The Death Road

So, I, today 13 July 2004, survived the Death Road. The "world's most dangerous road" is not just a tourist moniker for the route which drops from La Cumbre, above La Paz at an icy 4900m, to Coroico, in the lush subtropical valley 3000m below. It's been officially applied by the U.S. Department of Transportation in virtue of this road having the highest average casualties per annum anywhere in the known world.

Most people are well aware that this is due more to the approach of drunk and/or crazy Bolivian truck and bus drivers - periodically sending a busload of people off the precipitous edge - than to the intrinsically terrifying nature of the road. Nevertheless, it has great notoriety, and tourists flock to take tours down the road on mountain bikes and boast afterwards of their brush with oblivion. Of course, it's relatively safe for cyclists and their stats are a lot better - just six tourists have plunged to their deaths in the last five years. Still enough to put a shiver down your spine, though. I was nervous when I woke up this morning; I didn´t actually expect to die, but I did expect some adrenaline - a life afirming experience, in fact, from a glimpse into the abyss. I'd promised my friends in Arequipa I'd be careful, and avoided telling you about it, Mum and Dad, to avoid the paroxysms of worry.

In the end? Well, it was more endorphins than adrenaline, more sport than daredevil adventure. We covered the 64 km from La Cumbre to Coroico in about 2 1/2 hours, hitting speeds of 60-70 km/h on the first stage, a beautiful stretch of ashphalt lined with fresh snow, allowing us the chance to appreciate the gorgeous rock-and-ice towers plunging into deep canyons. The next two bits along the dirt road to Corocio - a narrow 10km stretch known as the core "Camino de Muerte", followed by a wider but still precipitous 32 km - involved some rough mountain biking, and sore hands from gripping the brakes, but one hardly felt the breath of the grim reaper. I suppose there were some sheer drops - keeping your eyes on the road you didn't really see them - but the road was wide enough for a cyclist to pick their spot, and with four guides and two 4WDs all hooked up with radios, there was ample warning of any oncoming uphill or downhill traffic, so we could easily stop and get out of the way. The only time I was truly scared was during the extended safety briefing prior to the start of the 10 km "real death road" stretch - if anything was going to make me fall off my bike it was the nerves engendered by the way that bit was talked up...

I'd promised myself that I'd be conservative; I wanted to make it back to Arequipa; if there was going to be a fast group and a slow group I was going in the slow group. Of course, that's not how it turned out - it turned into a bit of a race, and I had to be in the fastest of the three groups. The others in the tour were a typical cross-section of South American tourists - three Dutch girls, two Israeli guys, two Swiss girls, a Quebecois couple, an English girl, a Norwegian guy, an English guy and an Irish girl. On the ashphalt stretch from La Cumbre, I was the first rider behind the lead guide; on the 8km uphill ashphalt/gravel bit which followed, only the Norwegian guy finished ahead of me. As we hit the dirt downhill parts the three 6-ft Dutch girls took off at breakneck speed, along with the Quebecois guy; I and the Norwegian guy lost them on the wildest bits. It wasn't until three quarters of the way down that I got the confidence to really lean into the left-hand turns (towards the cliff side). In the end we all finished together, the second group was about a minute behind, and the third five minutes behind them.

As we dropped in altitude the vegetation got thicker and lusher, the sun got stronger, and about two-thirds of the way down we could feel warm, humid air rushing up from the valley floor. Apart from the sheer enjoyment of the ride, the real highlight was the incredible vistas - jagged snowy mountaintops still visible, canyon walls plunging into the rich jungly valley. We went through a couple of waterfalls and, lower down, a couple of streams; by the time we were finished we were filthy with dust and mud. In Coproico we adjourned to the Hotel Esmeralda for a buffet lunch and fnatastic hot showers, appreciating the stunning views back across the valley and mountains framed by tropical flowers in the hotel patio.

Riding back up in the tour company's 4WDs with our "I survived the death road" t-shirts, I couldn't help feeling we were frauds. That's not to say that the road is toothless - quite the opposite. In a truck or bus, it's truly a nightmare. The truly crazy-headed angelic heroes are the drivers of the heavy vehicles which frequent the route - and the passengers packed into them. On the way down we stopped for an upcoming truck and saw it come head-to-head with a minivan which had just passed us. On the Death Road, the rules are the opposite of everywhere else on the continent - traffic must keep to the left, meaning that uphill vehicles get to hug the mountainside, while downhill traffic has to pass by flirting with the precipitous cliff face. On this occasion the two vehicles met a really narrow bit, and the minivan had to reverse quite some way before giving a chance for the truck to pass - as it did so, we could see the left wheels of the van clinging to the very edge of the fragile shoulder.

There are people who do this every day. You see the mandarins being sold by the old indigenous woman on the street in La Paz at the bargain rate of 5 for 1 Boliviano (20c)? Most probably they've been brought up from the warm valley round Coroico by one of the heavily-laden lorries that chug up the winding route. Or perhaps the woman herself carried them up in one of the ancient and jam-packed passenger vehicles making the daily trip.

Unlike a fighter pilot or someone who taps burning oil wells, though, these drivers don't receive rewards commensurate with their risks. What does a minivan driver on the Death Road get paid? Probably the same pittance that Bolivian bus drivers get everywhere. The only extra reward for him and his passengers is an existential one, from frequently and calmly facing oblivion. How much that is worth when them and their children depend on this livelihood, I don't know. It's not quite The Wages of Fear.

For a tourist, it's the perfect product - we get the glory and the thrill of association with danger, without the reality. But that's on the backs of the hundred or thousands of local people who have tragically plunged to their deaths. When you look at it that way, it's perhaps a little ghoulish...

Notes from the Altiplano

Ok, in brief...

I got into Puno yesterday afternoon and straight away hooked up a trip to Lake Titicaca and a ticket to La Paz for the day after - I'm on a mission on this trip...

I fully intended to go to bed early and get plenty of rest, only it didn't work out that way. Will it surprise you to learn that I ended up winning a T-shirt in a drinking contest? How did this come to pass? Well, I wasn't going to miss the Peru vs Venezuela football game (heartening 3-1 triumph for the home team). Then a couple of Australians in the bar I was watching the game decided that a gringo couldn't possibly sit by himself with only Peruvians for company, and invited me over; later we were joined by a couple of Canadian guys. The bar guy had earlier mentioned that there was going to be a big party put on by Cusqueña at a place called Megadisco. Cusqueña is a much nicer beer than Arequipeña, and even people in Arequipa generally agree - but in a fashion that rather typifies Peru, it's virtually impossible to find Cusqueña in Arequipa - and of course Arequipeña is not sold in Cusco or Puno (though is very popular in Arica, go figure...)

I ended up going with the Canadian guys (who were complete dumbasses, in the most pleasant sense) to Megadisco. There was a huge party in full swing, and we were absolutely the only gringos there. It came to pass that a drinking contest was announced - three audience volunteers had to scull a litre pitcher of Cusqueña, a competition for girls followed by one for boys. When the male volunteers were requested, I made a dash for the stage, and although I didn't quite get there in time, the compere was keen to have a gringo in the contest, and dragged me up. I knew I was going to win; as far as I can recall, I've never been beaten in a drinking race. As it turned out I came a comfortable first; my prizes were a Cusqueña t-shirt and another pitcher of beer to share with my friends...

It goes without saying that I had already ingested a quantity of Cusqueña before the contest, and continued to do so afterwards. I'm not really sure what time I got back to my hotel, but it certainly wasn't long before I was being woken up to go to the lake...after bolting some breakfast I found myself in a launch with about 20 other tourists, feeling as my eyes had been painted on and wanting nothing more than to simply spread myself out on the floor of the boat.

The trip took in a visit to two of the floating Uros islands, which are entirely constructed out of the totora reeds that grow in the shallow part of the lake. Families live on the islands in reed huts, get about on reed boats, and make reed souvenirs to sell to tourists. I'm afraid this wasn't my favourite part of the trip. Apart from the intrinsic interest in islands constructed from the bottom up (and my level of intrinsic interest was rather lower than usual at that point), I found the whole experience rather cloying - each tourist being personally welcomed off the boat and onto the island, and the five or six kids forming themselves into a little group and "spontanteously" bursting into song (including a version of "Frere Jacques"). We were later taken to another floating island in a reed boat; each tourist was charged 3 soles. With over 20 people on board, those guys make a killing. It would take a taxi driver in Arequipa more than twenty trips to make that kind of money. Plus, Hugo says that on the islands regularly visited by tourists, the families don't live there at all - they live in Puno and head out early in the morning in time for the tourists. I don't blame them - I wouldn't live on a bloody reed island either.

