Yikes! The bags are packed, the camera’s charged and I have just had what can only be described as the “last supper”, albeit at only 2 pm. My mother is moping around with a forlorn look on her face and my father is checking and rechecking the baggage allowance. My brother meanwhile, wears a sagging “Evita” t-shirt from this year’s school play and dances to and fro to the tune of “What’s up, Buenos Aires?” I am finally off.

I began planning this trip early in January 2003 (age 14) and have continued ever since to dream, scheme and otherwise mull over the journey I want never to forget. Having lived in Buenos Aires as a young child I have strong memories of what South America meant to me and have told and retold the tales of my life there to any indulgent ear that comes my way. But these are only hip-high memories, seen through the eyes of a 7 year old. This time I want to go considerably further.

I will be starting my travels in Buenos Aires – city of tango, throbbing street music and, to many, the cosmopolitan heart of South America. After rediscovering my roots, or shredding what’s left of them on a whistle-stop tour of the city, I head on to Córdoba, Argentina’s second city. Smaller than Buenos Aires and less manic, Córdoba promises to show me a different side to this enormous country. It is reputed to have a more “studenty” feel to it with 7, yes 7, universities, and has had the rather hefty title of “South American city of culture” since 2006. Perhaps against my better judgement, I have opted to do a journalism placement at a fashionable magazine in this funked-up Argentine city. Thus I have one boy’s backpack (borrowed off a 6ft-something cousin) in which to fit a couture wardrobe, as well as everything else for the trips to follow. I sense an “Ugly Betty” scenario in the making here...

Anyway, putting that minor hitch behind me, I am on to Bolivia where I will be bussing my way across the casual ambling roads from Santa Cruz (Bolivia’s wealthier, more European city) to La Paz and the famous Lake Titicaca. From there it is on to Peru, up to Machu Picchu, into the jungle, back out of the jungle, and all along the lengthy, trundling route to Trujillo in northern Peru. And then a pause for breath. Only a short one mind, because immediately after I begin working in a Peruvian school for children from difficult, often destitute backgrounds. For a girl from a nice school in Wiltshire, the reality of this looks set to hit hard, but it’s to learn these lessons that us kids set out across the world and they are lessons I am in dire need of learning. So 1 month of serious reality check and I head off the Quito in Ecuador to begin my journey home to Wiltshire.

Ok, so it’s a lot to take in in one reading like that. But I intend to keep writing this blog along every step of the way – as a memory for myself, as a story of a little Wiltshire girl taking her first big gulp of the world and for any other intrepid young people anxiously forging their gap year plans. ¡¡Hasta pronto!!