Crazy beat journeys across the dark (South) American night...

Hmm, my deadlines say I've left myself 2 days to get from Popayan in Colombia (two-three hours southwest of Cali) to Màncora in northern Peru. Got to cross all of Ecuador in one go. It's a mad nerve-fraying trip through three countries, with about fifty changes of transport, and the whole dirty underbelly of non-luxury slow lane Latin American transit, not to mention the border crossings....Here's how it happens.

Popayan, Colombia. Good breakfast at hostal. Taxi to bus station.
10 am minibus Popayan-Ipiales, seven hours. Smooth enough ride through beautiful green hills of southwest Colombia. A snatched lunch of potato chips and chocolate because the roadside restaurant we stop at is so crowded there's no chance of getting a proper meal in the 20 minutes available.

Taxi, Ipiales bus station - frontier with Ecuador. Exit stamp from Colombia. Ten minutes negotiation with money changer to get acceptable exchange rate. Then 45 minutes revision by Ecuadorean customs officials looking for drugs. Sample conversation:
Customs official "Do you consume drugs?"
Me: "No"
Official: "Have you tried drugs?"
Me: "What, like, in my life?"
Official: "Yes"
Me: "Well, yeah, I guess"
Official: "What, just experimentally, to see what it's like?"
Me: "Well, yeah"
Offical: "Ah, that's ok then"

Entrance stamp to Ecuador. Collectivo, frontier -Tulcán bus station.
Dinner of cheese sandwich and chocolate from a store by the bus station. Bus at 7:30 pm Tulcán - Quito, 5 1/2 hours. Seems to stop every couple of hundred metres to pick up or drop off passengers. Steadily worsening headache reaches epic proportions as we pull into Quito. Taxi from bus station finds first hostal full. End up staying at relatively expensive hotel in the new town ($13 USD), but allows rest and recovery in peace.

I permit myself one day in Quito with good breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course it's the start of carnaval and everyone's travelling....not a single ticket to the frontier at Huaquillas for the night. Compromise and get the last remaining ticket for Cuenca, in the south of Ecuador, for 9pm. Guy at the bus companuy advises me to get to the terminal early, but time drifts by and it's 8:35 when I collect my stuff and get a taxi. Don't think it will be a problem since I walked to the bus station in 30 minutes during the day. But taxi has to go by different route, traffic is heavy, it takes over 30 minutes, I'm panicking. Past 9:00 when I get dropped off outside the bus station, still have to negotiate roundabout entrance and three flights of stairs to Quito's crazy bus terminal.

When I submerge myself in the zoo of buses waiting to depart (no such thing as a "platform" in Quito), my bus has already left. Guy takes me (panicking) out the back gate and round the corner; all the buses leaving the terminal have to do a big loop and exit here to get onto the street. There's a long queue; possibly my bus hasn't left yet. It hasn't - I manage to jump on and look for my seat. Driver has let on about 7 additional people, woman is in my seat. She vacates it for me (I feel a bit guilty) but her, her two daughters and another guy are nested around my seat, a single spot in the very back of the bus. There's nowhere to put my legs, so I have to rest them on some plastic moulding in front of my seat,where I also dump my backpacks (no chance to stow the big one in the luggage compartment as the bus was moving when I got on).

As usual, there's a guy on the bus there to sell/beg. Starts with some jokes; sample:
"I have 100 turkeys and I vendo (sell) one, how many do I have?"
Someone on the bus: "99"
Guy: "No! I have 100 turkeys and I vendo one, how many do I have?"
Someone else on the bus: "99!"
Guy: "No! I still have 100 turkeys - one of them vendado (bandaged)! I had 100 turkeys and I vendè (bandaged) one"
Everybody: "groaaaan"
(note of explication: the first person of both vender (to sell) and vendar (to bandage) is the same: yo vendo...very groanworthy pun.) I buy a couple of his trinkets.

Nine hours to Cuenca, first very hot in the back of the bus, then cold. Woman who had my seat complains and whimpers all the way, and I lose all sympathy. She could have taken the bus in the morning, dammit.

Anyway, I'm stuck with my feet 30 degrees above my head for the whole ride - not too uncomfortable by the standards of this bus, but the novelty certainly starts to wear off.

In Cuenca, find I've missed the direct connection to Huaquillas so instead I jump on a bus headed to Machala, the self-proclaimed "banana capital of the world", 3 1/2 hours away to make the connection there. We pass fields full of *lots* of banana plants. Driver lets me off at the junction where the buses to Huaquillas pass and, as luck would have it, one passes by soon. Jump on and head all the way to Huaquillas. When I get there it turns out the Ecuador border control post where you get your exit stamp was a couple of kilometres before the town itself. Bus driver says "Hey, you should have told me you wanted to stop there". Well...he did ask me "frontera?" when I got on the bus and I said yes sir...

So I have to take a taxi back to get my exit stamp, then another one back to Huaquillas...the town is shared by Ecuador and Peru, so you walk through a crowded market, round a corner, over a bridge and voila!, you're in Peru. Unfortunately, the Peruvian immigration post is out of town, another 4km down the road...

There's no official taxis, and in the crowded market hover a menagerie of conmen and shifty money changers, all looking to connive a quick buck. I'm descended on by an entourage offering to change my money, carry my bag, give me a ride to Tumbes (first town of any size in Peru). As it happens, I do need to change $20 USD (the sole currency in Ecuador), though I also have some Peruvian soles. I say ok, maybe I'll change some money...
Shifty money changer: "How much you want to change?"
Me: "$20"
SMC: "Only $20! That won't be enough! Today's a holiday in Peru, nothing's open"
Me: "Well, that's all I've got..anyway I can get more money out from an ATM"
SMC: "There's no ATMs...you need to change more cash"
Me: "There's an ATM in Tumbes"
SMC: "Nooo...not until Chiclayo" (about 500km away down the coast). "You'll really need more"
Me (losing patience): "Look, I happen to *know* there's an ATM in Tumbes...anyway, I only *have* bloody $20 to change!

So money changer guy shrugs and whips out his calculator. "I'll give you a rate of 3.5" he says. Which is weird, because the official rate varies between 3.25 and 3.35 soles to the dollar...But he's already punching away on his calculator. "Twenty times three point five is......42!" he announces. "What!" I take the calculator from him. "I think you'll find that twenty times three point five is..." the "equals" button is not where it should be, so he helpfully leans over and presses a button. On the screen appears the number 42. "Fourty-two" he confirms.

This is where I get mad. Some kind of lack-of-sleep too-much-travelling thing snaps, and I start yelling at my entourage. "Just piss off, all of you! Yes, piss right off!" In particular to SMC guy "How stupid do you think I am? I may be a gringo, but it doesn't make me an idiot! Twenty times three point five is 42? Jesus, even twenty times *three* is sixty!" (the kind of ironic thing here is that my brain is too tired and frazzled to actually calculate 20 * 3.5)

SMC has started to shuffle off, but his face lights up when I say this and he starts back. "Sixty! I'll give you sixty then". "No! Bugger off!" I shout. I think what offends me is not so much the brazenness of the attempted rip off, as the appalling insult to my intelligence.

So I wander out the other end of the market and cross the bridge. The thing is, I still need to get to the Peruvian immigration post somehow, so I'm forced to converse with the next set of shady looking guys who come up rubbing their hands and offering me rides. But I lose patience rapidly when they offer me exorbitant deals. "All the way to Tumbes for only $20!". Look, I know I can get a collectivo from immigration to Tumbes for a couple of soles, I just want to get to the immigration post, I explain. "OK, to Tumbes for $15!" they say.

I'm about to despair when I spot a uniformed Peruvian official walking along ahead of me, a police or immigration officer. I rush to catch up and say please señor, can you help me. "Can you point out to me some kind of official taxi to get to the frontier, and tell me how much I should pay to get there, and to Tumbes?" I ask. The Peruvian policeman looks amused but kind. He points to an old guy leaning against and ancient Buick sedan. "That gentleman will take you to the immigration post, and shouldn't charge you more than one sol. Then you can get a collectivo to Tumbes, from opposite the immigration, for one sol fifty".

I feel relieved to have encountered an honest, helpful Peruvian official (no, that's not an oxymoron!), and go over to where the old guy is. We wait for a while for other people to show up, but when no one does, I say I'll pay him the full five soles ($1.50) to get to the frontier. From there it all gets easier. I pass through immigration, change my dollars with the official money changers sitting outside (suspiciously inspecting every note, to their amusement) and then jump on the collectivo headed for Tumbes.

In Tumbes people are nice, and helpful! The guy who gives me a ride to the central plaza in his moto-taxi (ubiquitous three-wheeled buggies with motorbike engines) explains where the ATMs are, where to eat, and how to find the collectivos to Mancora. I get money out, the food is great, people in the restaurant are also super nice, and the plaza in Tumbes is pretty with murals and mosaics. Having eaten my first proper meal since Quito, I'm feeling relatively sane. I find the collectivo to Mancora, which is another hour and a half down the road.

The guy who collects the money and shouts "Mancora! Mancora!" has to lean against the door of the minivan to keep to closed as we rattle along through the scrubby coastal desert. But it's all good - there's a sweet warm breeze blowing through the window, and I'm about to finally reach my destination and chill out. Mancora is a popular spot "the most beautiful beach in Peru" supposedly, and it's full with holidayers from Lima and from Ecuador. But I eventually find a little cell of a room in a hotel/restaurant one block from the beach, jump into a blissfully cold shower and think about getting some beer.

London Calling...

London remains, for me, definitively the greatest city in the world. Endlessly interesting, more earthy and democratic than Paris, and a genuine melting pot in a way that New York isn't. It's difficult to pin down what it is that so fascinates and attracts about London, but I think it has something to do with the fact that it's been a city, and a highly important centre of trade, culture and commerce, continuously for over 2,000 years. The sense of histoy is palpable in every little corner. The original city swallowed up the surrounding villages and countryside, but gradually, allowing them to retain some of the character of villages and countryside. Contrary to what some imagine, it's also an immensely green city, full of parks and woodland.