Later the launch chugged on another 1 1/2 hours into the lake to visit the (permanent, 8 sq km) island of Traquile. This I did like. Although the top of the island, at 3900 metres, is significantly higher than Puno, the climate is much balmier, owing to its exposure to air originating from the hot jungle on the north side of the lake. It has an almost Mediterranean aspect, with lots of eucalyptus trees and wildflowers, agricultural terraces separated by carefully maintained stone walls. An Incan stone road runs from the jetty to the plaza de armas and steeply down to the main port on the south side of the island, passing through stone arches and offering stunning 360 views of the lake and the jagged, snow-covered Bolivian cordillera to the east. Like the villages and orchards of the Colca Canyon (story still coming), it reminded me more than anything of some New Age imagining of a medieval idyll.

I liberated myself of a couple of soles on the 2km road to the plaza, giving tips to a couple of the series of kids who were offering themselves as photo subjects as an alternative to selling their uninteresting woven braids. You'll see why when I get the photos developed. I'm not normally a sucker for the whole "cute children" thing, but I could already see the whole scene on glossy prints, and there's something about innocent-looking kids against a bucolic landscape and soaring mountaind which is a pretty universal heart-melter. Something to do with the collective aspirations of humanity, I think, though Stephen Pinker would no doubt pinpoint the response in a specific biological module which was adaptive at some time in our evolutionary past...

In the plaza we had lunch, while handsome dark-skinned men stood around furiously knitting. Apparently there are distinct traditional costumes for single men, single women, married men and married women. One's woolly hat is also an important part of one's identity, and boys start to learn to make their own at an early age. The casually rapid and elaborate stitching that I witnessed would have put many a maiden aunt to shame.

We got back on the boat for the more than three hour trip back to Puno. Everyone went back to their hotels while the Israelis went to complain; they claimed they had been promised that lunch had been included in the tour price...

I've just been to eat, so here I am now. This time I really and truly am going home to bed; tomorow I'm off to La Paz.

The Imbeciles manage a draw...

The Copa America got under way on Tuesday amidst fairly low-key festivities - at least in Arequipa - and near disaster for the home team. While all the local radio stations and newspapers speculate about the possible boost to tourism, the evidence of a major football tournament taking place here is currently limited to garlands being hung along the arcades around the plaza, plus a few Chileans and the odd Brazilian mooching around the bars and restaurants in the centre (Arequipa is home to the group containing Brail, Chile, Paraguay and Costa Rica).

Meanwhile in Lima, the tournament opened with Peru vs Bolivia. As I was eating dinner in the centre of town, my friends Cintia and Jackie came by to inform me that they were going out drinking to celebrate the fact that "Peru's going to win the championship", cheerily disregarding the fact that at half time an unconvincing Peru was 0-1 behind a Bolivian side hanging back but dangerous on the counter attack.

10 minutes into the second half, there was despair at my house as Bolivia went 2-0 into the lead, managing a bizarre goal when the Peruvian keeper Oscar Ibanez strolled out to collect a ball rolling towards the goaline, only to see the chasing Bolivian left back nudge the ball past him and shoot into the unguarded net from an oblique angle. While Hugo sat resigned and impassive, Lisbet hurled threats and curses at the television - "Imbéciles!; Inútiles!; don't you have any strength?; can't you take a shot?" - demanded the substitution of the entire Peruvian forward line and midfield, and announced that it was all typical as no Peruvian would ever amount to anything...

As the half wore on, Peru poured forward, as the entire Bolivian team seemed to have decided to defend from their penalty area; eventually a penalty was won and converted - 2-1. Before and after this moment Peru managed to squander about a dozen clear-cut chances, leading to much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth from the audience in front of the TV, waking and upsetting 3 year-old Gerardo and the kitten. Finally, all manner of shots from six yards having been blasted over, midfielder Roberto Palacios twisted on the edge of the area and fired in a stunning volley to level the score. There was still eight minutes or so for Peru to miss several more opportunities to win and for the terrifying prospect to hover that Bolivia would break away and notch a third goal - but in the end it stayed at 2-2.

The post-match mood was one of relief and reflection - a feeling that Peru had got out of jail combined with the sense that they really should have won by four or five. At least, in the easiest of groups, their hopes are still well alive, and there's the example of Portugal - who lost their opening game as hosts and still made the final. Hope springs eternal...

Matrimony, long-lost cousins and penis-shaped ballons

Man, it just gets weirder. A little over two weeks ago, I was invited, along with my Israeli friend Itzik, to the "despedida de soltera" of Ana, respectively the sister and cousin of my friends Lenny and Mariela. The functional translation of that is "hen's night", although it sounds much more dignified in Spanish. Ana was to get married to Frank, a French guy she had met three years ago; they had decided to make it permanent after he had visited her for a month in each of the succeeding years.

Yes, I know that boys don't normally get invited to such events - Itzik and I were there in the capacity of, ahem, strippers...but before anybody finds themselves beset with disturbing mental images, don't worry, we didn't have to take (many) clothes off...

It was certainly an eye-opening experience that I don't expect to repeat - there were about eight of Ana's friends gathered in her living room, together with her aunt Miriam, who I suppose was there in some kind of technical chaperone capacity. The room was festooned with helium ballons decorated with drawings from the Kama Sutra, plus liberal quantities of penis-shaped ballons; everyone being required to wear one on their head or round their neck. It befell Ana to wear an apron which flipped up to reveal male genitalia, drink from a penis-shaped cup, and speak into a carved wooden penis "microphone"...certainly there was a quite disturbing abundance of false phalluses, mock members, or what have you...

After, and during, the consumption of a bewildering variety of impromptu cocktails concocted from rum, champagne, cream, honey and god knows what else, everyone was required to choose a ballon from the ceiling and act out the scene from the Kama Sutra depicted on it. Playact, that is. I have to mention that aunt Miriam was among the most enthusiastic in this respect.


Two weeks later (the weekend just gone) I found myself in Ilo, a town on the coast about six hours from Arequipa in the department of Morquegua. A port and summer vacation town of fog, fishing boats, dust and jacarandas, Ilo is where Ana's parents live and was the venue for the wedding. By this time Itzik had left for Cusco, but Mariela and Lenny absolutely insisted that I come. I reluctantly agreed to hire a suit and, surprising myself, found that I actually looked pretty good...

After a tiring journey on the Saturday morning we arrived in Ilo and I was introduced to the parents and to Frank. One of the reasons that Mariela and Lenny had insisted I come was that poor Frank had come by himself from France, without family and friends. It was necessary, therefore, that I be the "amigo del novio". Lenny explained this to her parents, having pointed out unabashedly that I had attended the despedida in the role of stripper (her father then introduced me to one of his friends as "el estripper"). In the course of discussing all this, there was a change of plans - I was to be the *cousin* of the groom - since Frank couldn't possibly without at least some family. I don't think anyone had asked Frank if he needed a friend, let alone a cousin, but there it was.

I should mention that Frank turned out to be a thin, rather pale guy with his hair in a bob - kind looking but clearly nervous. Ana is pretty and gregarious, but far more chilled than her certifiably crazy sister. Both around 27. The ceremony was a civil one, in a local club; the room was decked out in almost surreal "wedding cake" style was lacy tablecloths, thick white curtain and huge aquamarine sashes. I was introduced to all and sundry as "Frank's cousin", including to the compere; so it was that after the exchange of vows, when the speeches and photos began, it was announced that "Frank, too, is not alone tonight - his cousin has come". There were photos with the parents, photos with the siblings, and then, when it was time for cousins, aunts and uncle, I was dragged up with Mariela and aunt Miriam. I made sure the offical photographer took one with my camera as well - I had to record the moment, feeling rather like the unknown guy who pops up in the Manchester Utd team photo.

After that it went downhill a little - I managed to lose Mariela's ring from her 15-years party when I put her into a turn and the ring flew off her little finger, to elude much searching of the dance floor and surrounds. Nevertheless, we finished off the rest of the beer (oblivious to the internal curdling with the previously consumed champagne, strawberry rum, pisco sour, piña colada etc) and stumbled back to crash at Ana's place at 5:30 in the morning.

The next day, unsurprisingly, I suffered a substantial hangover. It was a looong bus ride back to Arequipa, the slightly splattered suit hung up in the window. I expect to get the photos developed shortly.

