I want to start with a question for you today: Why do you go on holiday?

Category A

To escape your job for a week or two?

To escape your current life for a longer period?

To take a break from your normal routine and worries?

Category B

To do a certain thing you've always wanted to do?

To go to a certain place or country you've always wanted to visit?

To return to a place (that's not your home) that you like, love or calls you?

Your answer may be a bit of both, but probably leans more towards one category.

I'll come back to this later.

There's a writer called Lawrence Yeo who recently argued that travel is no cure for the mind. His central point is that an unsettled mind will follow you wherever you go, and that true contentment comes from gratitude and curiosity within your everyday life at home rather than chasing novelty in new places.

It's a great piece and there's some real truth in it.

It also poked me a little...

A challenge to my identity which certainly when I was younger prided itself on travel.

But I think he undersells something.

Let's see.

2014 — Escaping From

The last time I touched down in Patagonia I was the ripe old age of 23.

I was very much in category A.

I'd hit the eject button on a brutal start to post-graduation life. Fretting my days and nights away in an American law firm, commuting in and out of the city of London. In hindsight I had been bullied by a trainee who took out their anxiety on me and other fresh recruits. I didn't have the capacity to handle it back then.

So I gave up a Lavender Hill room with some of my best school friends and took a then-girlfriend on a three month trip starting and finishing in Rio de Janeiro.

It was in all manners of the word an escape.

After six weeks backpacking through Brazil, Northern Argentina and Buenos Aires, she decided it wasn't for her and booked an early flight home. I chose to stay. After a few days moping and revelling in the lovely capital I booked a flight south. To the southernmost city in the world. Ushuaia.
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A wonderful array of experiences followed including a visit to the remarkable Perito Moreno Glacier.

A girl I met on my final evening in Rio almost persuaded me to cancel my flight and stay on longer...

But no, I returned and only a few months later I broke up with my ex and soon found myself going back inside with the suit & tie life, joining finance firm Hargreaves Lansdown in Bristol.

Commence squiggly ‘career’, multiple pivots and a few more international escapes including a wonderful three month adventure in Costa Rica.

Stories for another time.

Yeo was right about that version of me though.

I was running from something, and that hadn't changed when I got home.

2026 — Escaping To

April this year I stepped back onto Patagonian soil.

Same place, different person?

Twelve years ago I had three months in South America.

This time, just over two weeks and plenty of ground to cover:

Bristol → Buenos Aires → El Chaltén → El Calafate → Torres del Paine → Puerto Natales → Santiago → Home

This wasn't just a jolly (holiday) though. It was a work trip for Swoop Patagonia. Much to my fianceé Liv's dismay that it could not in any way be called 'work'.

A huge thank you to Haz, David and co for lining it all up. The trip was designed as a means to enhance my understanding of our core Patagonia product (Torres del Paine and Los Glaciares) + the opportunity to produce some extra inspirational content for people looking to travel to the region. 1,440 items on my iCloud from the trip should help with that!

At Swoop we talk a lot about transformational experiences, and that word was rolling around my mind as I arrived in the trekker town of El Chaltén.

So I put it to Francisco my incredible guide. Was a transformational experience really possible in just two weeks?

His reply was almost instant.

"I think it only takes one day. One hike. If you're open to it."

He was right.

An epic holiday, recce, trip (whatever you want to call it) ensued.

Highlights

• 30km hiking day, reaching Laguna de Los Tres in the snow, coming back to a sauna and delicious steak
• Sharing mate (the local coffee alternative) on the mountainside with Francisco, discussing the difference between your profession and vocation and ideally how to align the two
• Reunited with my colleague and travel buddy Paul in El Calafate for a corker of a day at Perito Moreno Glacier
• Jaw-dropping views, proper fresh air and extraordinary winds!
• Living out my Yellowstone fantasy and becoming a baqueanos for the afternoon at Hotel Las Torres​
• Three cold water plunges with Swoop partners in lakes Viedma, Argentino and Toro 🥶
• One-night-only jacuzzi, fine Chilean wine/lager and luxury yurt accommodation at Patagonia Camp with another colleague/travel buddy Lain

See my Top 30 photos on our company Flickr here 📸

Lowlights

• My Dad had to cancel his trip in the run up (we were meant to be doing some bits together) leading to a redesigned, shorter itinerary
• I was a bit rusty on the travel front. Packing for both hot and cold weather I chose a big travel backpack over a suitcase. Paul turned up looking like the Lonely Planet pro he is with a small wheely suitcase and pack. My Tout’s carrier bag made me look like I was on a ‘school trip’
• The caprese salad in Buenos Aires
• Getting absolutely soaked in the Ascencio Valley before the sun was even up - although it turned into a glorious hike on the way home
• Six hours waiting in Natales airport before the flight was cancelled given I'd already filmed my triumphant "leaving Patagonia" selfie video
• Fourteen hours home sat next to the toilet and a baby on the return flight. That'll teach me for having too much of a good time and forgetting to check in early
• Lukewarm English breakfast tea throughout 🙃

That's travel. The lowlights can be interesting stories anyway, right?

Category B

Some of my travel experiences when younger carried a lot of weight.

They seemed like giant undertakings in my mind.

This one just felt lighter.

More chilled.

But not in a bad way at all.

It was shorter, of course, and WhatsApp makes contact with home pretty easy now. I watched episodes of Lost on my Mac. Checked in with BBC Sport. Tended to the odd work email. A blending of work and play, which reminded me of something Alan Watts said about getting paid to do what you love not feeling like work at all.

But the thing I came back to on my final hike with Francisco was simpler than any of that.

I like my life back home.

A settled relationship. Football, swimming and other hobbies. Day to day work I enjoy. A storytelling project I'm pursuing on the side (the monkeys!)

There's not the melodrama.

No burning desire to escape it all.

Philosopher Erich Fromm drew a distinction between escaping from something and escaping to something.

As mentioned, in 2014, I was firmly the former.

This time I was closer to the latter, and I think it changes your whole experience.

Which brings me back to Yeo. He's right that travel won't fix an unsettled mind. But I don't think that's the whole story.

There's still something special about being out there in wild, unfamiliar places that offers something to you that daily life simply can't.

"Looking at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility" as Rolf Potts says in Vagabonding.

Experiences aren't currency in your bank account, yet they can be as (if not more) powerful.

They can last longer too.

Memories that mingle with your present day imagination...

Delayed Gratification

I may have left a few things unfinished on this trip too.

I left the final section of the famous Base of the Towers trek incomplete. It was pretty cloudy that day and I had the chance to do a horse ride in the afternoon if I turned back and hiked alone home.

There were offers from a few people out there “You must come back and do X”.

I also sipped the famous Calafate Sour, which supposedly means you will come back.

Hopefully sooner than twelve years this time!

Maybe I'll take Liv and put her to work on the content.

But I'm easy. I'm really grateful to Swoop for giving me the chance to go back. Experiencing things with a little more luxury. And as Chino the sloth suggests: "Hang Comfy".

Plus there are other places I want to escape to first...

Adios for now,​
​Jim

P.S. I found an old journal entry from the 2014 trip and it was where I had the insight on TYOJ - Trust your own judgment - a central motif in the Monkey State Trilogy. So a nice synergy to bring it all full circle.