctica specifically drawn to the dramatic landscapes of ice, but what I found here was a rich landscape of wildlife, historical sites of our past, and ecological recovery success story, and indeed some glaciers too.

Let me set the scene: after sailing two full days through rough seas and fog the seas settle and the fog lifts just a little. We are called on deck from where we get an outlined glimpse, a sort of reverse silhouette of Shag Rocks though the gloom marking our approach to the South Georgia and the Islets that surround her craggy shores.
 
In the days that followed our luck held as the fog often lifted just when we needed it to. We made landings at Prion Island, Salisbury Plain, Gytviken, Gold Harbor and those were just some of the highlights...

Words cannot describe it and my vocabulary fails me…  Otherworldly, incredible, indescribable, profound: are words that hardly even apply. Through the foggy mists that envelop her shores, glaciers rise up to staggering heights and the icebergs dip and sway in their leviathan dance towards the open sea. Her cliffs protrude of ice and rocks looming over the ship. ‘Here thar be monsters,’ the maps once read, but now the giant beast that traipse these waters are friendly and often come out to play.
 
Nothing can compare… not mountains nor glaciers, not cathedrals nor twisted sky-scrapping steel. What makes Antarctica such an heart wrenching emotional place is embedded within. It’s the combination of rock and peak, snow and ice, history and legend, myth and magic that make this place a marvel of the world, a fading spectacle, that only we few may ever enjoy.

​Indeed neither words nor photographs can describe this dreamscape; so grand, so magnificent, so seemingly invincible through my feeble eyes. Maybe only in the keenest of poetry or loveliest of songs can these notions of greatness be portrayed.
 
Ernest Shackleton said, “What the ice gets, the ice keeps,” talking about his ship and others that are caught within and doomed to sink under the tremendous crushing force of the Weddell Sea’s ice. But I wonder if such a man was being poetic in such a time of dire uncertainty; for even after the ensuing disaster he knew he had to come back. As for me, the Ice has got my imagination captivated and I know my thoughts, my dreams and my delusions will remain here, kept within the ice for a long, long time to come. To Antarctica! The southern most continent you stolen my intrigue. ​