A bit on Euro 2004

Oh the drama and unpredictability of football...in short order Germany, Italy, Spain, France and England have been knocked out of the "Eurocopa", leaving Holland and three of the EU's "emerging" nations in the semi-finals (I include Portugal, as at last count they still had a slightly lower per-capita GDP than New Zealand). If it was a beauty contest, you'd be suspicious of a political stitch-up.

The highlights so far include the Czech Republic's pulsating, come from behind 3-2 win over Holland...and the Italians going into a furious sulk *before* the 2-2 draw between Denmark and Sweden which knocked them out. And how must it feel to be Greek right now, with the Olympics still to come in September? Male testosterone levels must be soaring there at the moment...

What will happen from hereon? Very hard to say. I'd love to see Portugal go all the way - they play fluid, eloquent football and deserved to go through against England (sorry, Gareth, if you read this). But they lack a bit of the ability to actually knock in the goals, so I have my doubts. On the basis of performances so far, you can't go past the Czech Republic, who have won all four of their games and scored ten goals - although they were somewhat less convincing against Denmark this afternoon. Then there's my perennial second-favourite team and perennial chokers, Holland. They're a bit lucky, having only actually won one game so far - but they've been unlucky in the past, and it could be their year. And of course anyone who's written off Greece so far has been wrong...so it should be pretty exciting stuff. I can't wait till Wednesday!

Down to the Majes Valley
Last weekend I had fun in a little town called Corire, about 3 hours down towards the coast from Arequipa in the startling green oasis of the Majes Valley. There's a relatively well-known petroglyphs site at a place called Toro Muerto in the desert near Corire,and I had been told it was also possible to see dinosaur footprints not too far from the town. My real motivation for going there, though, was to get out of Arequipa and have a little adventure on my own - away from the endless rounds of drinking, dancing, being stuffed full of the bewildering array of "typical Arequipeño/Peruvian" dishes and warnings to "never come here alone" in just about every place we visit...

I didn't manage to get off my ass and down to the bus station until about 3:00 pm on Saturday, and so after three hours up and down through the rocky desert accompanied by blaring but breezy salsa, merengue, cumbia and Latin baladas, it was dark by the time we got to Corire. A truly charming little town - extending no more than two or three blocks in any direction from the obligatory leafy plaza with a bustling market of fried food stalls and the usual assortment of goods and trinkets; plus a whole extra block devoted to fruit and vegetables. I checked into a hotel, had dinner and went for a stroll, feeling smug about being the one single gringo in the whole place. Until I arrived back at the hotel to find there were a group of ubiquitous Germans talking loudly outside my room...I asked at the reception about how to get to Toro Muerto and before I knew it was hooked up to get taken there the next morning by a guy called Marco Antonio, whose only qualification seemed to be that he was married to the receptionist.

The next morning he woke me up and said he would take me out in return for the cost of the petrol. After I insisted that I needed breakfast we found a comedor, where the options were adobo or adobo (a huge pork chop floating in a soup rich with onions - try digesting that at 8:00 am). We drove out into the desert until Marco Antonio's car refused to go any further, then got out and walked on, while he pointed out the various petroglyphs on the rocks - engraved drawings of llamas, people, geometrical designs and a disproportionate number of snakes. Marco Antonio certainly didn't have any specific guiding qualifications - he was unable to tell me which culture had done the drawings (I've since read they date from about 900 AD) and was in the dark about their significance. We wandered along looking at the drawings, him saying "What do you think this is then? An eagle? No, a condor you reckon? Ok, we'll go with a condor"

I actually preferred this, though, as it seemed a bit more like an exploration. Especially when we saw that a tourist minibus with the Germans pulled up below us and they got out, walked around and looked at a few rocks for 15 minutes, then got back in and drove away. We had climbed quite a long way further up the hill, and the drawings up there were definitely more impressive. We wondered about the petroglyphs - the most likely explanation for their existence is that the valley was on a trading route and people camping there drew them to entertain themselves. On the other hand, they would have involved painstaking engraving with the tools that were available - and when you're travelling a long and arduous route and stop to camp the night, you're exhausted, hardly in the mood to doodle. As Marco Antonio said, "you don't even have the energy to be with a woman" He said that during Lent local people make a pilgrimmage, wandering over the hills and further into the desert, starving themselves for three of four days.

It also seems that just about every part of Peru has its own buried treasure story, and Corire is no exception. According to Marco Antonio, after the Inca emperor Atahualpa was captured by the Spanish in Trujillo, llama caravans travelled through this part of the desert, laden with some of the massive ransom of gold demanded by the conquistadores in return for his release. A llama can only bear so much weight, and some of them were too heavily burdened and collapsed and died en route. Since loading their cargo onto the other llamas would have only compounded the problem, the Incan minions had to bury the gold there in the desert. A while back, a farmer whose land borders Toro Muerto supposedly uncovered a chest of gold accidentally while ploughing. Now he is said to enjoy unparalleled wealth, with a house in Miami and a new tractor every year.

Some people apparently believe enough in the veracity of this story to make regular nocturnal expeditions to dig up parts of the desert, trying to find the missing treasure. It's probable that some of them are the same "huaqueros" or "grave-robbers" who had been dynamiting the rocks and stealing individual petroglyphs to sell to foreigners. The petroglyph rocks have now been individually numbered to discourage this.

On the way back I took several photos from a hill of the striking contrast between the desolate, dusty desert and the striking green of the cultivated valley, which looked a bit like Holland turned subtropical. Earthen irrigation ditches bring water from the river and directly down from the mountains, and all kinds of crops are grown - including rice in the summer and wheat in the winter. By now I had run out of money, having underestimated what I would get charged for the petrol and stupidly imagining that there might be an ATM in Corire. I had to retain enough for my bus fare back to Arequipa and the taxi from the terminal, so I was going to have to miss out on going to see the dinosaur footprints. I had been told that it was possible to get to the dinosaur footprints by local microbus and walking, but Marco Antonio said I wouldn't have time, and I was inclined to believe him..

For lunch Marco Antonio took me to eat camarones at his sister-in-law's restaurant by the river and tried to marry me to the pretty waitress called Julie who sat with us outside the rustic wooden palings/dirt floor comedor while I scoffed the huge plate of camarones and we shared a (gratis) pitcher of sweet red wine. Excerpts from the conversation went something like this:

Marco Antonio: "Simón speaks good Spanish, doesn't he?"
Julie: "Yes, and he's also bien guapo"
Simon (blushes a little)
Marco Antonion: "What do you like about Simón?"
Julie: "His eyes...and his eyebrows" (for some reason, Latin girls seem to have a thing for my eyebrows...)
Simon (shifts uncomfortably)

Later, and in the context of talking about travelling...

Julie: "If I ever become rich, and have the chance to travel, the place I'd most like to visit is India"
Marco Antonio: "But you're already rica (when referring to a person, this effectively translates as "a babe"). Simón, don't you think that Julie's rica?"
Simon: "Yes, she's already rica" (Well, she was...)

As he drove me back to the hotel, Marco Antonio reminded me again that Julie was single. I made my promises to come back in a couple of weeks so I could get taken to see the dinosaur footprints, the valley of the volcanoes, the wine and pisco growing areas, to swim in the river, marry Julie, etc. etc.

I hopped on the Arequipa-bound bus, keen to sit back with a beer and watch Brazil play Chile, and we climbed up again through the desert to the pumping sound of more salsa and Latin ballads, until the familiar mountainous tryptych with Chachani at its centre appeared round a canyon bend and I knew we were almost home.

I've got a little "stuck" in Arequipa, but I justify the ease, comfort and slightly higher spending involved in this by pointing out that it's been the best place so far for meeting people in social situations. Apart from actually settling down and working (which I'm not quite ready to do yet), this is the best way to improve one's Spanish.

The centre of Arequipa is a ten to twenty block gridded oasis of stone streets and buildings of elaborately carved white volcanic stone and wrought iron, amidst the sprawling wider city. Sort of the South Beach to greater Arequipa's Miami. The little hatchback taxis nudge and honk their way around the one-way system and there's a very European feel; to me it brings to mind somewhere almost Italian.

There's a lot of tourists, though it's not yet quite the high season. At first I thought that Arequipa was a tourist trap, cut off from reality and where people are either irritated by the presence of so many foreigners, or are madly seeking to take advantage of them. It still may not be the real world (what is?), but I was wrong about the people.