I stayed with Simon and Jill in Whitechapel, which is a grittily attractive area just east of the City, only about 20-25 minutes walk from Tower Bridge. Whitechapel road is like Little Bangladesh, with a daily soukh of vegetables, clothes and other goods dominating the sidewalk. Women in Islamic headresses bustle through the markets: some of the younger ones are quite attractive, and the headress adds an alluring mystery. I really wouldn't be surprised if they eventually find their way to being a fashion accessory among Western girls.

On a Sunday the cafes off Brick Lane are full of antipodean, French and Spanish twentysomethings in black duffle coats and scarfs, smug about working abroad and living in the middle of it all. And the food is improving: they now serve the kind of fusiony cafeteria food that in New Zealand you might whip up on short notice in your flat. Not quite to the standard of actual cafe food in NZ, but an improvement on just sausage and chips.

Meanwhile Britain, despite Tony Blair's Cool Britannia and the Orwellian-sounding Modernisation Agency, remains what we only half-jokingly called a "Stalinist State". According to people I'd caught up with there, trying to open a bank account remains a Kafkaesque exercise in futility. Simon and Jill hadn't even been able to *re-open* their previous account, largely due to not being able to talk to the same person twice. While I was there, the bank where they had managed to open an account, managed to deposit their rent money into *the wrong account*. Whew! In NZ you have to be dealing with WINZ or some other genuine branch of bureaucracy to find that kind of incompetence. To buy a stamp so I could send a single postcard, I had to line up for 20 minutes at the local post office. I actually found myself gratified that the line, which stretched all the way out the door, moved faster than I had expected. Then, when I went back to the public gym where Simon and I had gone two days previously, the girl at reception told me she had to see my gym membership card in order to let me in. I tried to convince her that I just wanted to pay for one session, but she wouldn't accept the cash. Just because.

Oh, and the pubs still close at eleven. If you're half way through your pint when closing time comes along, it's knock it straight back or leave it.

But, give me a job, let me live somewhere within Zone1-2, and I'd still rather settle there than pretty much anywhere else.

A week in Rio de Janiero...

is not really enough, but I'm trying to squeeze as many tick-off-worthy things into the seven days I have here. Done the trip to the top of the Päo de Azucar and been to the Maracanä to watch a local derby, Flamengo vs. Botafogo. Today am hoping to make it to the Corcovado and the Christ statue. Also taking four days of Portuguese lessons, which is doing my head in a little. Oh, and beaches and a couple of clubs as well. All this doesn't leave much time for blogging, for which reason the Colombia and Peru stories haven't advanced at all. Will have to wait till I get to London or maybe, dear oh dear, back to New Zealand.

In other news, for those who are reading this but aren't actually related to me (I hope there's some of you), I am now an uncle (exclamation mark, can't find it on this keyboard). Alexandra Simone, ah, Bidwell I think, was born somewhere between Sunday and MondayBrazil time, as far as I can work out. Sophia is apparently still in hospital until today, but I'll call her as soon as I get the chance (most likely from London). Pretty exciting, no?

Beer, Sweat and Insects in Argentina...

Flew from Tacna to Córdoba the 19th at around midnight. Got stuck in Córdoba for five days amidst a daze of heat, humidity, stinky hostel rooms, ravenous mosquitos (I've been bitten over every inch) and hangovers (the place is a 24/7 party town, and although I wasn't at all in the mood, if you can't avoid them, make a half-hearted attempt to join them. Swarming with beautiful students, it made me anxious to get back to the gym and salsa classes. Tuesday made it to even hotter Carlos Paz, with its pretty green hills and sadly stinky, polluted, river and lake.

Arrived yesterday night in Buenos Aires. Perhpas even more humid, with a continuation of the stinky hot hostel rooms, but thankfully mosquitos are shut out. Huge, bustling and stimulating, like a Latin London, and the buskers actually outnumber the beggars...

Stories from Colombia and North Peru still being worked on...stay tuned.

UPDATE

Flew to Quito 19th January, headed to the frontier with Colombia, spent almost two weeks in Colombia, two days crazy travelling from Popayan in southwest Colombia to Máncora in northern Peru, couple of days on the beach in Máncora, two days in Chiclayo and around, a day in Trujillo, down to Lima where I met Paola and we spent a couple of days before heading back to Arequipa. Have a ticket for Friday night on a small airline from Tacna in southern Peru to Córdoba in Argentina. Intend to spend a couple of days there before continuing on to Buenos Aires for almost a week, then via Mendoza to Santiago again, from where I fly out to Rio on the 3rd of March. Have until the12th in Brazil, then fly Rio-Miami-London on the 12th-13th. Four days there to catch up with friends, then complete the circumnavigation of the globe on the 17th-19th, arriving back in Wellington on the 20th to start work on the 21st.

Stories are coming, don't panic! Keep checking this space over the next couple of weeks, I'll get them finished as soon as possible.

Dispatches - 22 Dec 2004 - 19 Jan 2005

I spent Christmas with Paola's family; as seems to be traditional here, Christmas Eve was reserved for present giving and a formal dinner, while the next day was dedicated to a bbq. It being Peru, this means a drinking marathon, no matter how respectable and reserved a family might appear on the surface.

I had brought a bottle of Sol de Ica pisco from my trip to the Ica vineyards as a present for the family, but first we had to work our way through a bottle of pisco from the valle de Majes, and later there were a series of wines from Majes, sweet but fresh and eminently drinkable.

The tradition here is for everyone to drink from the same bottle and glass, which are passed round from person (this would no doubt give infection control practitioners nightmares, but I think the alcohol tends to kill most germs). My introduction to this practice was another bbq at Paola's place, for Fathers Day. I wasn't aware of the rules, and on being handed a bottle and glass, assumed they where for my personal consumption; the others would have their own drinks too. I was sipping slowly from my glass and absorbed in a conversation with Paola's mother, when someone called out "Qué vieja tiene la botella!" ("What old lady's got the bottle!"). The old lady was me, and I learned my lesson. However, Paola's uncle delights in teasing me, and nowadays as soon as I'm passed the bottle and glass he shouts "Qué vieja tiene la botella!". Highly amusing.

Paola was fortunate enough to receive a phone call from her best friend Vanessa, which meant she could abstain for an hour. But in any case, the women of the family were quite within their rights to pull out, and wave "no thanks" when the bottle was passed. Not so the men. "You don't *have* to keep drinking" Paola told me when I confided to her my apprehension about the afternoon's bbq. Actually, I kind of do, I explained. When her father, grandfather, uncles, cousin and brother-in-law keep taking their turns, I can hardly wimp out. Masculinity has its subtleties too.

By 6pm I managed to convince Paola to head to HUgo and Lizbeth's, and we escaped. Of course, they were having a large bbq as well, and the drinking continued. The video camera was brought out, resulting in some hilarious footage, including Hugo dancing a huayno in his sandals and walk shorts. I hope to get some of the film onto CD and take it with me. We then made our second escape, and headed into the centre to meet Vanessa, dance some salsa, and polish off the last couple of beers of a dizzying Christmas.

New Year we spent in Arica, which was pretty blissful. At the crossroads of Peru, Bolivia and Chile, Arica is friendly and tranquil, avoiding the strident national identities of any of those three countries (though the Chilean army maintains a watchful presence). In addition, by January the climate is at its best, warm days and humid nghts with a refreshing breeze in the afternoon. If it hadn't been for the unusal quantities of jellyfish washing ashore, I might even have been persuaded to spend more than a couple of minutes in the water.

We stayed at the Sunny Days hostel run by Ross (NZ) and Beatriz, (Chile) where I had spent some time and worked briefly in May. From there it's a short walk to the beach, where we spent New Year's Eve drinking some beers and watching the fireworks explode over the Pacific ocean.

The two weeks post-New Year I spent trying to tidy things up, finishing off the websites I've been working on (didn't quite manage that, still more to do). Between times we spent a weekend at the beach in Camaná, three hours away on the Arequipan coast. Camaná used to be *the* place for Arequipeños to take their summer holidays; discoteques lined the beach and the parties were long and hedonistic.

In 2001 the huge earthquake which toppled one of the towers of Arequipa's cathedral triggered a localised tidal wave which descended on, and swept away, most of La Punta, the beachside part of Camaná (the town itself is on the Panamericana, a little inland). About thirty people were killed, and most of the buildings destroyed.

In a way it's a tragic story. Before the tidal wave, the sea fell back, leaving hundreds of fish stranded on the beach. Unaware of what was to happen next, local people rushed down to collect the fish, and many were drowned when the tidal wave hit.

On the other hand, it was probably lucky that it happened on a Saturday afternoon in June, when the place was more or less deserted. On a Saturday afternoon in January the beach would have been packed with half of Arequipa, and the tragedy would have reached epic proportions.

Camaná has never really recovered; summer vacationers now spread themselves out at different places along the coast, or go elsewhere. The restaurants, hostels and bars have returned or been repaired along the waterfront, but the residential areas remain in ruins, a grim reminder of the tidal wave. Paola's family had quite a substantial beach house at La Punta, which was completely swept away. We went to visit the site, the first time Paola had been back; not even a ruined wall remained.

That aside, it was a nice weekend on a not-too crowded beach, good seafood, cold beer and even colder water, which didn't tempt me to do more than briefly dip my toes. The waves at Sumner beach in December are balmy by comparison.

Sunday 16 I moved out of my apartment, which I've had since August 20 of last year, and stored a disturbing quantity of stuff with Paola - will have to do some rationalising when I get back. We were both a little irritable /tearful during the packing up process, but cheered up once it was over and the flat was delivered back to the landlord - it felt like one era had finished and a new (though uncertain) one begun.

Sunday 16 January at 8pm I was on the bus to Lima. I spent two days in a little hostel in Miraflores, which is one of the wealthy parts of the city. It's by the sea, with modern, American-style office towers and fast food joints, green parks, and an outdoor shopping mall, "Larcomar" hovering over the ocean.

