NEW ZEALAND: Waitopo

I'M AT: Kate's place in Te Puke. Blimey, they've done some work. And Macka owns an orchard, and is building another house.

So, Rotorua and Taupo are thermal areas. Meaning, big lumps of mud splash and steam and stink. Some houses are warmed by sticking a pipe into the ground and extracting hot water. This is illegal.

NEW ZEALAND: Unbelievable luck at Tongariro

I'M AT: The Park Hostel, National Park. Spa, hotel-like rooms, log fires, catering-standard kitchen, big TV showing the Ashes.

After two weeks of constant rain and freezing temperatures at Tongariro National Park, we were prepared for the worst, and the news arrived just as the bus pulled into town. Grey skies, mist, hail. The Crossing was off.

Firstly, a bit of background. The Tongariro Crossing is the most popular one-day hike in New Zealand. It traverses the high slopes of two volcanoes, Ruapehu and Tongariro, and on a clear day you can see for many miles, across the North Island's High Plateau.

It's also pretty pointless, even a little dangerous, to attempt during the wet. So, having decided to pitch up here for three days in the hope of seeing clear weather, my heart sank, and for the first day I did nothing more than drink beer, watch the cricket, go to the pub, watch more cricket, and give a tiny kiss to a hairy, toothless lady simply because she wouldn't leave me alone. I also managed to slap a bearded bloke round both cheeks on leaving.

So it was with a Speights-inspired hangover that I woke to sunshine, and blue skies, and a knock from the hostel guy - the Crossing was ON. This doubtless pissed off the rest of the bus crew, who had only one chance to do it, and were leaving within the hour.

So, up a trudge, quite steep and puffless, to the Red Crater, a deep-hued splash of crimson. The Crossing goes through a massive variety of landscapes, and the walk the ridge is pretty tough - up scree and rocks, unceasingly up. But when you're there you're almost level with the clouds in the far distance, and the light wind blows dust into spectral shapes that jig across the floor.

Raupehu is apparently famous as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings, but I haven't seen the film. So to me it was just a stunning mound of black. Around this point in the walk, the ridge crumbles downwards towards three Emerald Lakes, and the earth all around belches with sulphur. I like descending on this kind of terrain, so I bolted down it like I was on crack.

The walk kind of pans out from here, or levels out, at least. It takes you round the corner of the volcano, which is shrubby, the path descends very gradually so you can wince at the beauty of Lake Taupo before you, and just shake your head, and take another picture. After a stop for water and chorizo at one of the DOC huts, we carried on down, through forest wet with moss, until we reached the end, about six hours after the start. The thermals sat, thankfully unused, in my muleta.

It was here that I decided that New Zealand must be so gushing with wealth that no-one can be bothered to drive a small ice cream van to the end of the trail and just coin it, big time. Sun plus exhausted but monied walkers plus thirst equals a killing. But no jingles were heard. In Bolivia, there'd be storms of women in black hats pushing aguaitas and empanadas at you as far as the eye could focus.

But anyway. With socks off, in shade from the blaze, we sat down and chuckled at our luck, me, Christian, der Rammstein and Dortmund fan, and Hazel, a game old bird from Blighty. The only downer was that I lost my camera a few days later, and with it all the photos of a great day. But it's not a big price to pay for good weather, and it was absolutely bucketing it down the next day.

CHILE: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

I'M AT: Casa Roja, Santiago de Chile. Been here before, for Peter's wedding. Can't remember what I wrote about it then. But it's a converted old house, quite beautiful, buzzy place, big dorms, squeaky bunks.

And so, after travelling in South America for five months, my time here's up. What better way to bow out than with thousands of rioting Chilenos?

Chile is a very divided country. On the one hand you have the right-wing, monied, educated elite, a fair chunk of the population. And on the other, the majority, staunch left-wingers, supporters of the current President, Michelle Bachelet. Bachelet was elected fairly recently and is a very iconic figure for the left. She was held captive and tortured under Pinochet's dictatorship. There can be no ambivalence about Pinochet in Chile.

The General (R) - as referred to in the papers - had been ill for some time. Last weekend, he had a heart attack. And today, at 2.15pm, he died. As an outrageous coincidence, it's the International Day of Human Rights.

The first signs that something big had happened were the car horns. Then, men carrying flags. Then shouting. Then an almighty gathering of people around Plaza Italia, which we stumbled across in a heated haze. Red flags, Bachelet flags, Chile flags. Then police helicopters overhead, at which the crowd swore and raged and tore their lungs.

And amongst all this I had to leave to get my plane. The airport bus took me and the driver - the bus was bloody empty - down the main drag, the Alameda, which was also empty. I saw a large green armoured lorry directing its water cannon at a big group of folk, and then, too late, saw the thick white cloud of gas, and noticed the bus windows were open, and into the swirl we went, the bus, the driver and me. And let me tell you, even a little tear gas is not pleasant. It gets into your throat, and burns, and chokes, and it makes your eyes stream.

Sweet chaos, I will miss you.

CHILE: The only gringo in town

I'M AT: An unknown place with unknown name, Cartagena, Pacific Coast, Chile. It's musty and rubbish really, but it's not fair to judge so soon - rice and TWO fried eggs for breakfast tomorrow morning.

Well, so, it's the second time I've watched Colo Colo in a bar, and the second time they've scored four goals. Coincidence?

Three of Puerto Montt's side were shown the tarjeta roja, and they were hacking like they wanted it called off. It wasn't, and they went out of the competition. Their stadium looked, from the TV, much like Bromley Town's.

Anyway. I arrived in Cartagena on a hot bus, with fat empanadas in my belly. And it's pretty much like the guy in the Valparaíso hostel said it would be: deserted, a bit down on its luck, devoid of travellers. But he also said it's something that many don't see, and it contains something of the soul of Chile.

I checked into the place above - coercion - and decided to leave immediately, but after a couple of hours on the beach - on stretching out, a heavily pregnant dog stood and stared at me, subdued by a corner of pasty - I decided it wasn't so bad. Playa Larga is a huge stretch of sand that the waves relentlessly torment. The red flags were out. Walking on the promenade to the other beach saw me watching local kids dodge a spray of water as waves splattered against the rocks below, a sheet spray twenty foot high. And then round to Playa Chica, a neat, empty cove where beautiful oval waves lap calmly at the beach. The power of the Pacific is immense.

After the sun went down, the Heinken came out, and a guy in the bar asked me after the match who I supported, Colo Colo or Montt? The look on my face said Montt, he told me. I told him, Sir, I am from London, I support Crystal Palace - and with a raised fist, and a 'ciao amigos', the only gringo in town was gone.

CHILE: Montt Blank

I'M AT: Hospedaje Leticia, $5, a family house with cardboard extensions out the back and upstairs. The room was mouldy and had three beds, two of which were lumpy. Someone had left a dirty winter jacket hanging up, stained with dry paint, and there was a watercolour of the Virgin Mary on the wall. It felt lived-in.

Puerto Montt is the departure point for ferries South - to the island of Chiloé, and to deepest Patagonia. I'd originally intended to get the ferry to Chiloé, which is supposed to be beautiful, unspoilt and - very rare for Chile - still populated by indigenous folk, or at least semi-indigenous.

But I decided by the time I got here that I'd had enough of the lake district. So, as it turned out, flying to Puerto Montt from Ushuaia was fairly pointless, albeit it took me to within shooting distance of Santiago. It turned out to be all the more disheartening because there's absolutely fuck-all to do here.

A short wander up the polluted shoreline, past begging women and geezers squeezing lager from brown bottles, in dewy grass, took me to Angelmó, which I'd read was a quaint fishing village. You could get a boat to a nearby island and have a picnic. Fair enough. I had ten hours to kill. But Angelmó turned out to be one short road, with really tacky crap being sold on one side, and a row of shady discos/strip joints on the other. And this was Sunday; even the bedraggled supermarket was shut. The only twitch of light was the market, fresh with slaughter, where successive narled women opened up their cauldrons, steaming with fish and pink sausage, asking me if I wanted to comer. I really, really didn't.

I took my time walking back and passed the rest of the day doing drab things in a drab town and drank a drab beer on the bus - before the conductor told me that I couldn't drink my drab beer on his bus.

This, at the very least, has the distinction of being the first time anywhere, in any of the countries I've been to in the last five months, that someone's stopped me drinking. I feared not a night in a Chilean cell, but a day back in bloody Montt.

PATAGONIA: The Smoking One

I'M AT: Albergue Patagonia, El Chaltén, Argentina. A cosy and really friendly gaff in the newest town in Argentina. Turned out to be veeeery cosy; one of the French blokes in the tight dorm snored louder than Bud.

Coming here was a major reason for coming to Patagonia. And it turned out to be worth every cramped hour on the bus.

The Fitz Roy range of the Andes is deservedly famous. Cerro Torre and its two close brothers are thin, granite peaks, needling into the sky. And Cerro FitzRoy, AKA El Chaltén, the Smoking One, is a thick butt of rock, snowless and pink. They're two of the most difficult climbs in the world, not for the altitude, but for the profile, which is truly vertical. Anyway, we were just hiking.

The National Park is organised beautifully. On arrival, everyone troops off the bus and gets told about the various hikes on offer, the times and distances involved, and how to conserve the park. From there, you're on your own. So, with map and route, and a bag of empanadas, we mulched off, with Bud wheezing on the slopes. We had just enough time for an 8-hour circuit which would give us views of both Cerro Torre and Cerro FitzRoy.

The ground was covered with fallen branches, scattered by the incredibly fierce winds that rack this side of the Andes. They were dead and grey and white against the brilliant green of the grass. And we stopped amongst them, by a lake, to eat a few of the empanadas, and drink water from the lake, and to cool our feet. And the walk certainly took 8 hours, at quite a pace, and despite it being cloudy and overcast, throwing a scarf of white around the peaks, it was truly breathtaking to be amongst vast beauty. We ate well that night.

And, the next day, on pulling out of El Chalten at 6.30 in the morning, we turned our heads in the sunlight to be gently shown the incredible views of the peaks that we'd missed the day before, pink and jutting and glowing. Awesome.

PATAGONIA: Tales of tails of whales of Wales

I'M AT: Hostel Choiques, Puerto Madryn. Cheap, bit scraggy, Claudio the jefe is a brilliant geezer, forced me to speak castellano while we all played cards over a beer. The place was full of 18-year-old students, full of pride at their home town, Santa Cruz, which was to me just a name on a motorway sign when we headed South.

So, we're in Patagonia. It deserves its own section, I feel, because it's markedly different in culture, climate and landscape to the rest of Argentina.