Apart from the people I've met in bars (principally the girl I danced with on Friday night and her four or five female "cousins"), in a few days I've made friends with the guy who works in the place that sells espresso coffee (vanishingly rare in S. America), the girls who work at the internet cafe and their friend who takes salsa classes and is desperate to migrate to Australia, the three waitresses at the Quebecois-owned Mexican restaurant/bar (including an Ecuadorian girl who is also travelling around S. America and working as she goes to get together money to move on), the waitress at the "Irish" pub near the cathedral (not really an Irish pub at all but a normal local bar with a pool table, silly Irish name and an Irish flag on the wall), and the people at the adventure travel agency where I arranged the Colca Canyon trip, and who've just offered me some kind of job (but I don't think it's going to work out).

I know that sounds like mostly girls, and it is, but really I've been happy to talk to anyone. It's true that "las arequipeñas" are probably the most beautiful women I've seen, ah, anywhere outside of Spain, and that it's not unknown for them to want to meet foreign guys. Apparently, some of these are "malas" who will flirt or more with foreign men and then drag them round expecting to be bought things. I haven't met any such people so far; rather, pretty much everyone I've met has warned me about this. Yes, as a gringo male you do get more attention than you could expect at home, not being a representative rugby player, in a month of Sundays. But most of it is just smiles, and wanting to talk and/or dance. Which I think is pretty nice.

Although people in Chile are pretty friendly once you break the ice, and I had a really good time going out especially in Arica, on the whole there's just a bit more reserve and insularity. Chilean people I've met, both here and in NZ, also see to have this weird thing where they want to be friends for a while, then suddenly can't be bothered with you anymore. Or maybe that's just with me..

Here, there's just a little bit more alegria, and affectionate mutual piss-taking is the norm. I've thought about it, and concluded that the whole vibe is quite Spanish. There's certainly plenty of people who *look* Spanish here. Or maybe it's something Argentinian without the inflated sense of self-importance.

The centre of Arequipa is certainly extremely middle-class; people are well-dressed and look relatively wealthy, it's very clean (though there are no rubbish bins), and relatively orderly. So in that sense it's not the "real" Peru. But I realised on my last trip that in order to make a real connection with people - to really make friends - you need to have something in common with them, some minimal sharing of histories, aspirations and values. As it turned out, I had a lot more in common with some of the students from Guatemala City than with most people in Christchurch. So it is in Arequipa.

With very poor people you can converse, and they may be extremely friendly and curious, but there's a certain point past which you just don't have, and haven't had, the same life. It helps if you are sharing work with them, but even then you don't inhabit the same reality.

Of course I've figured out, you don't always have to make friends with people. It can also be good just to listen to people's stories and have an objective appreciation of how their lives are. Yes, the "journalistic" approach. Something I need to work on more...

Coming soon, a report on my trip to the Colca Canyon.

On the second day in Arequipa, we went to the musuem which houses the famous "Juanita", aka the "Ice Maiden" - the 13-year old Incan girl scarificed at the summit of the 6300m Ampato volcano and then preserved in ice for 500 years. In 1995 erupting smoke from a nearby volcano melted the ice cap and an archeological expedition found her and accompanying objects tipped out of their summit grave and sent a few hundred metres down the mountainside by the volcanic tremors. The visit to the museum was an hour long, involving a twenty-minute National Geographic video and a forty-minute guided tour through exhibits of various objects found with Juanita and other sacrificed children (to date eighteen have been discovered on mountaintops from Ecuador to Chile), then finally Juanita herself, housed in a glass case chilled to -20 degrees, hair, teeth and skin largely preserved, huddled in a sitting position and wrapped in a frozen blanket.

Lonely Planet describes the whole presentation as "somewhat reverential", which I would say is an understatement. The tour around the exhibits was ok, as the girl who took us was quite matter of fact, but the video, in reconstructing Juanita's last journey, made it sound as if it was the most wonderful privilege, as if someone had organised her a special birthday party. How do I convey the tone of it? Well for one thing, the word "sacrificio" was off limits - all the discussion was of an "ofrenda" (offering), anda woman at the front desk corrected me when I asked a question about the "sacrifice". As was pointed out both in the video and by the guide, the children "offered" on mountaintops were considered "chosen". Of aristocratic blood, they were brought up in Cuzco, lived with Incan priests from an early age, and grew up believing in their special calling. The Incan gods were belived to live in the mountains and volcanoes, and while offerings of artefacts were routinely made, live humans were reserved for times of difficulty and hardship, when it was thought that the gods needed to be placated.

From the artefacts found with Juanita, which included seashell necklaces, it is thought that she was sacrificed during a time of drought. Although remains have been found on mountaintops throughout the former Inca empie, the current theory is that all the sacrificed children were chosen acolytes from Cuzco, who were sent, often on very long and arduous journeys to the troubled spots. Sort of like a sacred and sacrifical SWAT team. Such chosen children would have believed, apparently, that upon their physical death they would pass to the other side and join the gods, themselves becoming gods.

The reality for Juanita is that she was a little girl who had to fast for a couple of weeks before the big day, then trekked hundreds of kilometres and up to the summit of a 6300-metre volcano (given the available clothing and equipment, an impressive physical feat for all involved), was given chicha and hallucinogens then, already half-dead from cold and exhaustion, was whacked over the head with a spiked mallet and bundled into a shallow grave along with some vases, blankets, dolls and bags of coca leaves. It had previously been imagined that she had been left there to let the cold usher her gently into the next realm. However, tests run at John Hopkins University established the rather cruder reality of the cause of death. With the benefit of this information, you can see the two notches in the side of her skull and note the partially collapsed eye socket where the blow fell.

The video interspersed comments from the archeologists with a reenactment of Juanita's last hours (accompanied by taciturn Inca nobles trudging up through the mist and silently performing ceremonies, leaving out the bit with the hammer). The female voice-over surged in tones of ecstatic awe as it reiterated how Juanita believed she was doing a great service to the nation and herself heading off to join the gods. Even on the face of the young actress in the reenactment, however, there were clear signs of suppressed terror. Maybe, like me, she couldn't help imagining what it would really have been like. I felt a few tears coming to my eyes as the voice-over waxed lyrical about the personal glory of becoming such an "offering". Quite an Orwellian moment.

Afterwards, Magdalena, a Swiss girl who had been on the tour with me, had a different thought. Why, she wondered, speaking about the eighteen bodies which have now been found, didn't they just leave them there? If the intention was that the dead children were gifts to the mountain, and we are so au fait with and understanding about that cultural practice, why do we insist on dragging them off the mountainside. The answer that occurred to me was that the Inca religon involved human sacrifice on mountaintops. Our religon is science, and museums are its temples, where other values tend to be sacrificed. Perhaps in the future people will find that quirkily barbaric as well.

Last Sunday in Arica people gathered in bars and living rooms to watch the "classico" of South American football - River Plate vs. Boca Juniors, the clash across the tracks and class lines of Buenos Aires. River won 1-0, with a goal in the first half, while Boca ended the game with 9 players and River with 10. Two of the sending offs were for double yellow cards, and one directly for a two-footed sliding tackle, while by the end of the game each side had three players with yellow cards. The referee has the reputation of being particularly officious, but I have to say that, apart from the second yellow card to one of the players sent off, it was all pretty richly deserved. For highly skilled players, the level of callous clumsiness wouldn't have been out of place indoors at the Queens Wharf Event Centre on a Monday night in Wellington.

Watch out for one Maxi Lopez, though. He was brought on by River as a replacement when Marcelo Salas limped off in the eighth minute, much to the disgust of watching Chileans. Bearing a striking resemblance to the bass player from Iron Maiden (like many of the players on both teams), he nevertheless seemed a class above anyone else on the field, and set up several goal scoring opportunities. If he isn't snapped up by a Spanish or Italian club soon, my name is Diego Maradona.

Well, I haven't really managed to keep up with the overwrought description of every day of my travels, have I. I just can't seem to keep up with a travel journal. Or perhaps the real problem is that I can't manage to be succint - the way it's been going is that I've been leaving out pretty much all the interesting bits, allowing me to maintain my standard level of verbosity regarding the boring bits. I have taken notes, though - and at some other time when I get off my weak-willed ass will try and write about the good bits. Meantime, the update is that, after two pretty lazy weeks in Arica I've made it to Arequipa, Peru. Man, what a beautiful place...snow-capped mountains hovering over stone monasteries and cobblestone streets. Not good prospects for catching up with any writing. There's volcanoes to climb and canyons to...ah, what's the opposite of climb? Plunge into? Condors to see too, apparently.