The coast terminates in some dramatic cliffs dropping to the coastal highway, with an esplanade, or "malecón" along the top of the cliffs. I went for a run along the malecón the second night I was there, which was beautiful, the sunset fiery over the Pacific, the air warm and humid, and the perfectly groomed parks along the way full of modern public sculptures, most un-Peru-like. The most famous of these is the "Park of Love", featuring a giant sculpture of a man and a woman embracing, surroundede by pretty mosaics. I noticed that all the municipal signs, asking people to keep the place tidy and so on, referred to "Miraflores"; as a concept, "Lima" was not in evidence.

The morning of the 19th I took a taxi to the airport and hopped on the Lan Chile flight to Quito, bound for adventures further north.

Trip to the Coast & Desert - Ica ...

The bus took a long time getting out a crowded Lima, and it was a good 4 1/2 hours before we rolled into Ica. I was pretty beat, so shelled out 25 soles for a comfortable hotel room with a private bathroom, and crashed hard (that's less than $12 NZD / $8 USD, by the way - Peru is cheap, you should visit!).

Next morning I did a bit of exploring round the centre of Ica, confirming my impression that in Peru what is known as "the coast" shares certain characteristics. Ica was as chaotic, dity and haphazard as Lima, though obviously on a much smaller scale (200,000 inhabitants). Three-wheeled taxis, similar to the model made famous by Mr Bean, dashed comically round the uneven streets, adding to the feeling of disorder.

This is the hottest part of South Peru - inland away from the cold sea, and at an altitude of only 500 metres. Still not as blazing as you'd expect at this latitude - only really hot between 10am and 5pm, and refreshing outside those hours. But enough to give the town a heavy, lazy feeling.

I visited the Vista Alegre bodega (vineyard) 5 minutes from the centre of Ica and was taken on a tour to see how they make the wine and pisco. It finished with an opportunity to taste the various products, and I was pleasantly surprised by the wine. I had formed the impression of Peruvian wines, perhaps with some prejudice, as being unsubtle and oversweet. A bit of sweetness is indeed unavoidable, given the lack of a real winter, but these wines were smooth, eminently drinkable, and swimming with aromas of herbs, fruits and spices. I would have bought a bottle, but it's pisco that is the most "typical" product of Ica, and so I opted to take a bottle of the classic Sol de Ica to present to Paola's family, with whom I was to spend Christmas dinner.

The charms of Ica central somewhat exhausted, I headed the 5km out to the oasis and tourist haven of Huacachina. A little pool fringed with palm and orange-flowered acacia trees, the oasis is surrounded by enormous sand dunes, which have become extremely popular for sandboarding - one of the things I had to tick off my tourist list. I didn't particularly like the vibe of the hostel where I stayed, though - it had a transient, slightly seedy feel, and I thought the young guys who ran the reception and travel agency were rather insolent. Yes, that's the word - sometimes I really think I'm getting *old*.

The next day it was off with a group of other palefaced tourists to go sandboarding on the dunes. The ride in the buggy was a bit of an adventure in itself, as we plunged vertically up and down the steep ridges and hollows. This is probably all kinds of disaster for any ecosystem exisiting in the dunes, but I put that out of my head like a good tourist.

The sanboarding itself was a bit of a laugh, the dunes high enough and the sand hard enough to get some speed going, but the boards didn't allow much manouvering and got sandlogged before reaching the bottom. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, with my few experiences snowboarding, I was one of the least incompetent, though still took plenty of tumbles on teh way down.

On the way out to Hucachina the taxi driver had told me about a local legend - the village of Cachiche and its "seven-headed palm tree". Cachiche is said to be the centre of witchcraft in Peru, and diabolical influences are responsible for the form of this particular palm, which has grown in twisted loops, repeatedly burying itself in the sand and sprouting another leafy crown. According to the legend, there was a local witch, who lived to th age of 106 and is supposed to have cured the stutter of a local boy who later became a congressman. On her death in 1987, she prophesied that when the seventh head of the plalm tree appeared, Ica would be wiped out.

In 1997 (an El Niño year) massive rains in the hills above Ica sent flood waters hurtling down the valley, breaking the banks of the river and burying Ica in a tide of mud. At this time, the villagers of Cachiche noticed that the seventh head of the palm tree had appeared and sprouted leaves. They quickly set to the task of cutting it off, at which point it stopped raining, and the flood waters ceased, just before they entered the village of Cachiche.

I decided to check out the story at first hand, and the next day dragged along an Israeli guy and English girl in my dorm room and took another taxi to Cachiche. Five minutes from the centre of Ica, it was a poor, sleepy looking collection of ramshackle houses and fruit trees with a few bored-looking people sitting around in the heat. We drove right up to the diabolical tree itself, and the taxi driver sought out a local woman to recite the legend in return for a small tip and a soft drink for her daughter.

Not everybody coincided in their account of the legend. According to the second taxi driver and the local woman, it hadn't been the "good witch" of 106 years who was responsible for the curse - she would never have done such a thing! In fact, the palm tree had historically been the centre for the ceremonies of the "bad witches", who had performed human sacrifices in return for knolwedge of the future. One of these witches, when she drew the short straw and was to be sacrificed, violently objected and placed the curse of the seventh head as she died. These days, she said, the villagers were always very careful to lop off the palm tree's seventh head the minute it showed signs of sprouting.

Meanwhile, just round the corner, was the meeting place of the "good witches". These were just "curanderas", we were told, who had practiced healing rites. The 106-year old had been one of these, and had cured the future congressman when he came to her as a 14 year-old boy with a crippling stutter. As a gesture of gratitude, he had a statue erected in her memory. It's a golden Art Nouveau nymphette with a head of curls. The good witch was said to have been something of a babe; she "bewitched with her beauty" according to the plaque on the statue.

Opposite the statue, where a local boy recited its history in return for a small tip, resided the current witch of Cachiche, a smiling man in his fourties doing a slow trade from his little store, sponsored in the bright yellow of Inka Kola. He offered to read our palms, but we instead opted for a couple of chilled Inka Kolas to quench the thirst.

The Ica regional musuem, which was supposed to be very good, was closed, so I cut my losses, grabbed my bags from the hstel in Huacachina, and jumped on a local bus headed for the two and a half hour ride through the desert to Nazca.

Trip to the coast - Lima...

It's summer in Lima. Remarkably for a city only a few degrees south of the equator, it spends eight months of the year shrouded by the garua, a thick coastal fog produced by the cold Humboldt current, and in winter the temperature hovers around 17-18 degrees. But by December a hazy sun has come out, the temperature is up to 25-26 degrees, and the high humidity makes the air thick and steamy on the streets.

The true extremes of Lima are supposed to be the leafy mansions of San Isidro and Miraflores, and the desperate poverty of the pueblos jovenes (shantytowns) on the rim of the city. But in the centre itself you can pass from tranquility to chaos within one block. In the area around the Plaza Mayor, the pedestrian mall on Jiron de la Union and the boardwalk along the Rimac river by the old railway station, Paola and I walked on clean, spacious pavements past splendid colonial buildings under the watchful eye of abundant police.

A couple of blocks away we crossed the avenida Abancay, officially the most polluted and noisiest street in the whole of Peru. Crowds of people hovered on the sidewalks waiting to dash across the avenue between the dilapidated minibuses belching clouds of smoke. We picked our way through the usual menagerie of sidewalk kiosks, street sellers, hawkers, beggers and thieves, only to be submerged in the pre-Christmas chaos of the barrio chino, where a human flood tide surged in all directions past shops and galleries filled with cheap jewellery and trinkets, and it wasn't clear who was buying and who was selling.

And we almost didn't even get there. With tickets booked for the 5:30 pm bus from Arequipa to Lima, I reluctantly took at face value Paola's promise that she would "pick me up from my place at 5:00 sharp" I had desisted from promising to pick her up, as I thought she didn't want her parents to know she was going to Lima with me. In fact, although she can't stay the night at my place, and I'm forbidden from ever going upstairs (where her bedroom is) when I visit her place, her mother had been told casually "I'm off to Lima with Simon". Complexities of Peruvian morality.

Although we were really supposed to *be at the bus terminal* by 5:00, I gritted my teeth (sometimes I think I'm turning into Dad) and accepted the 5:00 pm pick-up time, and was dutifully waiting by my front door at the indicated hour. At 5:10 I called Paola's cell phone. "You're already in the taxi, right?" I asked. "Yes, yes", I could hear her lying.

By 5:15 I was starting to sweat; I smoked two consecutive cigarettes pacing back and forth and checking the clock in the store by my front door. At 5:20 I phoned the desk of the bus company at the terminal and spoke to the guy we had bought the tickets off. "Can you make sure the bus waits for us?" I begged. We're, uh, having some problems with the taxi but we'll be there soon". The bus company guy winced. "Well, the bus has to leave at 5:35 sharp....where are you?". "In the centre" I replied. "Ufff" I could hear him shaking his head. I hung up after a couple more desperate supplications to wait for us.

By 5:25 I was renouncing any relationship that might ever have existed between Paola and I, rehearsing the last string of insults I would ever deliver to her, and readying myself to make a last desperate attempt to get to Lima by myself.

At 5:26 a taxi stopped by my place bearing a grinning Paola. "What are you trying to do to me, woman!" I blustered. "We'll never make it!"
"We'll be fine", Paola assured me. "It's only 5:20". After consultation of various timepieces and the radio, it did appear that my clock had been five minutes fast. But we still had to get to the bus station, normally at least ten minutes south of the city centre, through rush-hour traffic. I squirmed in my seat as we waited at traffic lights and urged the poor taxi driver to take any possible short cuts.

The taxi clock was reading 5:32 as we pulled up by the bus terminal. I grabbed all our bags and made a desperate rush for the terminal entrance and the Cromotex counter, Paola trailing in my wake. Fortunately the bus was still there on the tarmac and we were able to load our bags into the luggage compartment. But as we climbed aboard, the bus was already moving. We had made it by the absolute skin of our teeth.