For a start, the East coast is almost entirely featureless. Low bushes squat, in their millions, over a gravelly soil, for thousands of miles. We saw the ocassional weatherworn sheep. That was about it, for twenty hours, at 90kph.

Secondly, the recent history and thus ancestry of the current residents is quite different. The place was settled by the religious and the brave. Madryn itself was settled in the 1860s by a group of Welshmen, who sought solace from England's tyranny and a place in which to develop their beliefs. After establishing the port, they moved pretty quickly to the valleys of the Chubut River. They founded the cities of Gaiman, and Trelew, and Rawson, which remain pretty Welsh today, even if your man on the omnibus, Lewis Jones, speaks only castellano. You can go for a Welsh high tea in Trelew. We didn't.

And thirdly, Patagonia is different because it's a lot, lot more touristy than the rest of the country. Initially divided by Northern Europeans into massive sheep ranches, much of the place is now state-owned, and the population live from the tourist pocket. This is no bad thing, but it means that national culture is a bit thin on the ground here, and you could easily be in Europe, or North America.

Anyway. Puerto Madryn is visited because of its proximity to Peninsula Valdes, an area of land jutting into the cold Atlantic, blessed with some of the best coastal wildlife in the world - seals, sealions, penguins, Commerson's dolphins, killer whales, and the highlight of our visit, the Southern Right Whale. The elephant seals that feed and fight and fuck here do so in complete ignorance to the fact that they are the only ones in the world to do so. Mostly, they sit around, entombed in a blubbery landscape.

And so we saw the penguins topple and clown their way to the sea, and sit on hatching eggs, and it was nice and all. And then we went on a boat trip out to the dolphins, which are coloured just like killer whales, but much smaller, they zip and twing through the waters. Really very fast, and pretty elusive. I didn't think the boat was going fast enough to amuse them.

The Southern Right Whales, however, were just - spectacular. We paid a bit more to go out on a semi-rigid boat, which meant there were only 14 of us in the launch, and we could chop across the water much more quickly than the bigger craft. As a result, we made it right into the heart of a group of nursing whales. The pups are curious, and came across to swim right under the boat. They're huge. And they're just the nippers. The mums are a bit more placid, sticking a barnacled head out of the water to let off low sonar rumbles.

And everyone was very pleased because we managed to capture the Money Shot. The whales occasionally rest vertically in the swell, with their blueblack tails raised out of the water, and on this occasion we were lucky, the motor was cut and we drifted round the enormous tail, glistening in the morning light. Just beautiful, and very moving, and I felt stupid and hot and complex next to these graceful beasts.

But they do lack fingers with which to type.

ARGENTINA: Boca Juniors 3 Quilmes 1

I'M AT: Firstly, The Millhouse, which was annoyingly youthful and full of cocaine, cos it was Creamfields Dance Festival that night, and which I was glad to leave early the next morning for The, erm, Chillhouse, in posh Palermo, and it really was chilled out, and very friendly, and all the better for it.

I was incredibly pissed at my first Boca game.

Knowing me well, Corinne had warned me that there was no alcohol for sale inside the ground. So I filled an empty bottle of Pure Glaciar mineral water with Pure Cloaca vodka, and proceeded to drink it over the course of the match.

The stadium's called La Bombonera because it looks like a box of chocolates from the air. It was hot, and packed, and we were stood on the terraces, and I was glad when the sun sank below the West Stand.

And it was absolute magic.

The fans opposite us, the barra brava, hooligans, unfurled a huge 'number 12' shirt, and sang and shouted and screamed, whilst a fat, hairy bloke in a Boca ski hat climbed the nearby fencing to help put up flags, and pendants, and banners. It was sooo hot. I'd met a Kiwi lass and an Irish girl, and one of them had sunblock, and otherwise I would have died, pruned from the vodka. I forget both of their names.

(As luck would have it, we met the Kiwi lass again in El Calafate, I apologised for my state, she told me they thought I was on drugs, and we arranged to meet later so I could buy her a drink. We arranged to meet outside the supermarket at eight. Found out the next day, there were two supermarkets....forgive me.)

I woke up the next day not knowing how I got home. La Boca is a bit of a dodgy neighbourhood. I remember buying a flag after the game, and waving it around until it fell of the stick, and pushing it crudely into my back pocket. I'd also stuffed a page from the sports paper, Olé, into the same pocket, as I wanted to show Bud what the Argentinians make of the two West Ham players - the headline said When The Argentinians Play, West Ham Lose.

I don't remember the trip back, apart from being on the last Subte home, at 11.30 or something.

And I had to buy Olé the next day as well, to find out the final score. 3-1 Boca. It meant they were virtually guaranteed to win the Apertura, the first half of the season. It was a blur at the end. I found out there'd been a penalty. I then watched it on the TV as I waited in the arrivals hall of Eziaza airport for Bud's delayed flight to arrive.

Then I looked at my camera and found out that not only was the penalty at our end, but that I'd taped it.

Damn you Boca, if you sold beer this would never have happened.

ARGENTINA: All work and no play

I´M AT: Alaska Hostel, Bariloche. $6 for a piece of idyllic tranquility, AKA silencio.

I´m typing this in the living room of a hostel that can sleep perhaps twenty-five people, and there´s no-one else here.

The manager went to bed a quarter of an hour ago. The TV behind me is showing the Sarsfield v Estudiantes game. Juan 'Saba' Veron, of Estudiantes, has just been sent off for a second amarillo. He´s no better here than he was in England.

I ate my tea with a biege cat, annoying type, kept pushing a lumpen nose into my plate. And a brilliant puppy dog who ate my toes and gently bit my hands after I rubbed his stomach. They were both only in it for the cheese, though.

I tried to organise a couple of tours today, for a bit of rafting or hiking and the like, but it´s low season. Very low. It couldn´t get much lower if you killed its relatives and made it drink its own piss. So the trips are either not-happening-until-more-people-get-here, or they are happening, but to make it worth their while they have to charge-each-person-double.

The guide book said this was the best time to come, cos it´s not so busy and you can get a room more easily.

They should have added that it´s just like spending time in the Overlook.

CHILE: Guest of honour

I'M AT: Casa Roja, Barrio Brazil, Santiago de Chile. A converted mansion full of nice folk, and beer, and a big kitchen, and lots of energy. Paying twelve thousand of ANY form of currency for a bed is a bit unnerving, though.

The only thing that Peter H's perfect wedding lacked was a fistfight.

I have to let you know how I came to be here. Peter H is so called because that's his username on a Crystal Palace chatroom. Ten months ago, he let us know he was to be married to his Chilean girlfriend, whom he met travelling, on October 28th, and invited anyone who was in Chile to attend. Did he expect anyone to take him up on this? I'd have to say maybe, because he was amazingly calm upon meeting me, basically a total stranger, on his doorstep, just an hour or so before the ceremony began, and only a couple of minutes before his mum and brothers arrived.

He lent me his suit. He gave me a drink. This man, with his huge heart, invited me into his flat, to witness, with thirty or so others, close family and old friends, his wedding. I can't explain how the union of two strangers was as moving as it was. It was obvious they were very much in love.

After the wedding, we walked around a maze of streets to find the restaurant, which had tables and flowers and candles and cocktails waiting for us, and we ate a huge mountain of meat between us, and drank champagne, and danced, and listened to Peter H read a dedication to his missus, first in Spanish, then in English, and it was just great. I made some good new friends as well - Dave, Geoff, Samantha, Martin, and an Argentinian bloke who insisted on making me speak Castillano with him, and who told me that a woman's true worth was the size and colour of her heart.

Peter H, I salute you and your wife, and wish you every happiness, for you are truly a generous and admirable man.

ARGENTINA: Buenos Fucking Aires

I'M AT: A number of places all over town, cos Buenos Aires is a pretty busy place. All pretty swanky. Millhouse takes the prize cos of the fantastic private room there.

They sell t-shirts here with Buenos Fucking Aires printed on them, and, well, it's the type of place to inspire you to wheeze gently at the enormity, class and energy of the place and mutter under your breath Buenos.....Fucking.......Aires.

Firstly, it's big. Bits are shiny and modern, the new port area is much like Docklands; and other bits, like San Telmo and La Boca, are full of old buildings, and very charming.

Secondly, the people are, there's no denying it, fit. The women are thin and glamorous and share the same bouncy, feathered hairstyle. They walk around like contented devils in tight jeans and sparkly tops. And the men are pumped, and hairy, and very Latino.

And there's an awful lot to do. The place really does compare with a big European city. It's like Paris or London really, and many of the portenos would gladly call themselves European. They love a bit of style.

It was around this coooooool city that I walked in ripped jean-shorts and green flip-flops, biting into steaks, ogling tango, touching antiques, feeding animals at the zoo and generally beaming like a lovesick fool.

I'm smitten.

BRAZIL: Ronaldinho's flip-flops

I wrote a bit about the Brazilian side of the Iguazu Falls in another post, but quite frankly I'm allowing myself to post a separate entry, because I was in Brazil for a short time, even if I don't have a passport stamp, and it's worth celebrating.

I don't know if it's all the yellow football tops, big smiles, or skimpy clothing, or if indeed it was all in my head, but Brazil did feel different, sexier, hotter, steamier, than anywhere else I'd been in South America. One thing's certainly different: the idioma. Portugese is spoken here, so all the signs and posters have subtle but confusing differences, like using 'e' instead of 'y' (both meaning 'and'). I'd planned to spend a bit longer in Brazil, going to Rio and the beaches, but eventually I couldn't get the flight sorted, so it'll have to wait. I've since heard pretty negative things about the place, the cities at least, but you can never tell until you get there.

Anyway. We were there for the Falls, and went to the visitor centre, a splendid edifice, very posh, a bit pricey, and very cool. They're employed a seriously talented graphic artist to spruce the place up, and now the open-top buses are resplendant with stylised beasts - butterflies, coatis, toucans, monkeys - animals that you can find all around you as you walk through the lush jungle. The coatis are brilliant things, a cross between a cat and a raccoon, they sniff at your lunch and threaten cutely.

It's also very commercial, of course. You can ride jetboats, you can get an amphibious vehicle intop the water, you can hike and trek. We did none of these. Instead, we just gaped in awe at the falls. And gaped some more. And then wandered into the visitor centre and I thought, fuck it, even if I'm not here for long I'm sending some postcards from Brazil. And I'm going to buy myself something.

If anyone can tell me of a better souvenir from Brazil than a pair of gaudy green-and-yellow flip-flops with Ronaldinho's number 10 shirt printed on them, I'll eat a coati.

PARAGUAY: Apocalyptic City

I was in the Cuidad del Este for only about six hours, but it felt a whole lot longer.

