We splashed out on a flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia since the bus option takes something like 60 hours. This resulted in the first (and hopefully last*) theft of the trip with Gerard's binoculars being spirited away at some point during the journey. However, after speaking to other travellers we met who'd taken to the skies in South America, we realised binoculars were a small price to pay for a flight that left on time (one couple we met were delayed 30 hours) and successfully deposited our luggage at the other end (apparently not a common occurrence).

We were very excited to arrive at the bottom of the world and quite enjoyed the contrast of moving from 38 degrees to 8 - especially since we were getting closer to Christmas, much more festive when it's cold! We were also getting close to the longest day of the year and enjoying the amount of stuff you can get done in a day when it's light until 11.30pm. Our first port of call was to catch up with one of Gerard's colleagues who coincidentally happened to be in Ushuaia at the same time as us. We agreed to meet in the Irish pub thinking it was as good a landmark as any but discovered when Pierre turned up about 30 minutes late that there are actually two - to put this in context, there are about 10 bars in total in Ushuaia. The next day we all got up bright and early (some of us feeling a bit delicate) and went on a boat trip to see the sea lions and - less impressive - a lighthouse whose claim to fame (we later found out) is that it's often confused with a different lighthouse that was mentioned in a Jules Verne novel. In the afternoon Gerard and I left Pierre to get his flight and went off to hike up to the glacier above the town. It was rainy and miserable and we were literally in a cloud part of the way but the view was amazing and it was all worthwhile just to be able to say we were at the top of the bottom of the world! Next day we did a hike in the Tierra del Fuego national park and Gerard had king crab for dinner, thereby checking off the last 2 main attractions of Ushuaia.

Our next stop was Chile and the W trek (so-called because it's shaped like a W). We'd heard that the Chileans are very strict on not allowing food across the border so had restricted ourselves to bringing a sandwich each for the 12 hour journey. The crossing was earlier than expected, about 3 hours in, so we wolfed down what we could so soon after waking up and the rest we ditched just before leaving Argentina. The border check was all very thorough and a sniffer dog even came through the bus so we were glad we'd been pre-warned. Annoyingly we later found out (when we saw people tucking into bread, cheese, croissants, dried fruit...) that apparently as long as you tick the box on the immigration form that says "yes, I have contraband", anything goes. We met a friendly American guy en route so ended up going for dinner with him at a restaurant in Puerto Natales where I shared the best part of half a lamb with him and Gerard had the most enormous sirloin I've ever seen - I don't think he's ever looked so happy, move over wedding day!

Next day we went to get ourselves kitted out with some poles and rainproof trousers, in the process of which Gerard ended up in a hilarious conversation about the Dutch with the guy in the rental shop. After a few minutes of trying to decipher his thick Chilean accent, we realised he was saying "god made the world but Hollanders made Holland" - brilliant. Also on our to do list was accommodation. For those who haven't heard of it, the W trek is an 80-odd kilometre walk in the Torres del Paine national park which you do over 4 days. That means you also spend 4 nights in the park and there are conveniently placed "refugios" (basically hostels in the mountains) if you don't want to camp. I did not want to camp. This trek was high on the list of things I wanted to do on the trip so I'd done a fair bit of research before we left the UK and came across a lot of stories about the changeable (often wet) weather, strong winds and low temperatures at night. Unfortunately I'd come across as many stories about the requirement to book months in advance if you want to have a chance at a bed in a refugio - not so easy if you don't know what date you're likely to arrive. So we accepted camping as a less desirable possibility if that was the only way we could do the trek. Did I mention we planned to do it over Christmas, one of the busiest times of the year?

Luck was with us that day and somehow we managed to book 3 of the 4 nights in refugios and 1 in a "dome", which is basically a glorified tent but at least with proper beds and about 4 duvets each - and we didn't have to carry the thing around with us for 4 days. We did the trek east to west so our first day took us up to see the Torres that the park is named for. Our amazing luck continued because we had glorious weather - the next day apparently the trail was closed because of heavy snowfall overnight which must have been devastating for all the people who'd come all this way to see them. The scenery was incredible all the way up, so much so in fact that we almost missed the payload - we had hiked 4 hours and reached a spot where people were sitting and enjoying a beautiful view of the Torres behind some rocks. Assuming we'd reached our destination, we joined them and were happily tucking into our sandwiches when some people walked past and started raving about the view 5 minutes further down the trail. Everyone around us had seemingly made the same mistake because we all started packing up what was left of our lunches and made a beeline for the end point. Suddenly there was a lake, we hadn't even realised it was there! It would have been so painful to hear later that we'd hiked 8 hours and missed the best bit by 5 minutes!

I'll resist recounting the rest of the trek in any great detail, suffice to say the scenery was amazing, we got pretty wet, and we felt more than a little bit smug to be doing so much exercise over Christmas instead of stuffing our faces with turkey sandwiches and chocolate. Definitely a highlight of the trip so far.

* At time of writing, Gerard was still in possession of his woolly hat and iPod, both of which have subsequently gone missing. Some might question whether Gerard has been unfortunate enough to be the victim of crime 3 times or whether perhaps he might have misplaced one or two of these items...