I was still shaking a little as we pulled out of Arequipa, with the sky getting dark. Paola curled up in her seat and glanced up at me. "Everything alright, baby?" she asked innocently.

Once in Lima I was dragged into what seemed like *every single* clothing boutique on Jiron de la Unión and suffered in the non-airconditioned galeries of the barrio chino while Paola painstakingly inspected a huge variety of jewellery and other trinkets. But it was good to be there. Lima is everything Arequipa is not, or aspires not to be - humid, dirty, and chaotic - but it's good to get out of the provinces for a change. Lima is also one of the culinary capitals of the world, and the seafood in particular is delicious. We ate cebiche (chunks of raw fish marinated in chili, lemon and onions) in sidewalk cafes and enjoyed the warm air.

In between the shopping, we also made it to three different musuems - the Musuem of Popular (Folk) Art, an exhibition on "Women in Peruvian and Mexican Prehispanic Society" in the old railway station, and the Musuem of the Inquisition near the Congress building. This was my favourite - a historical tour through the building that housed the Lima branch of the Spanish Inquisition up until the 19th century. The same building later housed the Peruvian Senate, which was featured in the second half of the tour. This is one of those nice ironies which remind you you're in a country that doesn't make any sense.

We also made it to a silver workshop, and were given a guided tour through the process of forging the silver and making it into jewellery. Paola has ambitions of making and selling her own jewellery, in funky designs of silver and alpaca, so was keen to inspect the possible competition. But design wasn't the workshop's forte - mostly the rings, earrings etc were in predictable moulds for mass export consumption.

After two days, Paola had to go back to Arequipa on the 7pm bus. I had drifted into her time zone, and we suddenly found ourselves with 15 minutes to get from the hotel to the bus station - again through rush hour traffic. On hearing about our deadline, the taxi driver changed direction and threw us a blanket. "Put that over your backpacks" he said. "We'll have to go down Abancay".

On the way through the chaos of the avenida Abancay Paola and the driver swapped carjacking stories. Apparently Paola and a friend had once been attacked in a taxi in Lima; the assailants managed to leave her a nasty cut, but didn't actually take anything. "Yeah, they're usually half-drugged" said the taxi driver. "You know, the other week a guy tried to jump into the car when I was with a señora. He grabbed hold of the lady's purse, but I accelerated and shook him off onto the sidewalk. Then she goes mad at me, says I was in cahoots with the thief. Jesus, I just saved her from getting robbed! What thanks do I get?".

Welcome to Lima.

As it happened, we arrived to Cromotex terminal shortly after 7:00, and things were running on a more typical Peruvian schedule; people were still lining up to check their luggage. By now I had abandoned the idea of heading to the north of Peru; there wasn't time before Christmas, all the bus companies were raising their prices, and it would be hard to even get a seat in the last week before the 25th. Instead I said goodbye to Paola and wandered two doors down to the Flores terminal where I jumped on the first bus headed for Ica, three hours away in the desert south of Lima.

I saw this article on the Stuff website and would have to dispassionately say that this time they've got it right. Yes New Zealand is beautiful, but yes, it's also a bit boring and is not necessarily the best place to live, though a tourist will almost certainly have a good time.

It also inspires me, after having done a bit of travelling, to provide my own list of the best and most beautiful. I've still (hopefully) got a couple more countries up my sleeve in South America, so it'll be interesting to see if that changes anything.

Make comments!! On the website, rather than sending them to my email. That way other people can see what you've put too. Of course, I've never really been to Asia or Africa, so would be interested to hear comparisons from people who have, and have also done Europe/North America/Latin America like me (Paul Bryant, are you out there?).

Here goes:

Most beautiful country: Guatemala, by streets. New Zealand comes second, so I'm not being deliberately anti-patriotic! Guatemala, in addition to tremendous variety and constant beauty within a small space, has an undefinable feeling of magic.

Most livable country: Spain. To live somewhere, you want a combination of things: natural beauty, economic opportunity, security, friendliness, climate, vibrance, urban beauty, outdoor life, history and culture. Spain gets good ticks on most points.

Friendliest people: Argentina. This one surprised me, as I generally find travelling Argentinians a bit tiresome. But in the country itself - welcoming, educated, generally respectful, and with a touch of joie de vivre. And even paleface tourists like me get treated like normal people.

Most beautiful big city: Paris. Untouchable. Despite its awful outer ring.

Most beautiful medium-sized city: lots competing,and at this point beauty and liveability become intertwined. Some candidates are Venice, Italy; Seville, Spain; Wellington, New Zealand; Salta and Mendoza, Argentina; and Arequipa, Peru. Everywhere has its ups and downs - Venice is indescribably beautiful but very touristic - could you really live there? Wellington would win easily if it weren't for the climate and the lack of social life for 25-35 year old single people.

Most beautiful small town: La Antigua, Guatemala beats out Grenada, Spain. Volcanic cones and green hills hover over cobblestone streets and ruined baroque churches with red, purple and yellow bougainvillea climbing over the crumbled stone. The climate is delicious; at the end of the wet season you can sit under a moonlit sky and watch the lightning flashing in the hills.

Most liveable place: After much thought, London. But you *have* to have a good job and the ability to escape on holidays to the continent. I'd need to spend much more time in New York and perhaps San Francisco to make the comparison. I like the saying "If you're tired of London, you're tired of life".

Ugliest place: A tie between Newark, New Jersey and Juliaca, Peru. Neither place is actually particularly poor, but seem to share a collective disgregard for the quality of life.

Of course, many of these opinions have been formed by fleeting visits or initial impressions, so I'd welcome corrections or disagreements.

News Brief from Peru - "Rebellion" in Andahuaylas...

Don't know if any of this has filtered through to the ourside world - it was on CNN en español, but hadn't been picked up by the AP...some of you might find it interesting anyway....

While we were sunning ourselves and eating the world's best olives in warm, tranquil Arica over New Year, a group of young army reservists led by a former Peruvian army major and aspiring politician Antauro Humala took over a police station in Andahuaylas, between Ayacucho and Cusco, and 832 km southeast of Lima. Four police officers were killed by the group, who espouse an ideology called "etnocacerism" and demanded the resignation of Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo.

The rebels had originally planned to attack two army bases near Andahuaylas, but on discovering that the bases were on alert, opted for the police station, which was unguarded but held a substantial store of arms. The takeover was apparently achieved without a shot being fired, but the four officers were killed later when they tried to approach the station.

A standoff followed as the rebels held 17 police officers hostage and Peruvian police and army units surrounded the area. Crowds of people gathered in the streets, largely in support of the rebels, and formed barricades near the police station, blocking the approaches. Meanwhile, mediation efforts were underway, led by the Ombudsman's office and the parish priest.

Antauro Humala is being depicted by the national papers as something of a charlatan and an opportunist. His brother, Ollanta Humala, has been a military attache in France and South Korea and is supposed to have been behind some shady events including a "staged" uprising in 2000. Antauro at one point received 6% in a presidential poll but has recently dropped out of view, and it's being said that the events in Andahuaylas are an attempt to gain political attention and leverage.

The Etnocaceristas are described as having an "ultranationalist" ideology. From what I can make out, it's a crude mix of indigenous resentment, and xenophobia directed in particular at Chile and the United States. "Etno" is "ethno", and "cacerista" comes from Andrés A. Cáceres, a Peruvian hero of the 1879-1883 war against Chile. (see the full translated newswire article below). Of course, Humala is not himslef indigenous, and was educated in the Franco-Peruvian college. Unsurprisingly, his main adherents are young, little educated, unemployed men.

Early afternoon yesterday (3 Jan), after negotations had broken down a couple of times and various incidents had left one of the rebels dead, Humala gave himself up, along with 50 of his comrades, in the municipality of Andahuaylas. Other reservists remained barricaded in the police station with the hostages until this morning, when they also gave themselves up.

The whole episode was brief and seemingly pointless, but worrying, in that it presents a precedent and model for other groups to vent their frustration or make a name for themselves. It's hardly the best thing for Peru.

Meanwhile in Arequipa...

The events in Andahuaylas had also triggered off unrest in other regions of Peru. We arrived back here yesterday a little past midnight and this morning the streets were tranquil, giving no indication of the events of yesterday. I was updated by the girls at the agencia and the newspaper, accordng to whom things had gotten a little ugly. Three thousand protesters and a handful of members of the etnocacerist movement gathered in the centre of the city around the plaza de armas. The rowdy protests got a bit out of hand when news came through that in Andahuaylas Humala had reneged on a previous decision to surrender.

In a fit of excitement and jubilation, the protesters started ripping up stones from the plaza and forming barricades. The police responded by dispersing the crowd with tear-gas bombs. According to the paper, the worst-affected were children and old people who happened to be passing through the area at the time, and suffered breathing problems. There were seven arrests made.

La Republica reported that "tourism shouldn't be affected" by the incidents, as it was all over fairly quickly. I can make an assurance to the contrary, however. Prior to going to Arica, Tessy and I had responded to a request from an agency in Cuzco who had 14 tourists wanting to do four days in Arequipa. We put together a programme, worked out a budget and provided the programme and proposed price to the Cuzco agency. On my arrival back here Lizbeth informed me that the tourists had accepted and were all set to come. However, news of the disturbances in Arequipa filtered through to them and, anxious for their security, they decided to cancel. Instead they will be heading for Bolivia. That's a loss of what would have been a considerable earning for our agency, not to mention the about $3200 cash that it now not going to be spent in Peru. You hardly need the tear gas to make you want to cry...


Some Background...

This is quite interesting. I've translated it directly from the online news service.

Lima, 4 Jan (EFE).- Antauro Humala, leader of the ultranationalist movement "Etnocacerista", which took over a police station in the Peruvian city of Andahuaylasm, told EFE, hours before being arrested, that he compares his actions with those of the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and of Ecuador, Lucio Guitiérrez.

Humala indicated in a telephone conversation with EFE that the Ecuadorian and Venezuelan presidents, who led military coups in their respective countries before governing them, "represent a generation of officers who seek to stamp out the corruption of the military class stemming from the School of the Americas in Panama controlled by Washington".