The Iguazu Falls lie on a triple border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Paraguay is easily the poorest nation, and the border town, in English City of the East, sells outrageously cheap electronic goods to its richer neighbours. This makes it a popular day trip from Brazil or Argentina, and Corinne needed a camera, so we jumped the border and took our chances.

The electronics shops can be found in one small area around the main dual carriageway. Once amongst the many stalls and malls, we were surrounded by folk wanting to sell us stuff - clippers, socks, flannels, chocolate. And they were tremendously persistent, to the point where we had to be bloody rude to get them to leave us alone.

But they were nothing next to the camera-floggers. Men and boys stood around, waiting for gringos, and when spotted, we were asked what we wanted, cameradvdvideomusiccameracamera? Camera, we said. And from there they'd take us into one of the many shops, and condescend with the shop staff, and fawn and bleat, until we decided to move on, and they followed us to the next place. One kid, in particular, was unbelievable, and his dad wasn't so much better.

Anyway, perhaps surprised by Corinne's Spanish, they talked and talked and bigged themselves up, to the point where she had a pad full of numbers and a spinning head. We both had spinning heads. The shop staff looked at me a little curiously, for here I was with a woman who was doing all the talking, and, to them, obviously wore the trousers. They smiled at me, perhaps in sympathy.

So, eventually, she'd picked a model, and, aware that much of the gear in the Cuidad is fake, or reconditioned - in some cases the boxes are clearly battered and have flourescent repair stickers on them, despite being offered as new, at new prices - went to the only bloke who'd told us about the fake, reconditioned stuff, and bought her camera, and took as many pictures as she could - mainly of herself looking gorgeous - before the undercharged battery ran out.

She was well happy with her camera, though, even though the bloke's credit card machine didn't work and he took us on a walk through a crowded market, stinking with the risk of robbery, to take us to his 'brother's' store, and even there it took ages to get the deal done, all exchange rates and phone calls and much suspicion on our part. And then we hopped the bus, in the sun, many dodgy Asian characters walking around, and made it back to Argentina for a cocktail.

ARGENTINA: Iguazu Falls - the face of God

I'M AT: Hostel Sweet Hostel, Puerto Iguazu. A nice chilled place, very small, bathroom just big enough, kitchen for making nice pasta in.

The Iguazu Falls are enough to convince an athiest of the guiding hand of God. Enough to inspire a man to die for beauty. Enough to send you smack down onto the floor, moaning and bubbling and thanking fuck that you're alive, and nowhere else but here. It's the highlight of my trip so far. They're. Just. Staggering.

The falls are accessed from both sides of the Brazil-Argentina border. The Argentinian side needs a day, cos there are loads of different walkways and viewpoints. They're right up close to the bottom of the individual falls. You can go for a walk on an island beneath the falls, and there's a train to the main highlight, the Garganta del Diablo, Devil's Throat, above which you stagger at the crash and majesty, on wet planks.

The Brazilian side needs only half a day but features, in my opinion, the best view. You walk, again on wet boards, to the foot of the Devil's Throat, and just gawp open-mouthed at the immense mounds of crashing white, pouring onto the battered black rocks below. And you see a wide panorama, and rainbows, and swifts darting forth, and it makes you believe any of the lies you've ever been told about heaven.

Good god. Forget Macchu Picchu, this is the most incredible place in South America.

ARGENTINA: Gimnasia 0 Arsenal 0

I´M AT: Terra Oculta, an absolutely terrific hostel in Salta. I started at the annex over the road, then after a couple of nights moved to the main building. This is quite honestly the perfect place to stay.

BOLIVIA: Hasta luego

I'M AT: The Adventure Brew Hostel, La Paz, where we were promised one free beer, and helped ourselves to three. The scandal of it all deserves recording for posterity.

The people I've met are absolutely making this trip come alive. The hardest thing I have to do is say goodbye to them.

I met Mark in Ecuador and, for the most part, spent the next three months travelling with him through Peru and Bolivia. I got the bus all the way back to La Paz from Uyuni, from where his flight was leaving, because I wanted to see him off properly (as it turned out, the last night was a bit of a damp squib - it was a Monday - so we didn't reggaeton our way into the hearts of the locals as we'd hoped. We did both end up wearing Seventies gear though, so it wasn't all bad. Whilst I'm at it, going back to La Paz in general was also a mixed blessing - after arriving on the outskirts of La Paz to find the streets blockaded, we ended up getting picked up by a fake taxi driver, who admitted a fake copper, who proceeded to search for fake money, which he could apparently, miraculously, smell. As it turned out, Mark was relieved of his CD player and a load of pictures, but even so, we'd heard tales of kidnap, so it could have been far worse.)

You end up going through a lot with people, and spending lots of time with them. Mark is a thoughtful, intelligent geezer, a hit with the women despite his apparent lack of romantic interest in most of them, and he's a very good laugh. A good guy to travel with, easy going, and friendly. He does enjoy his job - some scale-manufacturing company or something - a bit too much for comfort, and preens himself to extraordinary lengths, paying a fortune for some sort of enriching body lotion in La Paz when you only had to step outside the hostel to get covered in toxic waste; and he 'monitors' the length of his eyebrows.

But despite these faults - some would say irrevocable flaws in his character - I have to say it, I was in tears when I said goodbye to him, and, well, lost for the rest of the day. The only thing to do was move on, so I did, that afternoon, on a bus to Oruro, whilst protestors dynamited the central streets of La Paz.

Salud, my friend, and sometime brother. I will see you next year.

BOLIVIA: Imagine my HORROR

...when I found out I'd taken a bottle of rum-flavoured cake essence, instead of the real stuff, on a four-day tour to the middle of nowhere, with only the promise of a glass of wine on the last day.

ANYWAY - I'M AT: A tour organised by Junin Tours taking us to the salt flats, up a volcano, to red and green lakes, thermal springs, an island of cactuses, and various trinkety stops on the way. Accommodation was cold, food rubbish, but it was unbelievable good.

Laying claim to the biggest salt flat in the world is testament to Bolivia's mineral riches. Sending rich tourists out to the visit them is testament to the incompetence with which the country handles its best assets.

Many, many tourists want to visit the Salar de Uyuni, and rightly so, because it and the landscapes that surround it are absolutely spectacular. So what do the authorities do? They allow a completely free market, so tourists get ripped off, and lied to, and their experiences spoiled, because no-one in power seems to give a flying fuck about the goldmine on which they're sitting.

Which doesn't mean that the necessity of getting a 4x4 to visit the place was a bad one, because it means the landscape remains 'unspoiled', and that there aren't TOO many other groups around. Few over the age of 50 would want to spend 4 days in the back of a rattly jeep. But you weep for the potential of the place. The Salt Hotel sounds great, and I guess comparable to how the Ice Hotel must be, but in reality it's a poorly-constructed adobe mess with salt on the walls and a wilting, stuffed flamingo stapled to the ceiling. At the Museum of Salt, sited near the main refinery, they've crucified an unfortunate barn owl on the wall, so it now fixes you with a broken stare as you walked in, having paid your pesos. At the refinery, they're more interested in gossipping and staring sideways at the tourists than they are about genuinely informing you about the work, the organisation, the process. It's not much of a living, admittedly, bagging salt for days on end. But still.

Anyway. The landsapes, which we´d come on this tour to see, were astonishing, and it was completely worthwhile doing this tour. So rather than speak my thousand words - http://www.flickr.com/photos/kong_

BOLIVIA: We Have Explosive

I´M AT: The Koala Den, owned and run by Koala Tours, who'd booked everyone staying there onto the same tour, leaving at the same time on the same day, and were still unprepared for everyone descending on the breakfast at once. Suitably Bolivian.

Cerro Rico is a huge mountain that used to be full of silver, and which provided the Spaniards with a great bulk of the wealth with which they built their country's infrastructure.

It's only full of zinc and tin ad other powdery spectres now, so the miners aren't living in the style to which they were formerly accustomed. In truth, it's absolutely horrifying that men can still work in hot, dusty, poisonous conditions without masks or proper equipment, risking death by explosion each day and certain death from silicosis after twenty or so years.

One guy worked in the dark because he had to save the money he would otherwise use to buy batteries for his head torch. He was 35, had the body of a 15 year old, but the face of Methuselah. He worked with hammer and chisel to make the holes in which he poked dynamite. Each hole would take hours and hours to chip away at, and he'd have absolutely no idea whether he'd blow out anything apart from rock. He worked on his own, whilst his son, 15 years old, worked in a co-operative in another part of the mine, for which he received more security but less financial reward, as all risks and profits were shared. If our man in the dark found a seam of silver, he and his future generations would be made for life.

So we choked and heaved and hauled our soft arses through the hill, learning as we went from Pedro Negro, a fantastic guy who also used to work in the mines but now earnt less doing these tours. Some of the miners earn as much as lawyers or doctors. There were thousands of lawyers in the town itself, for some reason, perhaps to settle ownership disputes, as the mine is completely unregulated. You or I could walk in there tomorrow and start blowing bits out of it, and this would be easy, as dynamite is available over the counter.

After emerging from the tour, and as a relief from all the tension and exhaustion that we suffered down the mines - oh, how we suffered - we assembled and detonated a big stick of pale green dynamite wrapped in ammonium sulphide.

And may I say, it damn near knocked the Pimms out of my pinkies.

BOLIVIA: Heave!

I'M AT: The front of an overnight bus from La Paz to Sucre, glugging back Bocks and eating Pringles.

National Express should make a point of saying that, no, they won't ask their passengers to get off their buses at 2AM to push, should their coaches get stuck on a muddy road.

I stopped short of helping dig up the nearby bushes to act as traction under the sodden wheels, but froze my arse off, and got a mouthful of dirty exhaust as we scrabbled and argued for over an hour in the dark cold countryside between La Paz and Sucre. We'd taken a short cut to avoid the roadblocks on the motorway. But sadly our driver hadn't taken off-road tuition.

It was touch and go but we made it in only 16 hours.

BOLIVIA: The Death Road

I´M AT: Las Brujas, see earlier.

I found out today that my mountain biking is pretty rubbish. I can't turn the damn things properly. So, despite the bedlike cushioning provided by the posh bikes we'd hired as part of the tour, I ambled and stumbled down the World's Most Dangerous Road.

And it was bloody dangerous. The urns and shrines at the side of the road pointed where lorries, and coaches, and other cyclists had met their death. The road is carved into the side of a mountain and is, in parts, only big enough for one vehicle. Signage is non-existent and the only help drivers get is a 'traffic light' system (handheld signs made of plastic and wood, turned by volunteers when a big truck approached a blind bend). 200 or so people are killed every year, sometimes in big lumps - like the coach that went over a month or so before we were there, killing about 40 - and sometimes solo, like the truck driver whose cab was later pulled out of the ravine and stripped by looters. The purple wreckage is still there at the side of the road only because there's no value in scrap, and no public facilities (or will) exist to clear it up.