Just so I hold myself to account, I've left out half of what I did in Santiago, everything in Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, everything to do with San Pedro de Atacama and the trip to Uyuni in Bolivia, as well as my entire time in Arica. Plus other thematically organised entries I was planning on various topics. Qué flojo soy!

On the road to Bahìa Inglesa, I took a picture of a road sign where someone had scratched the leg off the 'r' on 'Ruta 5' so it read 'Puta 5'. Infantile, I know, but against the grey desert spreading off into the distance I thought it had some pathos. Later, walking back the other way, I saw a sign that had received the same treatment - only this time someone had come along and actually painted the leg back on the r.

Bahìa Inglesa is a curve of coarse white sand facing a big blunt headland, "El Morro", on the other side of the bay. The evidence of the summer rush only goes one block back from the beach, in the form of a couple of hotels and restaurants, and the little cabañas crowded together at each end of the bay - then the town disappears into the desert. On an overcast mid-April day, it was eerily quiet.

I couldn't have missed Connie's cousin's place, "Chango Chile" - it's constituted of a cluster of canvas domes right on the beachfront. One giant dome houses the restuarant/bar/reception area, while four smaller domes have beds for guests. I talked to Connie's cousin Alex and the three or four Chilean guys who work with him. They were friendly, if seeming a little anxious. The whole place has been there for only a couple of months, and I guess after some fairly major investmenmt they're keen to drum up some business.

The domes don't have anything to do with some kind of hippie ideal (I can see you snickering Dad). Rather, it was a design they liked after looking at a few different options. The frames were assembled by bolting together metre-long steel struts, which form a skeleton principally of hexagons, each dome ending up with five pentagons. They did this bit themselves according to the design, and cut out the specially-made fabric, which was put in place over the domes with professional help. The windows and skylights in the domes close with velcro.

The concept is quite daring. Granted, despite the suggestion of drizzle the first day I was there, as a rule it doesn't rain in Bahìa Inglesa. One thing they may not have counted on though is the level of chill that can creep in. When I was there some people came in for dinner, and they had to bring in the gas heater to warm the main dome, while Alex wandered round frowning, saying "It's actually colder inside than out...".

Alex has been in Chile for twelve years, and speaks the "huevòn, huevòn, huevòn" chileno patois with fluency. His best friend at school in San Diego was Chilean, and after school finished suggested they take off to explore Chile. Alex went along for the ride and never left.

I talked a bit to one of the guys, Marcelo, who brought out a pot of mate sweetened with cinammon sticks. He studied anthropology at university, and spent eight months living with fishermen on the coast south of Caldera for this thesis. Right now, he says, there's a vague possibility he could get involved in a community development/technology transfer project with some local organisation. But for the present he seemed content to cruise along working for Alex. Incidentally, his sister Gabriela finished her studies in agriculture at Lincoln University, currently worksin Christchurch and is living in Lyttelton...

While I was at Chango Chile, the big concern was to organise a photo shoot showing the domes and the bay with people enjoying themselves. The photos were to appear in a Californian magazine, and the deadline to supply them was about up. The only problem was that for the pictures they needed (a) sun (which came out the next day)and (b) some girls (who are not that abundant in Bahìa Inglesa in mid-April). There was some frenetic discussion following the appearance of "Mono", the proprietor of (the) restaurant down the street, to ascertain the availability of his (as it eventually turned out) stuningly beautiful French wife Sylvie and two of her friends to appear in the photo shoot.

After talking with everyone, Alex offered me a discount and I said I'd come and stay the next night there. I started walking back towards Caldera through the desert as the twilight started to fall. Though I was on the wrong side of the road to hitch, a truck driver pulled over and offered me a lift back to Caldera. He said he worked as a policeman in the area for twenty years and got sick of it. Now he is in the recycling business, which is what the truck was for. Dirty work, he said, but "buena moneda". I said something like, well, you're still doing something for the community too. He heartily agreed, and we talked some more about the development of tourism and eco-tourism in northern Chile.

I took a stroll in the plaza, cooked dinner and had a bottle of beer at the unfriendly residencia, and tried to catch up with my journal. I was starting to feel ok about being in a small town.

Somewhere round the 20th of April

Yes, I´ve fallen way behind with this journal, so I´m going to skip over quite a bit (which I´ll catch up on later), and provide an update. Right now I´m in Caldera, on the coast about halfway between Santiago and Calama. Caldera is a tiny port town, and down the road is Bahía Inglesa, a busy beach resort in the high season. At the moment, both are well and truly off the beaten track. Chile´s first railway line went to Caldera, from the nearby copper town of Copiapó. It´s not historical interest that´s brought me here, though, rather a recommendation from Connie, a receptionist at Hostal Bellavista in Santiago. She suggested it as somewhere nice, off the tourist trail, and a place to investigate voluntary work - since Habitat para la Humanidad has some projects here, where they help local people to build houses. Plus the fact that her cousin Alex runs a hostel and associated operations at Bahía Inglesa.

The bus ride here was a little over thirteen hours from Santiago, and much worse than it should have been. It was a "semi-cama" bus, with super-comfortable seats which fold back to 65 degrees. For comfort and value for money, Chilean and Argentinian buses are, in and of themselves, unparalleled. The only problem is the insistence in keeping the heating wacked up at night time, to maintain an interior temperature of no less than 28 degrees (I know this because the temperature alternates on a digital screen with the time and the availability of the bus´toilet). With near-zero humidity and general passenger body heat, this dehydrates the hell out of you and makes it near impossible to sleep. Or at least for me. The accumulated light snoring of those who had dropped off didn´t help either - including that from the bloke who occupied the seat next to me from about halfway through the trip and immediately begged for some of my water - he said he´d been sitting in the terminal eating and drinking a little beer, and was terribly thirsty.

When we started off, about 8:00 pm, the heating was way up. After about 20 minutes into the journey, when it became clear it was likely to stay that way, I asked the guy who comes round to clip the tickets if they could turn the heating down. He said yes, they would fix it in just a bit. Sure enough, they turned it down, and the temperature came down to a much more comfortable 21 degrees. But about 10:30, when the movie finished and they turned off the lights, it was whacked up once more.

Conversations with people today and previously suggest that this is standard practice, so the "viejecitos and guaguas" (old people and babies) don´t get cold. But, as we all agree, a temperature close to 30 degrees where it´s impossible to to sweat is at least as unhealthy. I´m thinking of writing to the bus company and asking them to justify their rationale.

Am I sounding like some kind of middle-aged American or something? What a wuss, I can hear people saying. Wait till he gets to Peru and Bolivia, where equally long or longer trips take place in ancient buses with uncomfortable seats, jammed full of pigs and chickens...

It´s always a little daunting, arriving in towns like Caldera as a traveller, especially in a semi-conscious state first thing in the morning. There you are, bien gringo, getting off the bus with your blue and purple Great Outdoors backpack, generally in the dusty outskirts where the bus stations tend to find themselves, no idea where you´re going. Subjected to double-take looks from local people, like, what the hell is he doing here? And you don´t really know the answer yourself...

Still, weird as it may feel at the time, out of the way places tend to leave a disproportionate impression on you, even if you´re only briefly passing through. I have quite vivid memories of, for example, Comitán in Mexico, a pretty but nondescript town near the border with Guatemala, where I felt like practically the first foreigner to visit.

The best way to get equilibrium in these situations, I´ve found, is to buy a pack of cigarettes. This serves a couple of purposes. It immediately involves you in a couple of transactions with local people - the first in the store or kiosk where you buy the cigarettes, subsequently with anyone who tries to bum one off you - which proves that you´re not actually an alien being, and can speak the language. It also gives you something to do as you walk along and makes you look slightly less geeky.

I found a place to stay in a residencia by the plaza, which is listed by both LP and a Chilean booklet. It´s pleasant enough, but the owners are rather the opposite of gergarious; they´re an elderly couple who seem rather ambivalent about having guests at all. They have a "salón de belleza" out front (a hairdressers, really), and seem a bit irritated by the guests.

Before getting some lunch, I talked to a Colombian girl who was selling necklaces and other artesanías by the plaza. She said she was from Cali, and had travelled down through Peru and Ecuador to Chile, selling her things along the way. She had a beautiful, soft accent, and I felt kind of pleased to meet a fellow traveller. She said I should definitely go to Cali, where "they treat you well". I didn´t want to be pressured into buying anything; I showed her my pounamu necklace and said that was all I need to wear, and now wasn´t yet the time for buying presents. Anyway, I was really hungry. She said "bueno, comes; después hablamos". I went to eat and then snuck out of the diner to avoid talking to her again. But later I thought that one of her shark-tooth necklaces would have made a great present for Meghan or Ben (step-niece and nephew), for only 1,000 pesos ($1.30 U.S.); I could easily have mailed them home. I looked for her later in the plaza, but she was gone.