While denying that his uprising has electoral ends, Huamla noted that "we are officers of medium rank who want to put an end to the moral collapse of the old generation of soldiers in Latin America who are linked to narcotrafficking and other war crimes".

The retired major and leader of the ultranationalist movement "Etnocacerista", who defends executions as an effective method to get rid of corrupt politicians, said that he acknowledged that Chavez "has revolutionary and historic merit, because he stands firm against the pressures of the United States".

Commenting on the issue, the ex-minister of the Interior Fernando Rospigliosi said that "Humala wants to imitate the spectacular actions of other Latin American military officers like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador, who made coup attempts which catapulted them to popularity and ended up winnign elections".

Peru began the year 2005 shaken by the takeover of a police station in Andahuaylas (832 km from Lima) by some 150 members of the ultranationalist movement "Etnocacerista", who took control of a large stock of arms, held 17 police hostage and killed four.

Antauro Humala indicated that the uprising was intended to demand the resignation of the Peruvian president, Alejandro Toledo, who has a 9% approval rating according to the latest polls.

Regarding the date of the rebellion, which coincides with the Cuban revolutionary victory in 1959 and that of the "zapatistas" in Mexico in 1994, Antauro Humala acknowedged that he chose the date "because we knew we would find the police unprepared after the New Year festivities"

Humala, who may face charges for the rebellion that imply an average of 25 years in prison, revealed that he chose Andahuaylas to begin his rebellion because "in Peruvian history it was the epicentre of the rebellion by the Chanca culture against the Incas (13th century) and the peasant army which liberated Lima from the Chileans was formed in 1883".

He emphasized that he is "afraid of death" but that he "has spiritual peace which allows his participation in this historic movement which has already achieved its revolutionary task".

According to unofficial figures, the followers of Humala in the marginal zones of Lima, Ayacucho, Tacna, Moquegua, Arequipa, Puno and Apurimac reach 4,000 persons, who are mainly youth with few resources, little education and without any possibility of finding employment.

"Etnocacerismo" takes its name from the marshall and ex-president of Peru Andrés A. Cáceres, hero of the war against Chile (1879-1883), and feeds on xenophobia againstChile, the United Sates and Israel with a discourse which uses the terms of indigenous complaints and demands.

The chief "etnocacerista", a retired major, and his brother, Ollanta Humala, a retired commandant, took part in 2000 in an uprising against the president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who quit the presidency of the Peru in that year in the midst of accusations of corruption.

Adventure in Andagua Day Four: The Real Death Road

Chachas had the feeling of being closer to civilization than the villages on the other side of the mountains. It's on the mining road, and there's a once daily kombi to Andagua, from where the road connects eventually to the Panamericana and to Arequipa.

We stayed in a spacious attic with about ten beds, sharing the room with the two (noisy) little boys of the host family, and ate downstairs in the comedor. Around the table were men who looked as if they had just come in from the fields, probably because they had. Where were we from, one asked. When I said "New Zealand" he nodded sagely and said (as do about 95% of Peruvians when I say where I'm from) "Ah, a lot of cattle, no?" (the actual word is ganaderia, which means any grazing animal). Not a lot of people here have any idea where New Zealand is, but the majority are aware that it has good pasture.

I concurred - my standard response is "yes, it rains a lot, so the animals get to eat pure grass" (In Arequipa, the cows and sheep make do with alfalfa grown on the irrigated terraces). This guy, however, knew a little more. "You know, when the Majes irrigation project got under way, they used bull semen from New Zealand to breed the cows there" he told me. As it happened, I had read something about this in an online NZ farming publication I had come across by accident a couple of weeks ago, so knew what he was talking about. But I was still quite impressed.

I was almost too tired to sleep properly, in addition to being bothered by the sunburn, insect bites and dust-caked respiratory passages. But it was heaven to at least be in a bed. There's something I learnt on this trip - I'm a confirmed camping wimp. Between a slight claustrophobia, inability to sleep on my back, and a preference for two good pillows, I *really* don't like tents. And I'm not much at pitching them, cooking over a campfire or shitting in the wilderness either. So, I'd really rather walk an extra few hours and arrive at a nice little village where I can sleep in a bed. There - I've admitted it.

Next morning we left the exhausted burro in Chachas and set off to walk the five hours to Andagua. Toño had promised it would be "pure highway" all the way, but in the end we spent just as much time cutting across country and scrambling up and down banks. There's "only" a 400-500 metre gain in altitude from Chachas to Andagua, and the five hours march wasn't much compared to previous days. But, donkeyless, we were walking with fully loaded packs, and it was still pretty tough going.

We were now in the Valley of Volcanoes, a geothermal wonder containing about thirty separate volcanoes. The road wound between old lava flows, twisted mounds of porous rock like chewed-up toffee. The volcanoes themselves were hardly more than little conical hillocks in the desert, about thirty metres high. During one of our cross-country shortcuts Toño pointed out a thin line of bare earth about ten centimetres wide cutting a straight path through the sparse vegetation. It has been there for years, he said. It was certainly not a path for people or animals, as it disappeared into a heap of volcanic rock. So, something of a minor mystery.

Andagua, when we eventually arrived, was a strange little town. Toño commented that it was "poor, sad". The surrounding terrain is rough and infertile, and the atmosphere was different from the simple but verdant villages we had passed through on our travels. The most striking feature were the hedges in the small central plaza which had been clipped, Edward Scissorhands fashion,into the shapes of people and animals.

After lunch in a local comedor we said goodbye to Toño who had to return to Chachas, pick up the burro, then head all the way back to Cabanaconde. He had another three days ahead of him.

For us, it was a somnolent afternoon waiting six hours for the bus to arrive from Arequipa. I chatted to some guys in a 4WD who said they had taken three days to come from Arequipa. Their mission was to work their way through the little villages in back-country Arequipa and establish property titles for people who, by common consensus, owned their dwelling but didn't have an official title to it in Peru's property registers. They were doing urban areas while another team was working on rural properties. I said it sounded like difficult but rewarding work - in the liberal world view having formal title to one's property ought to inspire economic confidence and investment. They agreed, and said that the project was actually being sponsored by the World Bank.

The streets were nearly deserted for most of the afternoon, and it was only when the bus was about to arrive that the village girls appeared with their cheeses, for which I later learned Andagua is well-known. But I had run out of money by this point and wasn't able to sample them.

Though it had been a hard four day's walk, I reckon the most gruelling part of the whole journey was the return trip in the bus. It's 10 hours from Andagua-Arequipa, and I knew the road would be rough. It was - passengers being tossed up and down like rag dolls as we crossed the bumpier bits. This is true torture when it's night and you're dead tired but can't sleep.

I wasn't quite prepared for how steep and narrow it would be, though. It was already dark as we headed out of Andagua and I couldn't see a thing. But couldn't help noticing the bus repeatedly stopping, reversing and then heading downhill again. It was clearly negotiating some pretty tight hairpins...I pulled back the curtain and out the window could see the lights of a small town far below. Between the lights and the bus window was...empty space. I closed the curtain and hoped for the best; it's probably the first time I've felt genuinely scared in public transport.

It was a great relief to arrive at the bottom of the descent and a charming little town of stone streets where we had a break. It was still a way to go on the rough trocha before we joined the tarseal at Aplao, and I never really looked like sleeping, having time to chat to a public health nurse who sat in the seat next to me for a stretch.

On arrival in Arequipa at an exhausted 3:30 in the morning I made my pledge - no more Andes! But maybe it's what hurts and exhaust you this most that is, in the end, the most memorable.

Adventure in Andagua cont...

Day Three - Murder of the Lungs

The zip on the tent was broken, meaning we couldn't close the door, and passed a pretty cold night. I think Toño, who slept outside by the remains of the fire under the donkey's saddle blankets, might have been more comfortable than the tourists.

In the morning condors were circling around the valley with their distinctive silent glide; once you've seen a condor on the wing you can generally pick them from other large birds at a distance. We packed up camp and headed uphill. It was always going to be a challenge climbing to 5200 metres after two hard days, and I was already gasping for oxygen a little as we started off. On the way uphill we chewed a lot of coca. I'm not really sure whether it helps, or whether having a wad of leaves stuffed in your cheek restricts the oxygen supply even more. On balance, I think it is beneficial.

The valley narrowed and we were climbing between mineral-rich mountains painted in copper and sulfur-yellow. There is apparently a gold mine high up in those hills, served by an improbably high and winding road. The other two reached a ridge a little ahead of me and ditched backpacks for a rest stop; immediately Toño leapt off the path and raced down towards a little pool in a hollow to the right. I reached the ridge and saw why. More condors than I could count - probably fifteen or sixteen - were gliding and swooping down toward the pool and taking off again. It was an incredible sight - though I was too far away to take photographs, and didn't have the energy to follow Toño down to the pool. When he come back he said that there was a dead cow by the pool - the condors had found themselves a feast.

On our next rest stop even Toño was looking tired, and the donkey was noticeably struggling. Toño had to offer it words of encouragement to keep it moving ("Donkey! What the fuck's wrong with you, you piece of shit?!") plus the odd healthy blow on the backside. We were amongst clumps of yareta, alien-looking bright green moss that grows here on stones at altitudes above about 4500 metres. I had become so used to walking endlessly on this trip that I imagined we were still some way from the summit. It was quite a surprise when, at the next ridge we reached, there appeared the magnificent vista of the twin snow-capped volcanoes, Coropuna and Solimana, raising their heads above the horizon.

We had reached the summit of the pass earlier than expected, and Toño said this meant we could continue all the way downhill to the village of Chachas if we wanted. The plan had been to camp in a natural stone shelter a few hundred metres below the pass, where local people shelter their llamas and alpacas. Instead we had lunch there; on seeing it I didn't fancy spending another night in a broken tent at this altitude, and was keen to keep going to Chachas and the promise of a bed.