So anyway, against this dramatic backdrop I shuffled down like an old lady and only held my own on the uphill bits, when fitness took me past most of the field, most of the time. Nice.

At the bottom we were given t-shirts in a small Oscar-type ceremony, and monkeys came over and bit people's ears, once pissing on the head of an American guy with a girl's face, called Rusty.

I sent Bud the t-shirt as a gift, but I bet it doesn't fit him, the fat fuck :)

BOLIVIA: Softly canoeing through the open ferns

I'M AT: The Caracoles Lodge, three hours by rough road from Rurrenabaque, which is itself 22 hours by rougher road from La Paz. We took the plane, though. Caracoles is an 'eco-lodge' built from wood and hope, with mosquito nets round the gentle beds, a dining hut, hammocks under papaya trees, wandering llamas and a super-friendly, super-energetic stray dog they call Comer Nunca.

Rurrenabaque is a staging post for trips into the jungle and the pampas (grasslands). On arriving and shedding several stone in balmy sweat we checked into a place called El Oriental and slumped into hammocks, by green parrots a-squealing. And did nothing for a bit. La Paz is so high that it's generally pretty cold, 15 degrees or so, grey and autumnal, so we needed time to adjust to the heat and humidity, poor lambs - 30 degrees and t-shirt clinging to hot wet skin.

After a slump we clenched free drink tickets in damp hands and sloped to Moskitto Bar, were Premiership highlights flickered, pool table cambered, and drinks came cold and beautiful. Our tour left the next morning but despite this, I drank enough to give me both a hangover, and the fuzz to chat to an Israeli girl we met at the airport, sitting with her hairy brethren.

So next day we jeeped three hours to the Lodge, via sloths hanging like dark prunes in the trees, and a yellow-beaked toucan perched like a sentinal. Then patches of heron, and a pink spoon-beaked bird that nattered and swept. The wildlife in the pampas is magical and visible.

And so to the Lodge, dump stuff and swing, before we - a German couple, an Oz-American couple, and the four of us - Mark, Helene, Amanda and me - settled for a maté and food at a painted table. And after being burped and weened we staggered to our motorboat, a thin cigar of wood.

I simply could not believe that less than four or five feet away, and only a couple of minutes away from the fenceless lodge, lay countless alligators, thin strips of eye beaming as they lowered themselves into the water, and closer to the boat. They didn't look more scared than us. Prehistoric beasts with horny backs and threatening lurch. But eyeing them was strangely fascinating, and we kept our hands out of the brown water.

My camera also caught turtles, and hairy capybara as they sat like old Dukes on the shore, sniffing the air and waggling too-small ears. And later we set out again at night, to see by torchlight the reflected lenses of alligators, and mammals, and fireflies flicked the treetops.

The next day bought heat, sunblock and the stupid cricket hat I bought in Peru, and we eased again, right this time, to slip down the river and pick small yellow squirrel monkeys out of the trees, and a couple pirated themselves onto the boat, scenting mandarins, but we fed not. And then in deeper clutches of water we saw the humps of river dolphins break the surface, a gentle puff, and a silvery dive, and once again they'd beaten the shutters of our lenses.

Later we fished with wire and ham, and I caugt two yellow-bellied piranha, later eaten with salad and papas, and Mark caught a tiddler, and the German girl, tutored, caught a basket of fin - catfish and piranha, and later a small turtle, which she weeped pinkly over whilst it was unhooked and tossed back.

After a second night of heated sleep we ditched the boat and took hats and forked stick on a hunt on dry land for anaconda. 36 or 38 degrees and later 42. And after a bit we saw one, twisting as it warmed itself, and then I spotted a coterie of three mating snakes, and all in all we saw 11 anaconda, and one cobra, sitting in their holes or amongstthe dry grass. The whole area would be submerged by the rains, which would come pouring in the next month. Now, though, at the end of the dry season, small pools of water flapped with fish, and birds clinked empty cups, and all was survival, and sweat, and staring in awe. And our boat got stuck on the river bed a couple of times.

And after this, it was back to La Paz, on the road of flat tyres, and we wilted, and coughed dust, and sweated our slow way back to the waiting hammocks.

Rurrenabaque managed to spring a last surprise as, back at Moskitto, over a couple of cold ones, the gents played pool in a pair against the ladies, but with an inspired handicap - one of us would make the bridge, whilst the other cued, holding the shaft.

And we still beat them. The alligators ate well that night.

BOLIVIA: BE the ball

I´M AT: Hospedaje Las Brujas (The Witches), central La Paz, $4, right on top of the Witches´Market, so even before breakfast I´ve had a taste of llama foetus.

A blur of motion as the golf ball soars over a parched lunar landscape, before trickling meekly into a grey, pitted canyon. Playing at the World´s Highest Golf Course was some gig.

Not cheap though. After security had radioed our taxi through, after verifying our nationalities (apparently a lot of Brits play at this course, so we were considered fair game), we stumped up a cool $60 each in green fees and club hire and limped nervously to the first tee. Clubhouse bearing down, all Pringle and Fred Perry, all eyes on the denim gringos, and fear, fear...but after the first drive went OK for both me and Mark, we were off, sweating only from the heat. I eventually took 12 shots on the first hole.

At one point we hunkered down with the caddies to avoid the errant shot from the clay pigeon shoot on the other side of the canyon, as it smacked into the nearby trees.

This was the first time I´ve played on a professional course, the first time with a caddy - a 25 year old bloke called Paulinho - and it was great. And only 67 over par. And I almost, almost beat Mark, who´s had lessons and goes on golfing trips and everything.

Those balmy afternoons at Sparrow´s Den Pitch-and-Putt weren´t entirely wasted.

PERU - BOLIVIA: Lake Titicaca

I'M AT: Hostal Europa, Puno, Peru, a nice place but for some reason run by sharp sharks with alcoholic faces, darkly suspicious of their guests. AND Inti Wayra, Isla del Sol, Bolivia, one of many similar no-frills hostals to which we were guided by a mahogany-skinned local lad, found at the top of eighty backbreaking Inca Steps on the South of the island.

The bus from Cuzco to Puno was taken in sunlight, but strangely enough all the nuts came out during the day. A religious nut sat at the back rattled on for a solid hour, then two young singing nuts came and blew hot air round the wagon, then the religious guy started again, a baby wailed, and lightning flashed across the landscape. It took only a couple of seconds to remember that we were shuttling across a flat plain in a large metal object, but a couple of minutes more to forget.

Puno is the folk music capital of Peru and the streets clattered with brass as gentlemen span in sharp suits, doffing their porkpie hats at the ladies. It was some student festival and crossing the crowded road was noisy, tricky, spotlight on the gringos. But we made it out, for an alpaca feast, and tired, we all fell asleep, Katha and Ela meekly hiding something dark in their room. Mark thought it a Rubber Charlie - something man-sized and inflatible, carried under plain cover, with pneumatic cock and thick fingers. The girls never did reveal what their blushes hid.

After alapaca dreams we woke for the boat, a speedy launch that cut thickly across Titicaca as our gentle guide wove stories of reed and water. The Los Uros islands are upwardly thatched from the bottom of the lake, and the reeds squeaked as we were sped across the surface. After some explanation we paused to buy some trinkets and were then paddled across the lake. We looked back to see the small boy with whom we'd been playing football fishing for his ball with a practised thrust.

Taquile is home to indigenous people, wearing long hats, knitting and weaving and smiling for the cameras. After more perusing, and a fish lunch, we walked over the ridge and down to the soft waters, where the boat came to take us back to Puno. I talked with Katha at the end of the pier.

PERU: An armed struggle - by some

I'M AT: El Arcano, see below.

Muyac Tours have a den on the river Urubamba from which their Grade II and III rafting trips depart. It's called Casa Cusi, Happy House, and is thatched and wooden, with kitchen, dining room, and sauna, in which you can hibernate after the icy water has finished numbing your parts.

Our captain, Americo, took us through a series of exercises on gentle waters so we'd be able to cope with the torrents to come. Forward! Backpaddle! Everyone Right! (which meant leapping across the guy next to you and clinging onto a piece of wet rope fixed to the side of the raft. This, and Everyone Left, were designed to lift one side of the raft out of the water, to avoid rocks.) INSIDE!!!! (this was really screamed. Everyone in the boat. In cases of extreme peril. We never used this one.)

And, so like many things on this trip, I experienced something for the first time - hurtling over boulders and rocks in the rushing streams of water, paddling like a maniac, trying to keep rhythm with the rest of the boat, plunging my arm and paddle into the churning water, shoulders and back and pivotal hookfoot aching. And it was bloody marvellous, and I got soaked, and Americo dived into the water like a crack-crazed conquistador at the end, and the two Spaniards in the boat, shaped like bulldogs, mohicanned, merely spooned the water into the air with their paddles, whilst the rest of us worked like dogs, and Americo shouted at them, the warm brothers, and further back, me and Mark and the girls sweated, and fumed, and slammed into the water once more.

After the sauna, we took luncheon to the sounds of Bob Marley, and much later, back in Cuzco, we took dinner to the sounds of a marching band, and the four of us waited for Mark's pizza, and then to Ukuku's Bar, where a small energetic bloke in a balaclava served drinks from the top of his skull, and a nine-piece band played, didgeridoos and panpipes, thimbles chattering against washboards and congas, and all was right with the world.

PERU: Live eviL

I'M AT: El Arcano, a friendly place in Barrio San Blas run by a sweet young girl, her junky brother, and her laughing pa, Irwin, who gently changed the sheets of my bed following an accident with a loose-capped water bottle - Irwin, I SWEAR it was only water.

So we went overnight from Arequipa to Cuzco on a class coach of some luxuries, Cial Tours, a leaping marlin sprayed under the windows. Evening meal of jelly, a sweet strawberry sandwich and hot sugary coffee. And as we sat there, onto the bus walked 30 Peruvian schoolgirls, giggling at the gringos.

By this time, as I was visiting the toilet ten times a day and leaving only liquids, I'd decided to find out for sure if I was dying from some intestinal nightmare, so taxied to Clinica Pardo, and, having paid $20 and been told to wait 20 minutes, saw my bewigged Doctor two hours later, he had me shit into a small transparent cup, and told me to wait another three quarters of an hour when the laboratory would have my results. Conscious of time, I half-ran back to the Plaza de Armas where, in the Cross Keys Britpub, I met Mark, who'd found Kata and Ela, we had a water and a quick chat, and I scanned the walls for Palace shirts (none). And we made rough plans for the next couple of days, before a taxi took me back to the clinic.