After lunch I walked to Bahía Inglesa. It took longer than I thought - they had told me "half an hour, tops" in the diner - but was worth it for the landscape. The area around Caldera is completely, romantically, desolate. Especially today when the sea fog had come in early and stayed all day in a low-hanging drab overcast above the coastal desert. From the town outskirts, in the typical Latin American urban fringe textures of tin, concrete, dust, graffiti and litter, the desert stetches off - sand, a little rock, and the most rudimentary and occasional forms of scrub, towards the fog-shrouded mountains and grey sea. Boy, you could make some dialogue-light existential films here.

After two days in the Barrio Paris Londres, I moved to a hostel in Barrio Bellavista area, to try out a different area and be somewhere a bit livelier at night. Bellavista is on the north side of the Rio Mapocho (rio? qué rio? – it´s more like a huge drainage canal with a little water rushing down the middle between concrete walls, rubbish strewn along the sides and an unpleasant smell drifting up). Bellavista is another “bohemian” barrio, relaxed, pretty, tawdry round the edges. The main street, Pio Nono, heads north to the nearby Cerro San Cristobal (about which more later); market stalls selling fried empanadas and artesanias line the roadside on the first couple of blocks, and the streets are full of students drifting back and forth from the law faculty building of the Universidad of Chile (a concrete building of Mussolinian classicism). The streets are narrow and a little dirty, the buildings mostly brick and stucco, some crumbling, others freshly painted in what I´m terming “Latin earth” colours – lapis lazuli, ochre and terracotta. Tired-looking oaks and maples line shade Pio Nono, almost meeting in the middle of the street. Restaurants and bars crowd together, and at night there is a crush of people in white plastic chairs sitting out on the pavement while others file past. Hosts and hostesses from the various restaurants and bars practically beg you to come in or take a seat. When I went to walk up Cerro San Cristobal it was late afternoon and the sun was still up, but the restaurants were already touting for business. At several places they offered me a table despite me striding along purposefully with a backpack and sweaty t-shirt. When I said I was just off to climb the hill they gave me plaintive looks: “But when you get back…?”

I moved into a hostel called Hostal Bellavista, two blocks off Pio Nono. This turns out to be one of those “home away from home” hostels – not necessarily the quietest or the most comfortable, but immediately friendly, with all the right feng shui. Balconies onto the street, a terrace at the back with a view towards the Andes, free internet, cable TV, etc. Everyone talks to everyone else, as if that were normal in real life.

When I arrived there, a British couple were trying to check in. Only the woman who I guessed was the one who cleans and makes the breakfast was there. She was trying explain the prices to them and ask how many nights they wanted to stay, but they did not speak one word of Spanish. I, standing in the doorway with my large pack still on my pack, had to translate the entire transaction. After that, the cleaning/breakfast woman (whose name is Sofía) and I became quite buddy-pally. She is gregarious - her favourite saying is "Aquí todos son de confianza! Es como tu casa!" ("Here, everybody can be trusted! "It´s like being at home". She´s also a little needy, though this becomes quite understandable once you know her story.


Sofía is from Peru, and has been working in Chile for about seven years. She says she had a daughter at age fourteen and the bloke in question (guess what) ran off. Her daughter is now twenty and is at university studying to be a nurse. Sofía came to Chile to get work to support her daughter, who lives with Sofia´s mother in Peru. Despite the seven years here, she hasn´t been able to pass through many of the graduated stages of Chilean residence and citizenship yet, because apparently you have to work for two years in the same job to get to the next stage (Sofia has only been at Hostal Bellavista about four months). But there´s kind of a happy ending to the story. The daughter has a boyfriend whose parents emigrated to France, and he can get French residence. She is thinking of going to work as a nurse in France when she graduates. Meanwhile, however, Sofia keeps sending money home, but hasn´t been able to see her daughter for two years.

Do I believe every word of this? I suppose I should, but she does look quite a bit older than the reported thirty-five years. Though this too is quite understandable...

The hostel is owned by Gonzalo, a Chilean who lived his first eight or nine years in the U.S. He is still in his twenties, I´m guessing, but has that blingual, dual-cultural ease and confidence plus, I have to say, a great and eclectic taste in music. It seems that his parents have set him up with the business. Judging by the success and "buena onda" of Hostal Bellavista, he´s on the right track so far.

Graffiti on a wall in Barrio Brasil: "Nos hacen usar uniformes porque nos quieren uniformar". I presume this was written by high-school students, who all wear uniforms here. Couldn't help thinking that you'd be unlikely to see this kind of commentary from kids in New Zealand, tying a personal hassle to the wider ideological context. I used to really admire the political awareness and involvement of students and young people from Latin countries, and think the apathy and ignorance of their English-speaking counterparts a real defficiency. Now I'm not so sure - I wonder if it's not a symptom of the troubled histories of their countries, rather than any greater innate thoughtfulness. The sad fact seems to be that the societies that work out the best are often ones where people can't be bothered to argue about ideologies, and just unimaginatively get on with trying to make money.

There are lots of stray dogs in Santiago. I only noticed this on Friday and Saturday, when there were fewer people around because of Easter. Apparently a lot of people here get dogs as puppies, then ditch them when they grow up. They are mostly quite big dogs, cross breeds. Mostly they seem quite clean, and the majority aren't too skinny. The most notable thing, though, is how casually well-behaved they are. They sleep anywhere, seeking out bus stops, telephone booths, or any other suitable spot. They look before crossing the road, aren't excessive about following people who have food, and just generally behave like reasonable citizens. Someone I talked to agreed that they are probably better-behaved than domestic dogs. A lot of the nastiness and annoyance that comes from dogs seems to be due to their territorial nature, and desire to defend their designated enclave. But with the whole city to roam in, it´s all public space, and no one feels too threatened most of the time.

Santiago is also full of embracing couples. On Cerro Santa Lucia there are kissing lovers esconced in alcoves all the way up the hill. But even on the main streets it´s common to see effusive public displays of affection, people stopping for a hug and a snog. I don´t know whether this is something intrinsically Chilean, or a reaction to it being frowned on or forbidden during the Pinochet years (it´s not really the kind of thing you can ask people). Either way, you can´t help feeling rather envious.

One more prevalence that I´ve noticed in Santiago is that of the police, or "los pacos" as they´re called here. Mostly young and intense-looking, their rakishly-cut light khaki uniforms and holstered pistols give them a vaguely menacing paramilitary aspect. They often seem to move in groups, and there are clusters of them by the government ministries around the Plaza Constitución. Almost nobody stops at pedestrian crossings here, but one time when I was waiting to cross there was a policeman standing at the same crossing; two cars that had considerable momentum ground rapidly to a polite halt and let everyone cross.

Street vending seems to be officially illegal but generally tolerated here. The other day I stopped to talk to some guys selling their homemade necklaces, earrings and bracelets laid out on a little blanket on the pavement. They had wanted to bum a cigarette, and then we got into a conversation about where I was from, where I was travelling,what I thought of Chile, etc. One of them reached into his pack and offered me a glass of beer, which was great as I was pretty thirsty. As we were talking, some police on motorbikes approached, and the vendors started rolling up their blankets and making as if to walk off down the street. The pacos slowed right down, frowned meaningfully, then drove on. The two guys turned round and rolled out their blankets again. I asked if it was prohibited to sell things on the street. They shrugged. "It´s just that you have to show them some respect" said one. Apparently, they would have been more concerned about any drinking on the street (which at that time only I was doing). But, they said, "they´d never do anything to you, never". Why I asked, because I´m a turista, and they nodded yes.

8 April, second day in Santiago.

ok, so maybe my understanding of chileno is not all that crah hot after all. Stopped in the Plaza de Armas near a big crowd watching two guys doing comic street theatre; I vaguely followed it, but every time everyone laughed I had a completely blank expression. Mind you, I was behind five rows of people, and their voices were muffled. Later, I watched the evening news and, though I followed the stories, I missed quite a few details. This is annoying, because when I watch CNN en espanol I understand it pretty much word for word.

