From El Chaltén, Argentina
It's a long drive from Punta Arenas in Chile, over the border and along long tracts of unsurfaced remoteness in the wilds of Patagonia.

But the final hour was utterly delightful - smooth, straight, empty roads, sometimes pointing right at our target. Mount Fitz Roy is the tallest, most obvious peak, Cerro Torre the more slender tower to the left of the road. And you can’t tell from the photo, but it’s blowing an absolute gale out there.

From El Chaltén, Argentina
Rushing rivers, tall waterfalls, thick woodland, alpine meadows and chiseled granite mountains, half covered in snow and glaciers. This was the Patagonia I'd come for. In the end, the seven-mile hike to Laguna Torre took us nearly five hours, one longer than expected - mainly due to my inability to stop taking photos.

Even on the way back I caught myself aiming the camera towards the same bit of Patagonia that I'd captured on the way out.

From Ruta 40, Argentina
My first ever lesson on tea-drinking etiquette? In a tent buffeted by fierce winds in the heart of Patagonia. My teachers - a pair of mountain guides.

Maté is a shared ritual that has some opaque rules, but our guides happily inducted us in the art of drinking maté like a local. Maybe it was the warmth of the liquid after a long day of walking, oe the sense of companionship, but it was comforting to find this in such a wild and unfamiliar place.

From El Chaltén, Argentina
We finished up our picnic and began the long hike back to a well earned beef steak. As I headed up the path, I heared a sharp crackle, a mini explosion and a loud splash. I turned to see the last vestiges of the small ‘iceberg’ that stood in the lagoon disappearing below the icy surface.

It’s a timely reminder that Patagonia is a living wilderness, where even the most seemingly permanent fixtures come and go, freeze and melt, advance and retreat.

From El Chaltén, Argentina

20 years ago, Chaltén was a one-street village. No hotel, just hostals for climbers. The road to Calafate was unpaved. To buy bread, I had to walk down the street and shout ‘pan’. It rained, properly rained, so I spent the time holed up in the only café, playing cards and making friends.

Chaltén is bigger now, with 5-star hotels, a bus station and a shiny visitor centre. But it retains its character. And the café is still there!

From El Chaltén, Argentina
Everything you need to know about the remoteness of El Chaltén can be summed up by its cash machine. Yes, just the one. We rather naively disregarded the warning given to us in the guide book that this solitary machine is filled up just once a week and runs out not long after.

After three fruitless attempts to withdraw some Pesos, the penny had dropped. Even if the notes hadn’t.

From El Calafate, Argentina
They rarely put these in the brochure or eulogise about them in guide books, but boy do they had an extra layer of drama and beauty to the already epic Patagonian landscape.

Whipped into weird and wonderful shapes by the famously fierce Patagonian wind, they hang majestically, often ominously in the sky, embodying the enormity and rawness of this special region.

From El Calafate, Argentina
Watching the glacier is like experiencing a thunderstorm. But instead of a great bolt of lightning, followed by furious thunder, the rumble comes first. The difficult thing is swivelling the camera to capture the great chunks of calving ice before it all disappears into the lake.

In the end I had to do something I seldom do; take my finger off the shutter and just watch. That’s about the best compliment I can pay the glacier.