A pink lab slip later, I walked out with my diagnosis: giardia. Bought huge pills of death, which I took straight away, to kill the shell-dwelling beasts. And was told not to drink for three days whilst on the other medication, big orange capsules. I looked at the lab sheet, for the description of my sample: liquido, amarillo claro. Clear yellow liquid.

So, relieved at fiinding out I was actually ill, back to the girls and Mark, and then to Muyac Tours, where we signed up for white water rafting, and made plans for Peru's glittering prize - Machu Picchu.

PERU: In the shape of...the mountains it was built on

I'M AT: Las Bromelias, a cheap and squeeky hostel in Aquas Calientes, which is a touristy place at the bottom of the hill leading up to Macchu Picchu. The receptionist told us we had 'chikkipikki' luggage so that became, hoho, the word of the day. How we all laughed.

I managed to miss by some six months any availability on the Inca Trail, which is tightly regulated to minimise ecological damage, so me and Mark decided to approximate one of the organised tours ourselves, trying to save some dough in a place where every little thing costs a fortune. We also wanted to do as much physical work as possible to get up there, in a bid to suffer at least some of the rigours of the trail, and without a doubt we did.

The first thing you pay through the nose for is the train from Cuzco to Aguas Calientes, which, until it hits the Rio Urubamba, is also a pretty boring ride. There's no other way of getting there, so they have you over a barrel, albeit a barrel of exquisite Inca design. We got off the train early, at KM114, which is the start of an alternative (shorter) Inca trail (but one which is also tightly regulated, so all we could do was to go over the large wooden bridge and back). The conductor shook his head as the train pulled away, and for the next 5 or 6 kilometres we bumped over the large gravel chips of the railway, deep in subtropical forest, by the green rush of the Urubamba. We passed a number of blackened and creased porters taking a short cut from the main Inca trail, ahead of their groups.

On arrival we stashed gear and ate probably the most expensive pizza I've ever had in a riverside restaurant, not a wise choice. A bloke on the shore broke rocks open, and bluebirds swooped. And from there we went further down the railway to a disappointing waterfall, which despite all the PachaMama shit they give you here is locked away behind a rusting gate, and you have to pay the landowner for the privelidge of visiting it. It wasn't worth it, but we were getting the hikes we needed. That night we ate a tiny meal and scrunched our toes into the gravel as some fit Brazilian birds bounced around in the thermal baths.

Now, you can take a bus up to Macchu Picchu, or you can walk. There's kudos in being up there early whichever option you take, and if you're lucky you get to see the sun rise over the city, and over Wayna Picchu, that steep, inverted V of rock in the background of the classic photo that comes to mind whenever you think of Macchu Picchu.

And we were lucky, and on time, and the sky was clear, and we witnessed all of this.

The walk up was hard, no doubt, up an Incan staircase. We left in the dark at five and arrived at about six, keeping up the record of beating the approximate time of any walk we do. At points the walk is block on block on block of stone, steeply rising. There's no way of resting your muscles between steps until you get near the top, so you get knackered pretty quickly.

Anyhoo. Wet with sweat, and the sun rose, and it was breathtaking. We spent a hot morning exploring the city - it's pretty big and much of it's well-preserved, and it's ruthlessly functional. We also heard, from Katha, that the guides tell people that it was designed by the Incas to resemble the shape of a condor. But what absolute bollocks. If this were true, there would be parts of the high plateau that weren't covered in agricultural terraces, or buildings, for aesthetic reasons, and believe me, some of the terraces are nearly vertical. They made use of all the space they had.

But well, blimey, Macchu Picchu eh? It's far more impressive than you think it will be, because it's so well designed, and so atmospheric, far more so than you would have imagined. Some of the walks round the city take you to sheer drops, so awe is partly, on my part at least, inspired also by fear.

Later that day we walked to the Sun Gate, which, coming from the other direction, is the first time the trekkers get a glimpse of the city; and I went to the Inca Bridge, cut into the rockface round the back - about where you'd put the bins out - and which previously a visitor had fallen off and died, while Mark went up Wayna Picchu. He later told me that some people were crying up there, the stairs were unforgiving and some over sheer, sheer drops, down to a bumping rock death.

But. Anyway. Macchu Picchu, eh? Done.

PERU: A touch of class in Arequipa

I'M AT: El Caminante Class, Arequipa, $8 each in a beautiful quad room, hot water, TV, balcony, courtyard, sun terrace. Lovely.

So after the grind of Nazca came the cut-above city of Arequipa, where dark shadows hide only sunshine.

The big draw here is the nunnery of Santa Catalina, a small walled city in its own right, with walls painted ochre, blue, white and yellow. This place was established soon after the Spanish arrived, and must have been some sort of haven for a Europe blighted by war and disease. I swear we saw crooked steps leading the nuns up to some of the finest sunbathing in South America. Allegedly they held parties here, until a much stricter Sister iintroduced chainmail underwear and barbed wire pennance. But all in all, Santa Catalina is beautiful, a sanctuary for the mind and soul.

Sitting in her own icy sanctuary some blocks away is Juanita, a mummified Incan girl found some years back, above the snowline, in the mountains. The booth in which she rests is really nothing more than a fridge-freezer. There's no money here to buy her a fitting chamber, so she sits all icy and slowly rotting away, a far cry from the perfect conditions in which her body was preserved 500 years ago. If truth be told, Juanita is a bit ugly - her teeth jut out from a dehydrated face, and she's all curled up on top of herself, in the shape she was buried. But the Arequipans are rightly proud of her, and she has a real aura of, somehow, peace. An odd thing to say about a human sacrifice.

Arequipa's other big draw is the Colca Canyon, which is the second-deepest in the world, and in which live families of condors.

(Along with pumas and snakes, condors are very important in Incan mythology, representing humans, the earth, and the sky, respectively. Macchu Picchu is apparently built in the shape of a condor, but I'd argue that the shape is determined by the mountains on which it's built. We would shortly discover that Lake Titicaca is also, apparently, formed in the shape of a sacred animal, in this case a puma - chasing a visqaca (a mountain-rabbit).

But these lake-shapes can only be seen now using satellite photography, and as the Incans famously left no written records, how they mapped and subsequently deified this mystical puma was lost on me. We'd find out that these three animals were a little TOO important for some of the tour guides, who seem to see animal shapes in everything they see. It's mostly, in my opinion, a load of old fanny.)

There are loads of different tours to Colca, but as time was short we took a two-day tour with an overnight stop in Chivay. Chivay at night turned out to be one of the coldest places on Earth, made worse when I stepped in some overflow from the sink during a midnight piss, giving me wet hiking socks for the rest of the night.

The Colca trip was a bit of a disappointment, really. We saw one condor, which was great, but most of the rest of the time was spent rattling around at the back of our coach. Every small town we stopped a rolled out the tourist tat for the bus. And whilst the landscape was glorious, all golden in the sunlight, the sheer number of coaches on tour, stopping for the llamas, was a it overwhelming. The Typical Andean Dance at night, durng the meal, was good, though; a local girl whacked her boyfriend round the arse with a hard whip. The harder she whipped, the more she wanted him. And she was very pretty.

During my time in Arequipa we also visited several bars and restaurants, including Retro, the Forum, Govinda's, and some posh place near the Mirador with a terrible singer who'd loudly practice his tunes and then deliver them moments later, as if his audience had been temporarily deafened.

And naturally we flirted with the girls.

PERU: Clamber sands

I'M AT: Casa de Arena, Huanchaco - $5, a blinding laugh with a young crowd, poolside bar and nightly barbeque with free jugs of Pisco Sour, hot sun and lots and lots of sand. AND La Estrella del Sur, Nazca - $7 including a breakfast that I was never able to enjoy, and to be honest a bit of a dump.

Directly south of Lima is a fucking huge desert.

It's frighteningly inhospitable, but still folk live there, in dusty towns without water, eking out a living somehow. The bus ploughed through massive hills of sand as we pulled into Haunchaco.

It's a real-life oasis in the midst of all the dust, situated round a big green lake with reeds and birds and stuff, boats for hire. Palms sweep round in a curve, five trees or so deep, and then the desert begins again. A picture of Huanchaco's on the back of the 50 sol note, the most widely-counterfeited note in circulation here.

The hostal was great, and dead relaxed after the aching cool of Lima. We walked into some kind of paradise, with tanned or tanning bodies lolling round a swimming pool, or sitting at the bar, music belting out, laughter, a little miracle. Groups of people were walking up the huge sand dunes that tower over the hostal, and the sun was setting. So after a nip round town, gazing at the bright dune buggies, and a beer with a Peruvian guy that supported Brazil, we went back for the barbie, all chicken and burgers and avocadoes, tomatoes, potato salad, buns, pisco sours, cuba libres, the works, and had a great time getting pissed to Reggaeton with the people we met, Katarina, Daniella, Rachel and a posse of geezers from Sacramento.

Next day, fuzzy head and up and out for a zip round the dunes, our dunebuggy driver the colour of a burnt log, the buggy itself huge with three rows of padded seats, rusty buckles, rollbars overhead and a very loud engine. The ride was great - coming to rest after a dune climb, then tipping over, gears shifting, g-force rollercoaster of a dusty, windy sand blur. And all there was was sky and sand and empty water bottles.

And then the boarding itself, boards waxed with red goo, spinning, slipping, falling over into the hotly yielding sand, no balance, those around gliding like seals across the yellow surface, before on the final big dune I found some momentum and glided seal-like myself. My pockets were full of sand.

Less than 24 hours after we'd arrived at Haunchaco we left for Nazca, which turned out to be a sharp trap of a town.

The only good thing about the place was a terrific planetarium and lecture on the history and theories surrounding the Nazca lines, for which the town is famous and which were etched into the stone surface of the desert over a period of 700 years - lines, dead straight, some 10km long, but also geometric shapes, and animals, spirals, haloes of design everywhere.

No-one's sure what they were - calling cards for spacemen, running tracks for ancient Olympics, irrigation channels, representations of the stars. The lecture gave more questions than answers. But the guy running the show was fascinating, and he'd set up a telescope so we could see the moons of Jupiter and a real close-up of the full moon overhead after the show had finished.

So, all ready, we hit the airport for an organised tour the next morning, everyone who'd been at the barbie in Huanchaco plus a guy we met just before we left, Jan - and it was all such a great disappointment. We went off four hours late, despite being told every half hour that our flight was just about ready.