Another new food word: "manjar", which is a kind of dulce de leche. I bought some buns from a bakery, on impulse while I was out walking, and didn't really know what I was getting. I asked the woman who served me, but by then I had already paid for it. With the already sweet bread, manjar is overpoweringly cloying. I don't think I'll get it again.

Oh, for a telescopic lens. I walked down to Cerro Santa Lucia, which is a hill in the middle of the city with rocky steps leading up it, a couple of leafy plazas and a "torre mirador", a kind of turret lookout point. There are great views towards the Andes, and over the city to the hills and mountains to the north, west and south. The massif and soaring peaks of the cordillera inspired me, and pretty much everyone standing in the torre to whip out our cameras. The sense of being awestruck by a landscape - artificial or natural - is one of the principal pleasures in life, and a reason to go travelling and seek out new places. The first time I came into Paris and was struck by the sheer magnificent scale of the Hotel des Invalides, for example, was such an experience. In time it fades, and you become blase. Unfortunately, as soon as I got the mountains into the viewfinder, they were diminished. The whole vista - city, foothills, cordillera and peaks - has to crowd into a small rectangular box, and you just know the photos will be a disappointent. A flow-on effect was that, looking at the mountains with naked eye afterwards, my brain couldn't help referencing how they looked through the view finder, and they seemd already less impressive. I felt a little cheated, as though I'd short-circuited the becoming-blase process.

Coming away from the Cerro Santa Lucia, I was accosted by two students who were seeking "donations" in rereturn for a (truly awful) poem printed on a slip of paper, and a hard-luck story about how fees had become exorbitant since Pinochet privatized the universities. I'm still eager enough to talk with just about anyone, so I gave them a small donation in return for an enthusiastic discussion of New Zealand, Lord of the Rings, etc. They made out to be offended at how token it was - "this is for our university studies!" but I pointed out that, bloody hell, yo tambien ando medio pobre, I'd saved four years for this trip, and fees in New Zealand were also substantial (they'd assumed university there was cheap or free). Anyway, the poem was crap.

After a hot and sleepless flight, flew into Santiago with a breathtaking view of the cordillera sitting massively above the dry patchwork plains of Central Chile, the highest peaks snowy and jagging into the sky. Santiago itself was completely invisible under a blanket of brown smog. On the ground it was still, cloudless and getting rapidly warmer, well into the mid-20s. We were waved through immigration and customs, and I then had to fight off a flock of offers for special buses, taxis, accommodation and rental cars. There´s something about me that attracts touts and those seeking to sell something. Maybe it´s the vague, disoriented look and air of vacillation. If only they knew it was permanent. Eventually got on the bus which goes into Santiago, on the long boulevard Avenida Liberatador Bernardo O´Higgins (la Alameda) which runs into and through the city. From the outskirts it changes from industrial to wholesale retail, to more upmarket commercial nearer the centre, moving from looking like Mexico to looking like Europe.

Everything is a hassle and a trial when you´re newly arrived, and I think I do tend to handle these things worse than other people. The buses, the metro (where do the lines go, which direction is which, ah, what do you with your ticket to get through the barrier, god, you should have seen me blundering around), the money - Chile seems to have had similar bouts of hyperinflation to Italy and everthing is in hundreds (small change), thousands, tens of thousands, all the notes in similar colours. Lesson #1 - there is no 5,000 peso note; do not give people a 10,000 note for something small - I did this twice, which produced panicky and exasperated efforts to give the right change while other customers banked up. Language lessons also: avocado here is called ´palta´; yes, they know very well it s aguacate in Central America, but not here. A ´churrasco´ is what in America would be called a sandwich and in New Zealand a burger (i.e. stuff between burger buns). A completo is a small American hot dog.

Ended up in a hotel on the calle Londres; more idiocy - at first decided not to stay there because the price was significantly more than it said in the LP, then went back because it turned out to be better than anything else in the area anyway. The proprietor was tolerant and amused. A beautiful street - cobblestones, and magnificent three story buildings of stone with arcaded balconies, arched windows and wrought iron. Little plazas with shady slim trees with reddish leaves (have to find out what they´re called). The area is like a cross between Barcelona and Paris - though without the rubbish or dog turd of either.

I like the look of the central city - classical style stone buildings side by side with supermodern glass sky scrapers, wide boulevards of traffic with paved pedestrian malls running off. East along la Alameda the huge peaks of the Andes poke above the skyline. Barrio Brasil to the west of the city is downbeat and "bohemian", as says LP, the stone and stucco buildings more eroding and dishevelled, a nice plaza of date palms and market stalls at Plaza Brasil.

I like the people too, or at least what I´ve seen of them. They stride along purposefully, but with a touch of joie de vivre and without the robotic blankness of a city like London. And the streets are full of adults in their twenties and thirties! How one misses that in New Zealand, where outside the 9-5 workday the streets are owned by teenagers. People are super friendly and helpful when you ask for directions, but not over helpful - apart from at the airport, you blend in and don´t get hassled or strange looks. The general populace seems to be much like Carolina, Ignacio et al (my Chilean friends from Wtn). So far, no problems with el español chileno either - obviously those drunken nights at Latinos have helped (plus having a Chilean lecturer - thanks Lorena).

Still suffering from jet lag, though - beat in the middle of the day and awake at 5 am. I´m off now to do LP´s "walking tour", and hopefully will make it through to the late evening before crashing.

Saludos a todos

Early on a Thursday morning, my last in Wellington, two guys from the Salvation Army knocked on the back door, somewhat earlier than I had expected them. I helped them carry my bed, mattress, and computer table out the back door, and they loaded them into their truck. My chest of drawers and little bookshelf (which I had inherited from other people anyway) I left for Avril, who is always a little avaricious for furniture and other junk. The entire rest of my life I was able to fit snugly into a Toyota Celica. Of these items, there was one computer in several boxes, which I have now given to Sophia. She and Jeremy also inherited my two guitars (one to mind, one to sell for their own profit). With my parents, I’m leaving one box of books, a little pile of clothes, 30 or 40 CDs, and a small collection of papers and computer discs (my works in progress). In return, I managed to get rid of over half of my stuff which had been sitting in boxes in their garage. So they made a considerable net gain on the transaction.

Pretty much everything else – including my new Kathmandu hiking shoes - has fit with surprising ease into my backpack and detachable shoulder pack. My entire existence contained within a few square feet of Great Outdoors canvas. Hardly ever do I feel so secure and complete than at moments such as this.

I’m flying out today and feel extremely nervous.

Saturday April 3 2004 – Sophia’s wedding day

The day when my youngest sister became the first of four siblings to tie the knot arrived with a morning of implausible perfection. Friday was a warm 27 degrees with a gusty nor’wester which died towards evening and shifted off that quarter. By Saturday morning it was cooler but clear, steel blue with only the gentlest of zephyrs. The wedding ceremony was to be at my uncle Tom’s place at Robinson’s Bay, on the road to Akaroa. Tom and his wife Rosemary have a wooden cottage there with a sloping front lawn, framed by young ngaio trees, which looks south-west over the Onawe peninsula and Akaroa harbour.

Mum, Sophia and the bridesmaids had stayed the night at a motel in Akaroa. Dad and Cecilia headed over there at 10 am so Cecilia could do Sophia’s makeup. I decided to take myself over to Robinson’s Bay in my own time. I was dead keen to stay out of the way of the mounting, ill-directed stress emanating from both my parents. This tends to take different forms: Mum works herself into a self-perpetuating flap of obscure worries and unfocused nervousness; Dad makes an explicit effort to seem calm and controlled, but nevertheless suffers from occasional attacks of anxious authoritarianism. I was a little worried that Dad might have a problem with me going over by myself – “Why? There’s plenty of room to come with me”; “No, we’re doing this as a family”; etc. – but to my relief he was fine with it, and I was happy to be able to take my time getting ready.

The drive out there was spectacular in the intense sunlight, winding around the rocky bluffs where the peninsula hills meet the plains, then climbing up the steep valley above Little River. I had to grit my teeth at being stuck two vehicles behind a dangerously timid driver who practically ground to a halt on some of the tighter bends, but eventually we hit the hilltop and a breathtaking view of Akaroa harbour, opaque turqouise in the dead calm.

