“… hand me Lucille.” I reached back and took the affectionately named machete from Aaron as he steered our canoe towards the thick jungle wall of the riverbank. “I’ll bring us in slowly” he said. I crouched up front armed with Lucille, ready to cut an entrance into the dark green tangle. I didn’t like this part of our daily routine, all kinds of things hid in the overhanging vegetation. With a thrust of his paddle Aaron sent me face first into the creepers; I looked behind to see him laughing

“Do not worry, it is very easy. You aim in direction of polar bear and just shoot in head or chest, and bear will go away or be dead”, laughs the Inuit hunter, while pushing a gun into our hands. He just dropped us at the head of the remote Tasiilaq Fjord. “See you in three weeks,” we cry, but the engine of his boat drowns the farewell. We’re 160 nautical miles from the nearest form of civilization. The euphoria is great: pep talk and victory songs are chased by the wind into the fjord. The 4

We were supposed to have left on a Thursday, but with the prospect of extended flooding due to heavy rainfall, we chose to wait out the weather. Then came Friday 22 July and the incomprehensible events: The bombing of the government quarter in Oslo and the subsequent massacre of young on Utøya. One youth after another, robbed of their lives and their future. It was too much. In the end, we had to turn off the TV and shut down the computer. We could not fathom w

Every step takes away the very last piece of my strength. To move a leg I need to scream and squeeze all that is left in me. Nobody is listening anyway. The screams die quickly in the marshes. Our bodies sink deeper into a mixture of brown water, moss, and rotten grass. A couple of vultures circle above us on the last thermals of the day. We are far south and summer days are long at these latitudes, but the night is coming and I know that we will be stuck in these marshes. My GPS says it is o

The ferry departed leaving us alone at the roadside. Puffed up clouds filled the sky and a cold breeze set an ominous tone for the beginning of our journey. Reluctantly we stripped to our underwear, clambered over the rocks and fell gracelessly into the sea. The electrifying tingle of cold salt water rippled up my body and lifted my cheeks into a smile. This was the Pacific coast of Chile. Our next taste of seawater would come from the Argentinian Atlantic. We would get there on foot. Towelle

Carpets of bracken dropped sharply away down the steep valley ahead, the foliage heavy and shining in the close Scottish rain. My right foot rolled heavily with every twisted and unseen step through the head-height shrubbery. It’s the result of a broken boot, rotted away from the long mileage, harsh Highlands terrain and the ever-cloying, omnipresent wetness. I had only been travelling for five days across this majestic mountain landscape but already a catalogue of planning mistakes and equi

Let’s get something clear, I’m not very good in the heat, I never have been. It’s probably why even having travelling all over the world I still live in the England where it rains a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I love the sun and it seems to love me. I don’t need to sun bathe and with just a glancing dash of sun my skin turns the colour of a Colombian blend espresso. But in spite of an Italian heritage I’m more at home in -18 on an Austrian ski slope than I am by a pool in +35 degrees temperature

We were in Mongolia when we started to struggle. There are no roads, no fences, no signposts out in the wilds and every time we fell into the valley between two mountains our team would become bogged down in a quagmire of mud; even locals were getting stuck and came to us regularly to use to use our winches. This was Long Way Round, with Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, and I was directing the film-production as we’d traced our circuitous route from London to New York in three and a half mo

An extraordinary mild winter forced Jose to leave the skis behind in some sections, which he instead completed on snowshoes and – on the Russian stage – cycling. Jose shared the initial and final sections of the 6-stage  trip with friends but, most of the time, Jose relied on his loyal canine mate “Lonchas”, an Alaska Malamute which shares most of Jose’s expedition. Seen from Jose’s “southern eyes” perspective, the itinerary, mostly decided while on the go, was a unique way to penetrate into

