While I was working in a children’s home in Bolivia, stumbling my way through productive communication, I thought I had nailed it when it came to Halloween. Each child was to create their costume – within the predictable confines of plastic bags and coloured paper. Hence, as each of the girls skipped along on their way to the activities session, asking what we were doing that day, I confidently informed them that they were making costumes to dress up as witches for Halloween.

Being consistent with my rebel legacy I shall begin this column of Argentine tourism upside-down. My first recommendation will be Tierra del Fuego at Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world. After a three hour flight direct from Buenos Aires you arrive in Ushuaia. The city was first inhabited by the Yamanas tribe, followed […]

In the summer of 2003 I spent two months teaching English in an Andean village in Ecuador. The organisation I worked with, Voluntarios de Occidente, was expanding and as a result I was the first ever gringa to live in the village. For most of the locals, the children especially, I was the first foreigner they had ever seen.

El Salvador has a reputation for being really rather mean. Its citizens live in a limbo, trapped in between the US invasion of capitalism and horrific poverty. And it’s famous for being big on gun crime. Not the type of place you want to go to by mistake. But, accidentally, I did. Thinking I was going to Brazil’s version – Salvador de Bahia – I looked at the in-flight magazine’s map. It had no lines going to Brazil.