At Tom’s place Dad was marshalling cars into parking spots. He issued instructions like a nervous military commander: Rebecca’s boyfriend Tim would continue directing cars; Cecilia would hand out the programmes; I would pour out and serve drinks to arriving guests. But of course we weren’t to feel constrained to remain in these exact roles; we could interchange them as we saw fit, as long as there was always someone at each post…Then Dad had to rush off to Akaroa to pick up Sophia and the bridesmaids. Meanwhile Mum was working herself into paroxsyms of nervous worry – it was one o’ clock, and where was Jeremy! He was needed to set up the sound system. And I definitely shouldn’t put the champagne flutes on a tray – she couldn’t possibly carry them; she’d drop them and break them (this despite the fact that * I * was supposed to be serving the drinks).

People started arriving: Sophia’s friends and work colleagues, musicians from the Folk Club, aunts, uncles and cousins from both sides of our family. Cecilia had worked her way through four glasses of champagne and was greeting everyone effusively. To Gran’s friend Pam, a rural district nurse from Waverley: “Pam, you look * great * in pink! Pink is, like, totally your colour”

We decided that Tim should call Rebecca and tell them to hold off coming for another fifteen minutes. Not all the guests had arrived, and we were a little worried that Dad might interpret the concept of the bride arriving fashionably and suspensefully late as meaning an entrance at 2:03 sharp.

I was starting to feel a little nervous myself – I was to read out a sonnet by Shakespeare, his 16th (or 116th?), as practically the first act of the ceremony – so I had a glass of champagne, then another. Tim, Cecilia and I stood out on the road and had a cigarette.

The mixture of people put me in a slightly surreal position. Now, I’m not necessarily that au fait with my extended family, but Gran was asking me to point out the aunts, uncles and cousins from Mum’s side, while both Tom and Mary asked me sotto voce who the various members of Dad’s family were. Meghan came by with her friend, chuckling “So, I guess you’re going to be my step-uncle now” Despite being about the least “family-oriented” person I know, all this seemd oddly nice.

Everyone drifted from the brick courtyard by the front door down to the lawn. I was still organising my grip on my camera, champagne flute and the weathered little book of poetry I was to read from, when the proverbial hush descended and Dad appeared, leading Sophia, Rebecca, Moata and Sonja down the slope to join Jeremy and his entourage under the trees at the bottom of the lawn. Girls, the bride was wearing a simple cream dress with a green sash – the effect was ‘mediaeval Irish princess’. The bridesmaids wore dresses of a, uh, soft creamy mint green (??), which matched Sophia’s sash.

The marriage celebrant was a smiley middle-aged woman with short hair. She gave a brief, ecumenically Christian introduction (I found myself thinking “ah, a progressive Anglican”), then I had to read the Shakespeare poem, which I did with solemnity.

The rest of the ceremony I and the approximately twelve other self-appointed photographers shuffled about, trying desperately to capture all the important moments against the stunning backdrop of blue harbour, vivid sky and contoured hills. Despite my distraction, the nervousness and sincerity of both Sophia and Jeremy were palpable. Their vows were lumpen-throated and barely audible against the punctuating whirr of automatically rolling film and the whisper of the breeze.
“Do you take Sophia to be your wife…” said the marriage celebrant.
“Yes” said Jeremy.
“I haven’t finished yet” laughed the celebrant.
I almost think I had to take more photos to hide the fact that I was quite moved by it all.

Jeremy’s brother Simon made a speech incorporating a compendium of quotes, also from Shakespeare, on the theme of marriage. Sophia and Jeremy went into the house to sign the register, came out again, then everyone went inside to attack the finger food and drink more champagne. After a while Mum, in imitation of her late father, decided it was time for everybody to go and shooed them off, while Tom and Rosemary stood grinning by their piano.

After we all had a weary cigarette on the balcony, I took Cecilia, Moata and Sonja back to Akaroa to get their things from the motel, then, in the sinking afternoon sun, we started on the long and winding road back to Christchurch.

Thursday 25 March, midnight, having finally gotten everything packed into the car...

I was a little anxious about taking the car onto the ferry, it being the first time I'd done it. Would I get there in time, find the right place, have the right ticket, park in the right spot? Everything went ok at first - I got to the ferry terminal, checked in, and parked in the right queue. But I was so focused on doing the right things that I neglected to give the attendant my boarding pass when it was our line's turn to drive up the on-ramp. He gave an anguished yelp as I eased past in second gear, and I braked guiltily. He wandered over to my window, shook his head, held up his stack of plastic orange boarding passes and said "I've been doing this for fifteen years, and everybody always gives me one of these"

The tiny number of people on the ferry were an odd assortment of creatures, like refugees from a socially-inflicted gulag. Examples: a short, thin, bearded, fiftysomething man in short shorts and a cardigan, his legs covered in tatoos. An extremely obese family, shuffling along with difficulty, like reluctantly migrant tree sloths.

"Cruising on the inter-islander" is totally a misnomer. A great viewing platform on a clear day for the Kaikouras and Marlborough Sounds the ferry may be, but otherwise it's threadbare, draughty and uncomfortable. The Railways tearooms of travel. People travelling on the ferry are almost always predominantly weary or sleepy, yet there seems to have been some kind of "sleep-disallowing" clause in the original interior design spec. Serried rows of thin, stiff-backed chairs joined together with metal arms which dig into your back if you try and curl up in any way. I was so exhausted that in the end I took my pillow and lay down on the floor between the seats. I managed almost two hours' fitful nap there, as the boat gently pitched and yawed. Surprisingly, no one came along and told me I was creating a fire risk.

Picton 4:30 am and the cars rolled off the ferry, heading south in a procession of headlights. At Blenheim the lit-up strip of 24/7 service stations signalled blessed relief for my serotonin-deprived nerve endings - I was suffering from the feeling that William Gibson nicely calls "soul lack" in his otherwise banal novel Pattern Recognition. I drained a bottle of V and there were the first suggestions of a return of appetite as I ate at least the first half of my microwaved beef and cheese burger with some hunger.

I struggled out through the Awatere Valley and along the coast; it felt like the car was handling badly with all the extra stuff in it, yawing awakwardly like a pregnant fish. In hindsight, though, I think it was just my atrophied reflexes creating the handlingproblems.

I stopped at Ohau Point seal colony to watch the sun slip over the horizon; the seals were all asleep, apart from the infants, which splashed about in rockpools near the shore - the seal version of morning cartoons, I suppose. All the adults were totally crashed out on the beach. I looked down at them and thought: I'm up before you.

On the outskirts of Kaikoura I pulled over in a little park and took an hours nap in what may be my strangest sleeping position ever - my body still pretty firmly in the driver's seat, my head on a pillow on the passenger's seat. Despite the contortions, I droped straight off.

After that the neurotransmitter levels seemed to have regenerated somewhat and the rest of the drive was better. The Celica chewed up the Hunderlees, threw itself willingly into a 3rd gear 125 km/h to overtake a recalcitrant shuttle bus which refused to go in the slow lane, and in no time we were in the picturesque dry hills of Cheviot.

Coming down into the Waipara Valley, I got a bit of a shock to see the rows and rows of new vine plantings, still attached to their fenceposts and plastic, spread out beside the highway. The eighteen vineyards in Waipara have always been fairly unobtrusive, tuckd away on hill slopes or river terraces. But now Montana has bought a stake there, and the landscape is being transformed.

It saddens me a little. I've always loved the look of the Waipara Valley; coming from Amberley in summer the road suddenly dips down into the heat haze and an epic sweep opens up between the Teviotdale Hills and the stacked ranges of the Southern Alps. Everyone is always so eager to define New Zealand as green and lush and bountiful; in my contrariness I've always treasured the corners that are dry, gravelly and bitter. I like the fact that good wine grows in Waipara; I just don't necessarily want to see my dry hills buried in grapes.

The same thing has happened in the Cromwell Basin. There used to just be a few apricot orchards in a pit of gravel. It had solitude and arid romance. Then they put in the lake, and now the whole area is buried in pinot noir vineyards - sort of Burgundy-on-the-Clutha. It's nice enough, but something has gone forever.

I joined the southbound traffic at Amberley and wended my way into and around the Christchurch outskirts. At 10:30 am I pulled up in front of my parent's place at Rolleston. I was pleased to be there, but a little miffed that I was the first to arrive. With the four prodigal children (well, three of us at least are prodigal) reuniting for one brief weekend, I would have preferred to be the *last* oneto sweep dramatically in. Instead, waiting for the others to show up from Adelaide and Miami, I felt almost like a homebody.

This is my Amazon reviewer profile. I have a current ranking of 325, 289. I guess I need to write some more reviews, especially of more recent releases. Perhaps some books. I also need people to click "yes, I found this review useful".

The only way is up.