Well after a year of procrastination I am finally about to depart England's slightly beige shores and go somewhere that is a bit more exciting. Somewhere without All Bar One, Channel Five, the Daily Mail and Homebase. Somewhere where Jeremy Kyle is not. Sadly though, I fear that even the most remote of Jupiter's 63 moons (fact - check wikipedia) will not be quite distant enough to evade tidings of the latest evictee from the Big Brother house. Still - it should be a bit warmer and the wildly pointless tabloid football transfer speculation won't be quite as relentless and dispiriting.

The plan - arrive in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 26th, then head north through South America, taking in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Then, after pawning my soul to pay off corrupt ex-militia policemen in Bogota, I will somehow make it to the coast of Brazil - probably skipping the tiny hurdle of the Amazon rainforest - and back to Argentina. I have learnt lots of Spanish, and now know how to appease Argentinian cabbies by saying lots of cruel (but almost certainly true) things about Margaret Thatcher. From Chile I'll be flying to New Zealand (probably about April) for a few weeks, then a dash of Western Australia. Then onwards to Bali, Thailand, and hopefully Laos and Cambodia. I'll be trudging miserably through Heathrow Terminal 4's passport control come late August 2009, probably stuck behind an oversized family from Wigan with five shrieking toddlers who I have just had to sit next to on the plane back from Bangkok for 12 hours. It's going to be a riot.

I don't expect to find myself (I'm here), I absolutely will not turn into anything resembling a hippy, and I'll try hard not to be flippant about the places I have been in that listless, jaded tone that some travellers always talk in. i.e. 'Oh yeah we did Vietnam for a couple of weeks, we saw a TK Maxx there. It was such a disappointment'. Can't promise that last one though.

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