We headed uphill again for a while, following and crossing the mining road. High in a desolate part of the puna we came upon a cluster of straw-roofed huts opposite a small stream. In the stream, a woman with a small child was washing what looked like large cuts of meat, and intestines. She called us over and told us she was salvaging parts of two of her llamas, which had been attacked and killed by a puma. Could we please take a message to her sister in the village of Nahuira, on the way to Chachas, and let her know what had happened?

I had previously asked Toño if there were pumas in this part of the sierra, and he had shaken his head definitively. Upon hearing the woman's story he stil looked sceptical. "It will have been a fox that did this, no?" he asked. The woman laughed and pointed at the remains of her llamas - a fox had done that? (The llama is not a weakling - in the western U.S., farmers sometimes include a couple of llamas in their flocks of sheep to help fend off coyotes). Later in Arequipa, Hugo told me that there were indeed pumas in the mountains - but "a sub-species of puma, which is not as big", he said. Nevertheless, whatever had taken apart the llamas was of reasonable size.

From there, a direct path dropped what must have been a good 1200-1500 metres to Nahuira, many tines cutting across the serpentines of the mining road. Once again we traversed climate and vegetation zones, the tussocky paja brava of the puna eventually giving way to cactus and wildflowers and, far below, green agricultural terraces once more, at the foot of a hill beside a small lagoon. It was a long, weary trudge downhill on a path covered in fine dust which, stirred up, infiltrated and caked the nostrils and sinuses. Toño's insults of the donkey grew more vehement and frequent, indicating that it was really struggling.

Finally arriving in Nahuira, Toño went to try and deliver the message to the llama woman's sister (the owner of the llamas), and then we followed the road another 30 minutes to Chachas. After another nine and a half hours on our feet, it was a desperately weary group of persons and animal who gratefully accepted dinner and a night's lodging in Chachas' only inn.

Adventure in Andagua cont....

Day Two: Murder of the Legs

During the night in Choco, mosquitos (finding a niche in the microclimate by the river) feasted on my exposed parts while a rooster bellowed continually from about 1am. It wasn't the best night's sleep, but was nice to be in a bed.

The next morning we left the village behind and headed upstream, following the Choco river. I should explain that the previous day we had turned at right angles to the Colca river and headed north. The Choco is a tributary of the Colca, and has its very own narrow, steep, canyon. As the maize and alfalfa terraces of Choco faded off, the vegetation reverted to brush and cactus. It was a gentle climb over uneven terrain, crossing and re-crossing the river. There was a cool breeze blowing down the canyon and it was a relief to know that water was always close; several times I stopped and refilled my bottle from the stream.

It was over three hours up the canyon before we left the river and swung uphill. If Choco was like a Biblical paradise after nine hours dusty walk, Miña was straight out of fantasy literature. Nestled up against ever-steeper mountains, the collection of straw-roofs was preceded by a broad green swathe of cornfields and grazing cows. A long, winding path of loose rocks framed by tidy stone walls led uphill towards the village. It could easily have been the Shire (albeit mountainous) in Lord of the Rings, or any enchanted village from medieval fantasy.

On the way up the canyon we stopped for a break when we met a Choco native coming back downriver with his mule, and he and Toño spent a while discussing the relative merits of their respective animals. Later we passed a harassed-looking young guy coming the other way; Toño asked him whether he was from Miña or Choco. "No, man, I'm from Lima!" he replied. Turned out he had been up in Miña repairing the town's satellite phone. That's a long way for a maintenance man to go.

For people who had created and maintained the gravity-defying terraces which ascend the hills in sinuous green ribbons, I thought the inhabitants of Miña might have given the path up to the village a somewhat friendlier surface. Back in Arequipa, Mickey Zarate told me that the whole route up form Choco to Miña used to be much prettier; the lower part of the valley was covered with fruit trees, and apples and oranges "fell on your head". A few years ago, says Mickey, a massive huayco devastated the entire catchment; people were killed in Choco, and the fruit trees along the upper Choco river were wiped out. I guess the current path has been put back together from the rubble that must have covered the mountainside.

We followed a stream to a property perched above the village with panoramic views back down the valley, and ate lunch there. The owner, a small and cheerful man, was drying cheeses in the sun and gave Toño a cup of fresh milk.

Miña is about 3300 metres, and we still had to cross a pass at 4200 metres to reach our camping spot. Toño pointed out the bluff high on the slopes above us that we would have to round before the end of the afternoon. The previous day was I think the first time I've ever walked nine hours straight, and today we would travel a vertical 1900 metres from Choco, which I think very few people manage ever (by comparison, the final ascents of Chachani and Misti were 1200 and 1300 metres respectively).

We climbed up out of the corn-growing belt and into high-altitude desert of cactus, brush and wildflowers. I spotted a hummingbird feeding from a cactus flower. As we gained altitude a panorama spread out beneath us; the peaks of Ampato, Sabancaya and Hualca Hualca rose over the horizon, below them could be seen the great rift which is the Colca Canyon on its westward course to the sea, while perched at the foot of Ampato were tiny dots glinting in the sun - the village of Cabanaconde which we had left two days previously.

Nineteen hundred metres of vertical ascent is a killer for legs which have walked nine hours on the previous day, and as we neared the top of the pass the altitude was starting to have an impact on the oxygen supply. My calves were beginning to shake, but we eventually arrived at the top and the familiar cairns of medium-sized stone which always mark high points here. It is believed that one's sorrows and worries are left behind in these stones that are piled on mountaintops.

We dropped into a narrow, shallow valley at whose head Toño pointed out the 5200-metre pass we would have to cross the next day. There were still snowdrifts scattered beneath the rocky peaks. As we descended to our campsite - a flat area next to a stream sheltered by low walls of loose stones - we spotted groups of deer dashing up the hillsides. It was 6:30 in the evening and getting dark - we had walked another 9 1/2 hours. In the fading light we saw large, eagle-like birds circling the hills - called huachera said Toño.

We ate by a small cooking fire and Toño told me that he had served in anti-terrorist unit of the army in Ayacucho during the struggle against the Sendero Luminoso. Had he been scared, I asked. He shrugged - "we had to go where they sent us; we didn't have any choice in the matter" he said. But had he seen actual combat, I wanted to know. Oh yes, he said, there was "all kind of slaughter". He laughed - "they had compact Russian weapons with a range of 1500 metres. We had rifles like this (pretending to cradle a large and unwieldy weapon), accurate over about 500 metres".

In the dark I saw large flashes behind the mountains to the north - bolts of lightning in a clear sky? Yes, said Toño, we were seeing storms in the jungle far to the northeast beyond Cuzco.

For the love of a good parade....

If there's one thing which unites Peruvians - rich, poor and miserable, indian, mestizo and European - it's the love of spectacle, in particular of a decent parade. Central Arequipa sees an average of about two processions a week; if there's no protest organised, there's usually the feast day of some saint, or the anniversary of a college.

Yesterday in the morning it was the turn of a range of protesters, including the university workers' union, pensioners and civil construction workers. All across Peru, yesterday was a big day of strikes and protests, ranging from Ministry of Health doctors and midwives striking for more pay (sound familiar??) to people protesting against environmental contamination from mining operations. La Republica came up with the snappy headline "Paro, Luego Existo" (I Strike, Therefore I Am").

In Arequipa it was all pretty tranquil. "It's a protest, as opposed to a strike" Tessy explained to me. "Which means we don't have to close the doors when they go past". There were still the usual effigies of Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo and a few shouts of "death to Chilenos!" (Chile slightly trumps the government as the cause of everyone's misfortune).

Later in the afternoon, a smiling crowd of people marched down Santa Cantalina with streams of blue and white balloons and banners proclaiming support for, ah, the Virgin Mary. They sang, and called out "arriba Maria!" and, I think I heard this right, "arriba the Pope!". "You give us hope, Maria!" said one of the banners (I was tempted to ask "how?").

Why are they parading? I asked the girls in the office. "What - don't you know who Maria is?" said Noemi. "She's the Mother of God". Yes, but why today? They couldn't tell me...sorry, lapsed Catholic, can anyone out there tell me what is special about 25 November??

...and off to have an adventure

I have quite a bit to write about, but won't be able to for the next while, as I am off on a five-day trek in the wilderness. We're starting from Cabanaconde, near the rim of the Colca Canyon, and will be trekking to Andagua, in the Valley of the Volcanoes, where there are apparently over 300 volcanoes of all shapes and sizes. On the way passing through remote wilderness up to 5200 metres. I'm going with a French guy, who speaks only a little Spanish and a little English (I've already had to practice my French with him), and guide organised by Lizbeth's father, who is apparently some kind of shaman. Should be quite an experience - will write about it when I get back.

NB #1
Anyone who is interested in reading the stories I've submitted to various newspapers etc, click here. As always, I'd be happy to get any comments, which you can make by clicking on "comments" at the end of this post.

NB#2
You may have noticed that I've changed the name of this page from "Bidsta Blog" to "South America Bidsta Blog", to now "South America Bidsta". This is an attempt to get Google's robots to notice that the page is about South America, and place relevant ads accordingly. I get paid about 30c every time someone "clicks through" to one of the ads on my page. I am strictly prohibited from artificially generating clicks myself, or encouraging others to do so, but should note that, if anyone sees an interesting ad on my page (especially if they do pick up on the content and put more South America-related ads there), feel free to click on it!

Jeeeeeerrryyyy!!

On Saturday it was back to Cerro Juli, where we went to watch the bands on Arequipa's anniversary; this time to see Puerto Rican salsa singer Jerry Rivera. Now, despite being a fan of salsa, I have to admit to not having heard of Jerry Rivera - I guess I just like whatever they play. Pretty much everyone else had, though - there were about 10-15,000 people crowded into the bullring at the "Fia" on Cerro Juli.

The event summed up a lot of what is typical about Peru. The tickets said "7pm", and some of my friends were convinced that this meant Jerry Rivera would start playing at 7. I had a tough time convincing them we didn't need to go out there that early. Of course, it turned out that they didn't even open the gates until nearly 9pm, by which time there was a huge line outside.