It was hot at the airfield and there was nothing to do, and we couldn't eat because we were told we'd all be heartily sick if we did so before the flight, so we all missed breakfast and gradually wilted. Then the tour guy insulted all the Germans in our group, his eyes darting with malice, and stung us for the 'airport tax'.

The flight itself eventually left at midday, with the sun directly overhead and no shadows cast, and it was really difficult to make out any of the shapes properly, apart from the 'spaceman' etched into the side of a mountain. The spaceman was just a bloke with an oddly-shaped head. Then my hands went numb. 20 minutes later we'd returned safely to Earth.

It was good being up there and all, at 2,400 feet, seeing the shadow cast by our small 5-seater cessna as it dipped and banked over the desert, but really, after seeing the lecture and all of the very impressive photography on all the brochures, our expectations were such that the flight could never have matched them. As such we all trooped off of the plane, a bit glum, and headed off to find some food.

Nazca drained me of money and enthusiasm and I was very glad to leave.

PERU: Bay City Strollers

I´M AT: The Point Hostal, Barranco, Lima. $9 including a small breakfast. Bar, pool table, BBQs, no locks on the doors, and our dorm was called White Vinyl. Cool. Too cool for me to stay longer than two nights.

Lima´s a city of 8 million people, many of them living in stinging poverty. The lifestyles here are more sharply contrasting than anywhere else I´ve been in South America so far.

The weather´s also pretty grim at the moment. We plodded along the cliffs by the crashing Pacific, in the grey mist, through our Beverley Hills-style barrio, all white skin, shiny bikes and fat salaries. The coast road took us into Miraflores, another rich district and one where most tourists stay - there´s a very swish cliffside shopping centre called Larcomar here, where we chucked a couple of credits into the Daytona machine. Paragliders zipped around overhead, too close to the nearby glass skyscrapers.

From here we got a ten-minute VW Beetle to the city centre. The guy tried to sting us for a $8 ride - not the last attempted scam of the day. We walked around the posh Plaza Mayor, cathedrals, monestaries, government offices, buildings like iced battenburgs. A bearded guy asked us where we from and flipped out a wallet containing colourful woven dolls, supposedly knitted by kids with down´s syndrome. It was impossible to tell whether this was true or not. We next bumped into two Limeño guys, one with a daughter in Bristol who´d been deported, and another who spoke German with Mark. They asked if we wanted a beer, maybe to sit down with them for ceviche? We moved on politely, the choking traffic racing in every direction, until another bloke came up, black bouffant. Woman? Woman? Woman? Then mumbling something about God and Jesus.

I wanted to see a famous stone bridge crossing the River Rimac (Lima is a Spanish corruption of the Inca name Rimac). It was disappointing. And it led to a real slum area, just minutes walk from the palatial splendor of the Plaza. Windows smashed, drunks bumbling, eyes staring. Walked past a food stall on the street and a woman with a purple birthmark on her face rushed over, concerned..."¡regraso, regraso....es peligrosso!" (return, return, it´s dangerous!). We looked up and saw a beaten-up Policia 4x4 hastily driven onto the pavement up the way. A raid. Men on the roof, semi-naked. Making signs of the devil at us as we walked past. Another man on the corner, pointing for us to go in the other direction. "regraso, regraso....". We got the fuck outta dodge.

The San Francisco monastery was a small walk away, so we visited that as part of a tour group. The guide showed us Moorish tiling in the main courtyard, wooden tributes to the deeds of St Francis, a carved wooden copula, and a catacomb full of grey bones. We stared at a circular arrangement of many skulls and femurs.

From here tried to find Chinatown, but instead hit a street market full of food stalls, and had a bite of Papas Rellenas, a mashed potato reformed with cooked beef, an olive, and a boiled egg inside, then deep fried until golden and crispy. I had another spud feast, Papas de la Huancaina, something I remember was recommended by Tina - boiled slices in a hollandaise-type sauce, with aji. Gorgeous.

Then to San Cristobal, the hill overlooking the city. From the top, where there´s an ornate cross studded with halogen lamps, you can see the vast expanse of shantytowns and skyscrapers, mud flats and well-cut parks. A strange place.

After a quick spell down a massively crowded shopping street, Jiron de la Union, we got a taxi back, to change, then out again for the most expensive meal I´ve had in months, at the Nautica Rosa restaurant. It´s built on its own pier so you walk past crashing, salty waves to get there, passing craft shops and bright lights. The ocean below the restaurant is lit by searchlights, and we were by far the youngest there - all else were lawyers and doctors, resplendant in their finery. Swordfish, tuna, asparagus, risotto, pecan pie, lucuma cream, a holy bread man, too much cutlery, a $8 splash of wine in a crystal glass. Fantastic food, and the bill was 174 soles, about $60. It´d be a ton back home.

We wanted a couple of beers to finish off and asked the taxi by the start of the pier to take us back to Barranco, but he told us all the bars were shut, and that he would take us to the Eclipse instead, a place full of chicas, in San Isidro, a barrio north of ours. The Eclipse turned out to be a strip club, charging 50 soles entry. So we got straight back in the cab, went to where we wanted to go in the first place, found out the bars were in fact open, and Mark stiffed the driver with the fake 50 sol note he´d picked up in Trujillo.

Lima eh?

PERU: The majesty of Huaraz

I´M AT: Albergue Churup, see below.

The days are full of snow and white horses.

Flanked by mountains of grace and majesty, Huaraz sits in a bowl of dust, arteries untidy with unkempt brick. It´s thrown up some great hikes.

First was Pasto Ruri with my recovering brother. A white shroud at 5000 metres, this glacier caps one peak on a crown of mountains. Bus from hostal, with biscuit-faced hombre giving it large on the mic in his black leather jacket, led us to bubbling mineral pools, rust red and foaming, and to a small deep green pond. A llama in Don Johnson shades was posed for photos. And a girl got onto the bus holding a lamb in a small knitted hat.

Bus carried on past a scattering of puya raymondi plants, endemic to Peru and Bolivia only at this altitude and climate. They´re enormous. A spiky bush gives frond to a bushy spike only once, at the end of the plant´s 100-year life, scattering thousands of seeds from thousands more flowers. The spike flamed its way high into the sky from the charred earth and we took pictures of each other.

The glacier itself sits at the end of a short walk at high altitude, and is grey from visitors. But the countryside is fantastic, all curves and licks and dripping icicles.

Next day, Axel, Mark and I, later joined by a lovely French couple, went to the best hike of the lot, Laguna 69. After initial confusion we took a bumpy collectivo to Yungay, a town recovering from an earth-and-meltwater catastrophe in 1970 that buried the whole city. From here we got a battered half-brother taxi up the rocky slopes to the Llanganucho lakes, clear greens and blues, and then to Cebollapampa, a campsite through which we walked at the start.

This hike was stunning. Up white-grey tracks past trees and flowering bushes, a waterfall polishing the red shine beneath, past a huge shard of rock and a small grazing pasture to a brilliant blue lagoon, on the one side overtowered by a huge peak, reflecting gently in the rippled surface. Mark and I walked in opposite directions round the shore, returning only when the noise of rockslides above got too much.

I met another great couple here as well, Richard and Mazza, she of Vancouver and he - fantastic - of Croydon outskirts, so chatted with Richard in matching accent, all big time and easy life. A lovely couple who I hope to stay in touch with.

The Laguna had killed Axel a bit so he went to bed, but Mark and I went onwards outwards to meet Danish Rebecca for a lemon tea or six in the Trece Buhos, the Thirteen Owls club.

Nexto, Mark and I, expensive mountain bike trip in the corderillera negra, unsnowed peaks, freewheeling past dust and pines and farmers and angry barking dogs, who almost took our shins off, good sport. This was just a half-day and there was too much up.

And finally today up early again to meet Hans, a Swiss guy, and later US Heidi and her mates, medical students from Lima, for Laguna Churup. This one did me in, steep from the start, and after grazing on rocks with the promise of more steep I bailed out and took a leisurely descent into donkey fields, with a bag of dried apricots and pistachios. Hans and I gladly shared the lift back to Huaraz, where I found a burnt neck.

Huaraz is great. Lima tomorrow.

PERU: 4+630

I´M AT: Albergue Churup, see below.

There´s only one, mostly-unpaved road from Huaraz to Willkawain.

Juan, the hostal owner, recommended we hike there, and get the bus back if tired. Mark and I both needed the exercise, to get our strength back, and to acclimatise properly you need to stretch your heart, head and lungs.

At the end of the hike, at Willkawain itself, you can find what is basically a quite impressively-restored, stone-built barn, about 20 metres square, 15 metres high and with three floors. The whole place has been built with great care. The stones in the walls and ceiling varied in size from small pebbles to huge slabs of rock, all of which had been polished a shiny black over time. The first floor was given over to animals and their feed, whilst the second and third were for humans. The guide speculated that this was probably the home of an important local family or families; it was impossible to say for sure, as only miniature ceramics, for burial with the dead, have been excavated. Willkawain was built in 1100AD.

Clearly our faces at breakfast had betrayed a health and stamina which wasn´t yet there, as the hike almost killed me. Countless times, turned corner to find - yet more steeply-sloping dust. One of the many rest breaks brought some sort of curse from a witchlike old woman, haggard in her mountain garb, who, in answer to an amiable ´buenas tardes´, viciously swished a bent cane and muttered darkly at us as we sat at the side of the road.

Anyway, as we sweated I noticed all the houses were painted with numbers - 3+190, 3+200, 3+220 and so on. When I saw the big 4KM sign at the side of the road, I twigged what these were - extremely practical house numbers. The numbers show the distance from the start of the road in Huaraz to the house itself, in kilometres+metres. The road is not a good one, so a gauge of distance is very useful.

It was at 4+630 - a ramshackle concrete block with a dusty lump of garden - that I felt the heat in my belly and was forced to plead for the baño. And what a baño this was. A tramp through the dust to two size-six, foot-shaped carvings on the floor, and a damnation of brown below, accompanied by a barking dog nipping at my lowered jeans. I had to hang on to the unplastered wall to avoid following everything down.

As our bus came back down the road, from the ruin, I tried to make out the hallowed ground, so I could take a picture, but all I could make out was mud, bracken and a set of grinning teeth.

PERU: Tenemos mal salud

I´M AT: Alburgue Churup, Huaraz. $13 in twin room, $6 in dorm. Very relaxed, gentle smell of burnt pines, two common rooms with DVD in one, bit mean on the breakfast.

We turned up in Huaraz in plenty of time for Thursday and Friday night and so, with intentions of hitting the town for a couple of nights - acclimatisation time, you understand, no hiking for 48 hours - we got some quick sleep, after the night bus from Trujillo had given us none. Mark had been feeling a bit shaky for a couple of days and I got a bit achy just before we got on the bus.