The Czech guide approaches us with a little hesitation. He seems embarrassed to be asking, but knows how important it is he gets this right. His group’s safety is in his hands. We sit on top of the summit of Obalj in the Bjelašnica massif at 1896m, bathed by the warm sun, as charcoal clouds gather across the valley. Lorenc smiles a welcome and leans over the map, chatting to him in Serbo-Croat. The map is a print from the internet, one of the best places to get detailed maps for hiking in Bo

Some of the other smells that are forever linked to my travels in Morocco are cedar wood, diesel, cumin, mint, Fairy soap (it was the only soap available in the village market), rose water, musk, and donkey manure (not a great association I will admit!). A mental souvenir from that first trip is of sharing an old battered Mercedes Grande Taxi with six other passengers and a twenty kilo hessian sack of fresh mint leaves for five hours of bumpy mountain roads. By the roads end you could have

Driving to a trailhead is an exercise in white-knuckled terror and adrenaline induced laughter as you realise that some Corsicans really don’t understand the concept of speed limits. The average Corsican driver seems to have adopted the ‘Gallic shrug’ attitude to road rules with the Italian male’s ability to smoke, talk on their mobile, grab their crotch and drive on twisty mountain roads, all at the same time. When you get to the trailhead, be aware that the temptation to follow a compass b

One country in particular has almost a surfeit of amazing seashore bound by desert and thorny scrub, and some of the most under-appreciated food outside its own borders and perhaps a few neighbouring countries/states.I’m referring of course to Mexico and unfortunately I’ve heard many people describe the food as one note; hot and windy. However, when you see the huge variety of food available in the local markets and the multitude of ways you can alter the taste of a dish by the simple substi

N69° 05’ 58.3”, W029° 55’ 13.1”

The Mission ‘We are tourists’ I repeated for third time to the man who was eyeing me suspiciously through the dense jungle surrounding a remote village, a few miles from the Sierra Leone – Guinea border. His English was patchy but two questions came clearly through the darkness of the jungle night, ‘What research are you doing? What are you looking for?’ It finally dawned on me that the word tourist meant nothing to him. I attempted to explain that we had come t

The park comprises a variety of landscapes: rolling fells, forest wetlands, ravines and gorges carved by meandering clear streams, mires, and even verdant alpine valleys. For wildlife, brown bears are present but rarely seen; more likely sightings include snow grouse, arctic fox, elk, and the ever-present reindeer. While the park receives 280,000 visitors per year, you can easily find solitude, especially out of season. Time your visit for October and you may wel

I have always wondered what makes us embark on a trip and I believe that the bottom line is the stories. There is nothing as ancient and related to human nature as listening to stories. A story and a wish inevitably lead you to a map. It can be whether a flat and cold map like those from planes’ magazines, or a wrinkled yellowish and colorless one with a mystery X written on the center. A map is a wish waiting to be fulfilled. Once a line has been drawn on the map, everything else is easy: yo

I was asked by a close friend before departure why exactly we were making this journey and the more I thought about a sincere response, the blanker my mind went. Not so good when you are putting your life plus every penny you own behind something. We weren’t doing this to raise money for charitable causes and so didn’t want to place this falsely at the top of our agenda. I love Brazil passionately and have done since I first arrived there nearly 10 years ago. But why exactly? People asked, a

About five hundred metres from the summit I ‘sucked rubber’; I drew on my CamelBac, to discover my SiS isotonic juice was empty, done, finished. We were near Marble Bar, the hottest place in Australia, with the record of one hundred and sixty days at over 100° Fahrenheit (37.8°C). We were running up a mountain called Mount Bruce and there was another team hot on our heels. I had no idea of the temperature, it was just plain hot and we still had to run to the top register then we would be face

It was our fifth day of hiking, and on this particular morning what lay ahead of us was the 11,000 ft Donohue pass. The warnings from the rangers in the Yosemite Wilderness office were dire and we’d already encountered several people who had been turned back by the conditions in the snowiest year in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains in decades. It was a tough year just to complete the 219 mile John Muir trail (JMT), but we weren’t just hiking it, we were also filming and photographing the