Inside, the organizers had done their absolute best to ensure chaos at the beer tents. There was a total of 1 tent for each of the three levels, with two harried girls serving in each. They were taking payment in cash, but of course had no change. Naturally there was a glass ban, meaning every person's order had to be laboriously poured frothily into a plastic cup. Division of labour being an unknown concept; both the girls franticly tried to accept money, find bottles and cups, and serve the beer.

I waited for an hour to buy two glasses of beer. It was a short, but extremely packed queue, with the crush growing greater as time went on as everyone tried to manouevre themselves into better positions for when the next person would extricate themselves from the counter area. There was no limit on the number of drinks that could be ordered, meaning that some people spent 15 minutes at the counter, handing an endless chain of drinks back to their friends.

Meanwhile, as the series of lukewarm opening acts finished up, there was absolutely no indication of when Jerry Rivera would appear. Recorded music was piped out from about 11:00 without comment, and by 12:30 I was fully expecting Jerry not to show at all. About 12:45, he finally made his appearance on stage, and I was deafened by the screams of all the girls around me, inspired to sever their tonsils by the sight of a short, chunky guy at the distance of about half a kilometre...

An hour of bouncy salsa later it was all over and everyone traipsed out. Thanks for coming, Jerry...

Trouble on the Streets...

Last week Arequipa experienced what I believe is normally called "unrest". There were 48 hours of strikes, headed by the transport workers union and principally intended as a protest against rises in petrol tax. But diverse groups also wedded themselves to the strike, and it became a general outpouring of frustration at unemployment, the cost of living and the perceived incompetence/corruption of the government.

The first 24 hours were notable in the centre of the city mainly for the eerie peacefulness of the streets, empty of the normal bustling traffic. Roads in and out of Arequipa were blocked by pickets and stones strewn along the roads (in Peru they're not as full on as in Bolivia, where they like to block roads with wrecked vehicles). People arriving from other towns had to walk several kilometres to get into the centre. La Republica reported that there was trouble around the "pueblos jovenes" (shantytowns) of the Cono Norte area and incidents as some vehicles tried to cross the pickets.

On day two the protests spread to the centre of town as strikers marched, making laps of the central eight blocks. All the businesses along Sta Catalina had their doors pulled a little way down, and as the marchers appeared at the top of the street everyone hastily started dragging things inside and closing doors. Wan't that a little excessive, I asked the others inside our building. Aren't there protest marches all the time, without problems?

Turned out they were wise, though. On the first lap round the march was peaceful - a group with a manner proclaiming themselves as the Young Socialists handed out anti-government pamphlets with a silhouette of Che Guevara and the chants were "down with (Peruvian president) Toledo and his government" as well as "down with Cerro Verde" (the large copper mine 34 km from Arequipa; it's owned by an American company, but I don't know what exactly the principal complaint against it is)

On the second march past we were closing everything again; Lizbeth was dragging in our sandwich board where the tours are advertised, and I was sitting at the computer. I heard a couple of loud crashes and turned round in time to see the second of two sizeable stones strike the sign. I was angry - why the hell were they throwing stones at us, I wanted to know. "They say we're amarillos (yellow); we're not supporting their strike" said Tessy. "Bloody ignorant..." I spluttered, suddenly feeling less sympathy for the whole strike.

By evening the marches had mostly dissipated, but what remained was decidedly uglier. A rag-tag group of protesters made their way down Santa Catalina; one was dressed in military fatigues, giving a somewhat chilling suggestion of the Sendero Luminoso. They stopped outside Lan Peru (Lan Chile's Peruvian arm, it has been involved in various legal battles over its status as a domestic carrier) and tried to get some of the people in our shop to help them down the Lan star, which they said was "Chilean". They chanted "Death to Chileans", "Death to Lan", "Chilean Interests Out", "Viva Aero Continente" (the Peruvian national carrier) and "Death to Cerro Verde", while between times a soemwhat wild-eyed woman led chants of "El pueblo/unido/jamas será vencido" ("The people/united/will never be defeated")

Eventually they contented themselves with painting a slogan on the closed door of Lan, and moved on. The police were conspicuously absent during all this, but then that's hardly unusual.

Meanwhile, the first of several civil trials of Abimael Guzman, the imprisioned leader of the Sendero Luminoso, began in Lima. There were particular efforts to ensure that he couldn't make any televised discourse, which might be transmitted to his potential followers.

The next day everything was back to normal; the streets were choked with extra traffic, as everyone tried to get things done they hadn't been able to in the previous 48 hours. For now at least, it's business as usual.

Mid-term Report

I've now been in South America for a little over six months, so it's time for the mid-term report. Before going away, I set myself some goals. This was kind of mandatory - spending a year sampling local beverages and chasing female fellow travellers might be acceptable at age 22 or 23, but at 30+ it's necessary to set down some kind of life-improving, career-advancing or at least time-justifying Strategic Framework with Terms of Reference. Here's how I've done on the Key Performance Objectives so far:

Improving my Spanish: 8/10

This is one area where I give myself pretty good marks. The best things for improving your language skills are: staying in one place and getting to know people, getting a job, and involving yourself with local people of the opposite sex. I've done all of those things rather avidly, at the expense of other objectives. And my Spanish has improved: I feel relaxed and comfortable in most situations now, and in Arequipa often forget that I'm speaking my second language. Of course, there are still moments when I find something incomprehensible, or struggle to get words out...but then, that happens to me in English as well.

I've been quite good with books - have read once piece of serious literature from Chile, one from Peru, and am half way through another Peruvian one (how many pieces of serious literature do you read per year anyway??). Think I will read some thing Argentinian next. Bit more slack with movies - have watched far too many in English with subtitles. But there's really not that many Spanish-language movies at the cinema, and when I'm watching cable TV in my apartment in Arequipa I'm normally really tired.

The one area I haven't really challenged myself and am still lacking in confidence is speaking on the telephone. I really only ever call people I already know, and even then reluctantly. This is perhaps forgiveable, since I've always disliked the telephone. Nevertheless, this is an important area to work on.

Travel Writing: 7/10

This gets reasonable marks, if only for sheer volume. I've been quite good with the blog, after a slow start - I think it takes you a while to get the feeling for what to write, how much, and about what. Since I put the hit counter on my blog I've also noticed that regularly posting seems to have a big impact on the number of visits I get, which is obviously motivational - one must satisfy one's public...

I also wanted to put together some punchy travel stories that I can sell to magazines or newspapers. This is proving to be much more of a struggle for two reasons. One is that I haven't put quite enough effort into it - I keep getting distracted by other things. The other is that I just write too much. Whereas the ideal length for travel stories is around 1200 words, what I put together always seems to drift on to 2500-3000....well, I've always been verbose. I don't think I've got the style quite right either, and my research isn't as in-depth as it could be. There's a lack of experience there. I'm going to put in a significant effort on this one in the coming weeks.

Having Crazy Adventures and Seeing Exotic Places: 5.5/10

I scrape a bare pass mark here. I'm not being too down on myself, since some of the objectives are incompatible, and this one has been sacrificed for some of the goals listed above. In six months, I have ticked off the bare minmum of "must dos" in the countries I've visited: Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, the Colca Canyon, San Pedro de Atacama and the Salar de Uyuni, the La Paz-Coroico road, Lake Titicaca. People on tight schedules, of course, sometimes do all these things in a month. I also get some extra ticks for the mountain climbing - Chachani and Misti might not be "technical" mountains, but how many people get above 6,000 metres at all?

However, I really haven't properly got off the Gringo Trail; almost all the places I've visisted are well-known tourist destinations. Sure, in Arequipa I've got away from doing purely gringo things (I get marks for that elsewhere). But it's still comfortable and touristic. I haven't taken the slow route from small town to small town in any country, soaking up the authentic culture and exploring little-known places. I haven't gone to any of the more impressive-sounding countries (Colombia, for reputation; Paraguay, for obscurity; Venezuela, for a bit of both).

I haven't ridden on the back of a truck for twelve hours across some obscure part of the Andes or into the jungle. Hell, I haven't been to the jungle at all (it's a rather curious fact that I've managed to pass now about a year of my life in Latin America without going to the jungle at all; in fact I've only spent a few days in a truly tropical climate - in Puerto Escondido in Mexico). I haven't done any real independent tramps, carrying all my gear and food, pitching my own tent etc. I haven't been on a trip down the Amazon on a riverboat sleeping in a hammock. I haven't really taken many risks....

So, there's a significant amount to work on there.

Meeting People, Getting Work & Understanding the Culture: 7/10

On the surface, this is what I've done best. I've settled down in Arequipa and made lots of friends. I think I've picked up quite a lot about what makes Peru tick (which is a whole lot of incomprehensible things that nobody really understands). I fond that I've been involved in doing things which really interest me and use my skills (no English teaching or bar work thank god).

However, in some ways my experiences have been rather superficial. It's not only that my friends are all middle-class, but also that I've noticed that I really don't know many people who aren't involved in some way in the tourist industry. I often don't make the effort to get to know people or find out about their lives (only a couple of times have I talked to people on buses). In my experiences with "ordinary people", especially from the countryside, I recognise that I tend to focus on how dirty and rude they are, and forget to consider or ask about the circumstances of their lives, which often in Peru are incredibly difficult. I've on several occasions discovered things about everyday life in Arequipa through reading the paper, to which I'd previously been completely oblivious.

This lack of effort has to an extent limited the kind of material I have for my stories and articles - I could make *much more effort* here.

I also find myself being pretty judgmental about people ("why don't they get off their asses and stop bothering me or sending their kids to sell sweets") when I'm a fundamentally lazy and lacking in initiative myself, being fortunate enough to come from a country where there are cosy and well-paying bureaucratic jobs in which people who are occasionally rude to their superiors and often late to meetings are not only tolerated, but given pay rises.