For the next 72 hours I didn´t know which part of my body to point at the toilet, but whatever came out, it was the colour of Inca Kola - bright, merciless yellow. The lights and sounds of the weekend tapped on the window but I couldn´t really decide if it was night or day. Aborted attempts to walk into town were followed by a collapse into bed, again.

This has been a right pain, as both of us have lost weight, strength and stamina, and now just walking up to breakfast is difficult. Over the next few days I need to get my appetite back and start walking properly again before finally getting around to the hikes.

Read a couple of good books, though.

PERU: Some ruins and stuff

I´M AT: Casa Suiza, see below.

Two thousand years ago, in one part of the world, one man founded a religion. In another part, thousands of other men baked mud bricks and made big things out of them in the sand.

Chan Chán is a mud city built by the Chimu indians. It´s the biggest in the world - but this is a similar claim to stating you´ve got the biggest nose in the world, or the smallest cock. It´s located on the coast between Huanchaco and Trujillo.

There´s not much of it left now. One of the palaces has been restored and there you can see carved adobe fish, and diamond-shaped nets, storage huts with reed rooves, faces and shapes in the hard brown mud. I couldn´t quite feel the culture here. Same goes for the Huaca del Dragón which is located right bang in the middle of a ghetto, fumes, dogs, decaying houses and wind-flapped laundry. Dragón´s a big mud brick carved like a sinister wedding cake.

The next day, Tuesday, we got a rickety van to Huaca de la Luna, which was a pyramid built by the Moche. There are two out there in the desert, actually, the other one´s the Huaca del Sol but it´s been reduced, by the Spanish, the weather and the looters, from its palatial past to a mud lump. Anyway the visitable Luna is carved with painted shapes, men, huge crabs, serpents - they´re all faded quite badly and the place is still being restored. Our guide spoke only Spanish, so it was hard to understand the full picture. But what I certainly couldn´t work out is why they spent so long - 600 years - building a pyramid right next to what, to me, looked like a far more impressive mountain, perfectly servicable, a lot bigger, and almost pyramid-shapèd.

Anyone?

PERU: Like Margate, but colder

I´M AT: Casa Suiza, Huanchaco, nr Trujillo. The loo flushes only occasionally,and there´s no breakfast, cos the kitchen´s being redecorated. But it´s near the beach and only $5 a night with private bathroom.

AND LO - here I am in Peru.

First impressions are that it´s an awful lot more dirty, noisy, and chaotic than Ecuador. I feel I´ve been thrust into a tatty blender.

Border crossing was quite a laugh, once we´d stopped batting away the mosquitoes. The Ecuadorian side was fine - all official and pretty quick. But once we´d walked over the dirt road and under the Bienvenidos Peru sign, our days of ease and grace and sweet air were over. The border guard´s concrete outpost was black and empty, and the bus was humming with a waiting engine, so a bunch of locals from the bus walked up and hammered on the door, rang the buzzer, shouted, tapped keys on the window. Nothing happened. Dark and humid, and food for buzzing creatures. Cockroaches and crickets, rolling like dark treacle on the tarmac. Until - by the light of a candle and bleary-eyed, the guy, about 50, crumbling like a digestive, took his place behind the immigration desk, and with rusty stamp imprinted our passports, eyes winking through bottle-bottom glasses, laughed that my name is King, and squattly wallowed in his dirty tracksuit. I could quite easily have handed him a pencil portrait enscribed on a crisp packet and received his blessing.

So we moved on and into the night.

The route from Ecuador took us from Loja over the border to Piura, in Northern Peru. Little to detain us there so on, through a very bleak, white-yellow desert, concrete houses without roofs, to Chiclayo, another change of bus and on to Trujillo. Helpfully, the local beer is called Trujillo, so with an advertiser´s handclap we poured ourselves off and into the afternoon, a taxi straight to Huanchaco which the guide called a ´relaxing surfer´s paradise´.

It was like Margate, only colder. A ramshackle pier, chipped surfboards, sweet carts and their owners ambling around on faded pink conrete. Large orange sandwiches of waffle and toffee. Fish restaurants closed for the low season. Glistening grey sky.

Anyway we dropped anchor at the hostal and changed, went out for beer and food, got a taxi back into Trujillo, went to a club (naturally), and came home the worse for wear, a few pennies shorter and with aching backs, to rest our toes in the freezing coast.

ECUADOR: Deep South, Man

I´M AT: Hostal Izhcayluma, Vilcabamba. German-run, $8 dorm room including a wonderful breakfast, views over stunning scenery, an incredibly varied and beautiful garden that attracts exotic birdlife, bar, pool table, swimming pool, hammocks - the business.

Vilcabamba seems to have a reputation for attracting the esoteric of mind.

It´s the place where you can supposedly get San Pedro, a hallucinogenic drink made from a local cactus, used by shamans and the like. I didn´t see it on offer or even spoken about, but Vilcabamba did seem to be in the middle of a long trip.

Take the caucasian guy with mocassins who used to traverse the main plaza, veeeeery slowly, bleached dreadlocks tied into a pineapple above his head, sacks for clothes, his mixed-race children and wife walking a few paces behind him. Or Mike, a bloke from Norwich who´d moved here years ago, never to return, who ran a café in town, complete with a display cabinet of mystical ephemera and books on symbolism. Mike was a big drinker and weed smoker, as, it turned out, were most of his mates. His even stranger friend, Gavin, was an emaciated, 50-year-old Kiwi in a cowboy hat, who babbled manically about dark omens in the sky.

Mark and I were once invited back to Mike´s house after a night of drinking in the café, and we passed a carved potato pipe around Mike and his friends, through which we smoked a very baggy spliff. I was told the next day that I´d been listening to Mike eulogise about some guru for hours, nodding my head as best I could, but the memory is not mine. The night ended - as did all four nights in Vilcabamba - walking up the 2km pitch-black slope back to the hostal, fending off the farm dogs.

Another night, on the way down, our German friend Kristine and I bumped into a bunch of drunks who were swigging something from a water bottle. They waved us over for a chat and offered us a drink and, despite thinking this could be San Pedro, we both took a swig from their unmarked bottle. It turned out to be cane liquor, made extremely locally, and was so nice that I bought a bottle to keep me company during the forthcoming nine-hour journey to Peru.

For all that, Vilcabamba is absolutely, outrageously beautiful. Brown, rutted cliffs spill into gentle canyons below, butterflies drift like pollen on the temperate air, birdsong is light and trill, and the nights are warm. One day, before Mark showed up, a group of us borrowed a mountain bike each from the hostal and rode to the start of a three-hour hike to a nearby waterfall, which you had to slide your way through a guy´s near-vertical potato field to get to. I ended up taking the same photograph of the same beautiful view thirty times.

But the place had its teeth into me as well, for not only did I turn down a beer one dinner, I forgot to take up the pool challenge laid by two German girls. Anite, and your silent friend, Vilcabamba has a lot to apologise for.

ECUADOR: Arroz con pollo

A bit about the food and drink in Ecuador.

FRUITS AND JUICES - sensational, and such a broad range. Mora (blackberry), papaya, naranjilla (a small, ultra-juicy orange), taxo and grenadilla (a bit like pomegranites in that they´re hard shells full of many seeds, suck from husk, gorgeous), pina (pineapple), naranja, four different types of banana including a red one, watermelon, lima, maracuyá (passion fruit)....all really good, fresh and cheap.

The fruit juices are freshly made, often with added sugar, sometimes with the raw white of an egg to make em frothy. This is a poor country, but the juices are readily available, everyone drinks them, they´re tasty, healthy and cheap. You can also get these as batidos (milkshakes) which are equally good.

SET MEALS - desayunos (breakfasts) and almeurzos (lunches) cost about $1-$1.50 and are, broadly speaking, a cheese sandwich or bun; coffee (usually Nescafe); a fresh fruit juice; and the main dish, rice with fried chicken, or rice with fried ´meat´. It´s not great, but it´s bloody cheap and fills a hole. Sometimes you´ll have a soup dish with lunch as well, I´ve seen plenty of menus offering sopa de patas, chicken-feet soup.

Meriendas (evening meals) could be llapangachas (stuffed potatoes with sausages, or chicken), or cuy (guinea pig), with roast tomate de arbol (a type of sour tomato, much better cooked than raw or juiced). I haven´t eaten many Ecuadorian dinners here so I can´t do this section justice.

SEAFOOD - the best thing to eat here, by some distance, is ceviche, raw fish or cooked shellfish, served in a cold broth of tomatoes, onions, lemon juice, a stinging hot aji (chilli sauce), popcorn and banana chips. I wasn´t looking forward to it but it´s gorgeous. The best one I had was also the cheapest, served up during a Gran Colombia food festival in Quito´s downtown market, at which we ate some figs, cheeses, little fried potato cakes, all fantastic stuff.

STREET FOOD - loads of different stuff, dried banana chips, crisps, really good fresh fruit helados (ice creams), chocolate, empanadas (pasties, with banana, or cheese), loads of corn on the cob. The buses always stop and let food sellers on, and it´s too often far too tempting. These guys charge $0.25 for an ice cream or small snack, $0.50 for something filling.

INTERNATIONAL - there are loads of places offering international food as well, certainly in the big towns. Many hostels have cafés and restaurants and these are the places to eat Italian, German, Mexican, sushi....anything you fancy. The best pizza I´ve had was at New York´s, in Cuenca, where the smallest pizza on the menu was the size of a truck wheel. All fresh and oozing.

ECUADOR: Salud, Fernandas

I'M AT: The Hotel Pichincha, Cuenca, see below.

My last day in Cuenca, and I got done everything that I wanted to do - sent some stuff home, including about 400 photos on CD, and bought some waterproof clothes - no longer The Most Unprepared Man in South America

 

So with a couple of hours to kill I walked to Turi.

 

Turi´s a hamlet with a powder-blue church, overlooking the city of Cuenca.  It takes about an hour to get there, mostly uphill.  You have to do a chicken run across the Loja-Azaqoes motorway to get there.  Midday´s not the time to do it when the sun´s out.

 

But the view really is great, taking in the whole city, surrounding villages, the Tomebamba and three other rivers, mountains in the distance, little fluffy clouds, the whole deal.  The only thing is that there´s really nothing else to do up there.  The church was shut and I already had a bottle of water, so I came back down again, and got lost in the suburbs, really wealthy houses with tree ferns on the driveway, high gates, mesh shutters, Alsatians.  And eventually, passing the cafe where I bought the water on the way up, I smiled at the señora who´d served me, she called me over, and I met her three giggly daughters and grandson Fernandas.  Cute lad with a thick Fifth Beatle of black hair.

 

When the highlight of your day is a brief, sweaty, fractured conversation with a small, nervous child, it´s time to move on.  Salud, Fernandas.

---

Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail . "The New Version is radically easier to use" – The Wall Street Journal

ECUADOR: The Sapphire-Vented Puffleg

I'M AT: Hotel Pichincha, Cuenca. No-frills $4.50 with good central sitting area, angry bars on the windows, friendly and helpful (if bleary-eyed) owner.

Met Handsome Swiss Guy Mark (I should add, NOT my description) in the hotel Pichincha on Wednesday evening and went out and got battered, ended up dancing in a salsa club and then went to an after-hours bar with a load of Ecuadorians.  The girls here are quite spectacular.

 

Got in at 5AM, slept most of Thursday but at night we went to a posh restaurant called the Eucalyptus Cafe, then to Club Roto for the 10 de Agosto celebrations.

 

Got back at 4.30AM.

 

Friday, Mark, me and two American girls, Dara and Golden, took in a match between Deportivo Cuenca and Liga de Quito.  Finished 1-1, Quito had a man sent off and there were some very impressive fireworks.  And cold lagers.  So after a quick bite to eat we hit a club called Pop.  Danced until the wee hours and got in at 4AM.

 

And then it was Saturday.  Saturday night was surprisingly quiet early doors, but still - we managed to go salsa dancing at the Eucalyptus again until 2, then to a strange deserted club (which I later found out was a strip joint) playing house music and serving $3 cuba libres, did some stupid dancing with some Spanish and French folk, and got in this morning at 4.30AM.

 

Four nights on the trot, six different clubs, Pilsener and Brahma beers, absolutely wrecked, I´m an old man and I´m finally feeling it, but have the suspicion that tonight´s quiet night may not be as quiet as would be good for me.

Met some cracking characters, though. Hippy Suzy and her mate Betty, who ran the after-hours bar; an artist called Freddie, wheelchair-bound, likes a whisky and supports both Rangers and Celtic; DJ Gustavo, a guy we saw play both Roto and Pop, loads of different music and a good bald grinning madman; Sili, from Venezuela, who was always trying to get into Mark's pants; and a cast of three from El Cafecito hostal, including sad-faced Arriana from Quito, who never quite joined in.

 

 

Somewhere along the line we managed to fit in a trip to Parque Nacional Cajas, which was stunningly beautiful, verdant and eerie, rivalling Quilotoa for the most spectacular countryside.  It really was incredible, lakes, spikily-leaved plants, giant lichen and jagged mountains, which the golden sun made holy with its beam.

 

And I shouldn´t leave this bit about the park without mentioning some of the varieties of hummingbird that we COULD have seen, which Mark has picked out in luminous yellow in his guidebook, and which I´d write in the sky in enormous letters for all time, if I could:

 

- the Rainbow-bearded Thornbill;

 

- the Purple-throated Sunangel; and:

 

- ......the Sapphire-Vented Puffleg.

 

How good is that??

ECUADOR: Bananas, elections and landslides

I'M AT: El Tren Dorado, Riobamba, but wishing I was in Cuenca.

I tried to leave Riobamba on Monday, a six-hour journey to Cuenca, but, much like the train, the bus turned back after four hours and came back to Riobamba, as a landslide had blocked the main road.

 

You´d imagine that big cities would be amply connected but no, the landscape here is so mountainous that the ´main´ road is pretty much a dirt track in the sky, so when the mountain crumbles, so do everyone´s travel plans.

 

Anyway, back in Riobamba I met a surprised Katy, who I´d left that morning, and we had a cracking Chinese, so the day wasn´t all wasted.  She did level the scores at cribbage though.

 

So the next day I left Riobamba again, half the man I used to be, and this time via Guayaquil.  And believe me, ten hours is a long time to keep waving away the fried banana salesmen.

 

The journey contained very many sparkling white herons and their miniature bookend offspring, huge fields of bananas, all bagged for harvest, moped taxis, enormous stalls selling enormous melons, and the first touch of 30 degree heat since I landed.

 

And everywhere you go, every available space has been painted red, yellow and blue with the name and affiliation of one of the twenty-odd Presidentail candidates in the forthcoming election.  Quite simple but no less impressive for it.  VOTE CYNTHIA.  And they will.  Saatchi and Saatchi could learn from this.

ECUADOR: Derailed on the Devil´s Nose

I'M AT: El Tren Dorado, Riobamba. Good rooms bang on top of station, with star signs for room numbers (stayed in Taurus) and richly embroidered animal throws.

Riobamba is a bigger city than I´d expected, and really nice and buzzy.  It sits in a valley surrounded by the Chimborazo and Tungurahua volcanioes, and as the bus comes into town you´re greeted with a hazy patchwork background of snow, rock and cloud.  Nice.

 

The tourists in Riobamba are here for one thing only, and it´s not the reggaeton.  We ride a stretch of railway they called the Nariz del Diablo, or Devil´s Nose.  The railway used to connect Riobamba to Guayaquil, many hundreds of miles away, but lack of investment, landslides and successive tropical storms have destroyed much of it.  It now goes precisely nowhere, and is nigh-on useless for getting around, but it passes through some spectacular countryside, and some marketing genius has been employed to ensure that the roof is always full of tourists paying $11 for the ride and $1 for a cushion.

 

The train leaves at 7AM but you need to be there early to secure a good spot on the roof.  So, after a 5AM breakfast, we bundled on fleeces and hats to sit on a rusty expanse and wonder at what was next.

 

The train rolled through town with much drama, horn blasting, cars and trucks and people waving us off.  And then, for the next two hours, the romantic visions died, we found ourselves sitting on top of an old train in the cold, and only the ocassional shower of rain broke the monotony.  I was the only one to put up an umbrella and hunched out of the way of the drips.

 

The train pulled into Alausi and we hopped off for a piss.  I say hopped off - we clambered down a metal ladder on the side of the truck - these are very high carriages and I ripped my jeans on the way.  Some bought hats, some ate banana pasties.

 

And then all back on board for the Devil´s Nose, a very steep descent into a dusty canyon.

 

Now, the guidebooks will have you believe that this is a miracle of engineering, but I would imagine that most, like me, with my scant knowledge of track engineering, would fail to grasp the endeavour.  So what you´re basically left with is a ride down the side of a mountain, spectacular though it is.

 

And then our carriage derailed at the side of a sheer drop, and the roof felt a little bit higher than it had before, and the woman who´d been standing up taking videos for the entire journey decided to quietly sit down.

 

So, after we´d stopped, with bits of wood and cigarettes in mouths, the brakemen got her up and running again, and we arrived safely back in Alausi, from where we got the bus back to Riobamba.

 

And there it is.  The Devil´s Nose train ride.  Six hours on a hot tin roof only to arrive right back to where you´d started.  Nice mountains though.

ECUADOR: Quilotoa, Chugchilán & Siquisili

I'M AT: Cabanas Quilotoa, Quilotoa. A cold, ramshackle converted barn... AND The Black Sheep Inn, Chugchilán. A hyper-ecofriendly hostal but with ridiculously high prices. Good food though.

For the past three days and nights I´ve travelled from Quito > Quilotoa > Chugchilán > Siquisli, and am now in Baños, there´s a partially exploded volcano over my shoulder, and it´s just started raining.

 

Quilotoa is a long-extinct volcano that last exploded in the late 1700s.  The eruption created an enormous crater which filled with beautiful green freshwater, and its ripples dive like drakes amongst the surrounding countryside.

 

The bus from Latacunga to Quilotoa was quite ridiculous, perched on the edge of foaming gorges, patchwork mountains.  Hard to believe that cultivation is possible at that sort of elevation.  Approached from the bus, we checked out and subsequently stayed in a really cold place called Cabañas Quilotoa, owned by Humberto Latacunga (no inbreeding there, then).

 

The tap water was recycled piss, I think - but they served up some nice hot grub and put on a show of dancing boys and girls, and we drank beer and played poker.  I met a nice couple called Steve and Suzanne from Worcester whom I´m meeting up with in about an hour.

 

That first afternoon we walked to the bottom of the crater and back up again, about half an hour down but a good hour back up.  I tumbled over loose sand on the way back, red faced with exertion, and was widely mocked by some lava-faced French who suggested that, haha, had I not seen it?, haha, I should use, the, the, the solid route to my left, which a small mountain girl was breezily ascending.

 

Thanks.

 

Made it back up but vowed not to do the hike from the crater to Chugchilán, the next stop (about 22km from Quilotoa).  So got the truck the next morning instead.  We arrived at the Black Sheep Inn for two nights and on that same morning hiked to the bottom of the canyon below, and then upstream, Steve and Suzanne shared their lunch with me (I´d been pounding my clothes on an old fashioned stone and had neglected to sort out a pack-up).  The river forked right, we took a smaller river, jumping across to save our feet from drowning, and then I - or Steve, I´m still not sure - lost the map.

 

So we kind of made it up from there, and some of the ledges were ridiculous, a small sideways step to the death below.

 

We climbed up a pounding steep loose bank to negotiate a waterfall, found ourselves on a plateau overlooking the canyon with only a lonely goatherd for company, asked him for directions, then decided against taking them, got chased by a snarling farmdog, before finally climbing the steep paths between farmed fields to emerge caked in blood and vomit, reeling from the agony.

 

And then collapsed back at the hostal - about which, in summary, a hippy dream of sorts, but a thriving business, a permaculture, completely vegetarian, sauna, honours system for the banana bread and other organic snacks, composting loos, llamas and dogs and cats and swans gadding about.  It was great, but I also was quite glad to leave in the end - it was expensive, and I felt like a walking swearbox, afraid to frown.

 

Wednesday morning we hired horses and a group of seven or eight of us rode to the Cheese Factory (a bit small and nondescript and the buggers left immediately after we rode off), then higher up to the Cloud Forest, had lunch, a small tour of medicinal plants, before a gallop back down the hills, a real race between the horses.  I´d been kicked in the knee in the morning, by a mule in front, but finished the day only with a really sore arse.

 

It was my first time on a horse and I absolutely loved it.

 

So I travelled here, to Baños, today, via a crazy market with a REAL snake oil salesman, and where you could buy a small cute puppy for $0.50, with Katy from Utah, who is only six days younger than me.  She´s an outdoors type and her enthusiasm scares me slightly.  Our paths diverged in Ambato, and she´s gone to Guaranda but is meeting Steve, Suzanne and me on Saturday to do the Devil´s Nose train ride in Riobamba.

 

We´re meeting at Simon Bolivar´s old house. He probably pissed into his own drinking water as well.