Physically & Financially Staying in One Piece: 7.5/10

It's hard to know how to mark this, since it's largely about avoidance of disaster. By and large, I have (avoided disaster), though of course it can strike at any time and I' m probably tempting fate. Money-wise, well, I've spent about $8,000 NZD in seven months - that might sound impressive, but I could easily have spent less. It's difficult to overstate how cheap the cost of living can be, at least in Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. Anyway, it's far more important *what* you spend money on, than how much you send (see "having crazy adventures, etc") I haven't lost any of the trip-destroying things - air tickets, wallet, passport - and have managed to keep hold of the things of secondary value - camera, electric shaver and trekking boots. Heck, I even have most of the clothes that I left NZ with.

Physically, my teeth and eyesight are still fine, which were the things I was most worried about. I got really sick once - the mandatory Lake Titicaca food poisoning case, which drifted on for a week or so and had a violent aftershock the night of my birthday in Arequipa. I regret to report that my cigarette intake has steadily increased since I've been in South America, but to counter that I think my alcohol intake is significantly lower than back home - which is not to say that there hasn't been the odd day spent in a dazed hangover. At times I've found myself a bit unfit and out of shape - while paradoxically at other times I've been in more or less the best shape of my life - after doing the Inca Trail, for example. This is an ongoing one.

So, I get pass marks in all areas, but there's quite a lot of "could do better", Mr Bidwell!!

Key Objectives and Milestones for the Rest of My Time Here

>>Work on telephone Spanish and speaking confidently to people I don't already know; seek out more Spanish-lanuguage movies

>>Get some of those punchy 1200-word stories out!>>Take the slow route through some more obscure places (North Peru??), take a riverboat trip in the jungle (to Iquitos??) and tick off one more impressive-sounding country (Colombia??)

>>Pitch my own tent at least once

>>Be more patient and interested in the campesinos and their somewhat miserable lives

>>Don't lose anything major (my passport, a limb)

Categories: South America

Up 1,000 Steps in 31 Degrees

In Salta, on the other hand, I immediately felt like I'd arrived in the right place. Surrounded by tree-covered hills, it nevertheless has an arid feel, since most of its 700mm rainfall falls December-January. It's often said that in this part of Argentina you start to feel the influence of Bolivia, and that's true to an extent. There are plenty of mestizo people, whom you don't see in other parts of Argentina, and many of the streets outside of the central few blocks are bumpy and lined with faded, crumbling buildings. But I'm not the only one to comment that the lazy feel, tree-shaded streets and pretty churches reminds them of Spain.

Salta is also sounded by beautiful and diverse countryside, from the lush microclimates near the city, to the towering, cactus-sprinkled canyons to the north near Jujuy. You can do all kinds of trekking, horse riding, biking and rafting nearby. Plus it abounds with attractive cafes, bars and restaurants and, I was assured, absolutely rocks on the weekend. I only wish I'd had more time to take it all in.

As it was I had to content myself with two days worth. On Tuesday I explored the city, photographing the churches - pastel coloured with an Andalucian influence - and climbing the Cerro San Bernado, a hill rising up behind the city. There's a cable car to the top, but of course, I had to take the hard way, up the exactly 1,000 steps (the numbers are marked at intervals of 50). There are little grottos marking the stations of the cross on the way up. On the thorny hillside with the sun beating down and the previous night's bbq and wine squeezing out of my pores, it did rather feel like my own personal Calvary. Later I checked the internet to find that the temperature had hit 31 degrees. Salta has a beautiful, warm climate, with the summer months aliviated by afternoon storms; it averages 26-28 six months of the year, but it's in the months October-December that the temperature can soar up towards the 38 degree mark.


On Wednesday I was up early to go rafting on the rio Juramento, about two hours drive away below the dique (dam) of Cabra Corral. The river wound through beautiful steep canyons with eroded layers of different colours. The rapids were grade III, ideal for beginners, they say, to which I would agree. There were only a few moments of "un poco de emoción", as the guide described it, the rest was pretty relaxed. Of course none of us had any idea what we were doing; the guide oversaw the direction of the boat and told us when to paddle. Nevertheless, I wasn't the only one to feel like I perhaps could handle something a little more dangerous.

On the way down the river we saw dinosaur footprints on a flat part of the canyon wall. According to the guide, it had been a stormy beach before the Andes rose up; later erosion has peeled away the layers of silt that covered over the dinosaurs' prints in the wet sand. The last 200 metres of the trip the guide told us we could throw ourselves out of the boat and float down to the bank, bouyed by our life jackets. Great fun! - and possible because the water was about 15 degrees; you wouldn't try that on the white water in NZ...

Apart from me, a Mexican guy and an English girl, the rest of the people in the two rafts were again Argentinians. It makes the tourist experience a little more genuine when you're doing it with local people.

I should also mention that the hostel in Salta was one of the most pleasant I have stayed at - run by young Argentinians (and one Israeli) who seemed to be enjoying themselves, it has a nice roof terrace with a bar and a collective bbq every Wednesday. Even though I was only there a couple of days, I felt like I'd made some friends, and was quite sad to leave.

If you have the chance, go to Argentina!! In upcoming editions, I'll explain why...

Tucuman, Argentina?

Sometimes you really feel like you've drifted into a different dimension in transit. So it was with my day in Tucuman. The only reason I went there was to break up the trip from Mendoza to Salta (though it was still 14 disorienting hours overnight on the bus). I knew nothing about it, except that Martin Santillan, who worked in the Albert Hotel in London (he was "loud Martin" as opposed to "tall Martin", who was from Mar del Plata) was from there. Lonely Planet said it was the centre of a big rice and sugar-growing area, and had a hot climate ("visitors in the summer months may find the heat very oppressive"). It was also supposed to be rich in colonial history, peppered with orange trees, and one could still see the occasional horse-drawn cart wending its way through the streets. Sounded quaint.

Imagine my puzzlement, then, when the bus left the highway after 14 hours travel and two hours unexplained delay, to wend its way past faded, peeling buildings through crumbling streets, under deathly leaden skies starting to release big cold drops of rain. The big sign over the bus terminal did say "TUCUMAN", so I was assured I hadn't got on the wrong bus in Mendoza, at least not in this dimension. The largely open-air bus terminal did indeed give indications of a warm climate, but there was none of it in evidence as the skies began to open shortly after I got off the bus.

The streets appeared to conform to the map in my LP, and the recommended hotel even existed. But there was no sign of colonial architecture, orange trees or anything resembling sun in the grey, drab streets. Exhausted from the long trip and a big night out in Mendoza previous to leaving, I crashed in my hotel bed and listened to the rain pelting down onto the incongruous airy balconies.

By later afternoon I was awake and desperately hungry, so I went out looking for something to eat. The town was if abandoned even by ghosts, and the rain was still pouring down in cold waves. It reminded me of nothing more than some of the less attractive parts of Christchurch in winter. I had rediscovered siesta when in Mendoza (in South America, unique to Chile and Argentina outside the capitals) but there were still plenty of things open from 2:00 to 5:00. In Tucuman, however, the streets were completely deserted, and I looked in vain for something to eat. Eventually, near the main square, with its few colonial buildings emerging through the mist, I found what appeared to be a comedor, a few tables and chairs inside a bare cavernous space, with one couple huddled together over a bottle of beer. After some persuasion, the elderly woman there admitted that yes, she had some empanadas, and 15 minutes later I managed to assuage some of my hunger.

Later I found an internet cafe where the pretty girl working at the counter wished me "suerte" as I left. Evening had arrived, shops were opening, and there were some people in the streets. The rain had stopped, and orange trees had appeared in the plaza, but there was still a chilly breeze blowing. I found an Italian restuarant, where I gorged myself on pizza, then went back to the hotel to crash once more. A couple of hours later I felt something biting me. Mosquitos!! They had also been brought over from the steamy, subtropical Tucuman dimension. I smeared myself with repellent and went back to sleep to be plagued by vivid, guilt-wracked dreams for the rest of the night.

The next morning the sky was clear, the sun was bright, and I was off to Salta. "I thought this place was supposed to hot" I said to the taxi driver on the way to the bus station. "It is" he replied. "Then what was yesterday about" I wanted to know. "I don't know" he frowned. "It was strange...unstable, very unstable" he muttered. I don't know whether he meant the weather, or the fabric of the space-time continuum.

As the bus drove out to meet the highway to Salta, we passed plenty of orange trees. Just at the turn-off, there was even a horse-drawn cart.

As a postscript, I note from checking on the internet, that Tucuman has spent most of this afternoon and evening hovering around the 34 degrees Celcius mark.

Getting on the Horse...

We're actually galloping...at what seems like a hundred miles an hour down the canyon, the horses' hooves are throwing up dust, I'm desperately trying to simultaneously grip with my knees, keep my feet in the spurs, and maintain my balance. Bouncing up and in the saddle, I keep having the wind knocked out of me.

It lasts what is probably, in real time, a couple of minutes. I can't imagine keeping it up for any longer, let alone turning round in the saddle to fire my revolver at any pursuing bandidos. When we stop I ask Tito whether we were in fact galloping - what exactly does galope suave mean? He talks me through the speeds of a horse: the walk, the trot, the galope suave and the carrera (literally "race"). Right, so a galope suave is a canter. It sounds more impressive in Spanish. But Tito says I've done well, and that not many manage to do any kind of gallop their first time. "Look how your mood's changed from the way out to the way back!"

He's right - I was rather apprehensive this morning, having booked the horse riding rather despite myself. I think someone had told me that it was one of the Things to Do in Mendoza, and I had it classified anyway as something I Ought to Do At Least Once in South America. There were to have been five people in the horse-riding group, but the other four apparently cancelled at the last minute, leaving me to do it alone. Great, I thought, I'm not even going to have company in my incompetence.

I shouldn't have worried; Tito is very used to guiding beginners, and was very relaxed, which in turn affected me. He says he used to be an executive in a multinational company, but gave it up recently as it was too stressful. He learnt to ride on the pampas of his parents' hacienda in the Buenos Aires as a kid and now has a little ranch only 10 minutes from the centre of Mendoza. His dogs were going barking mad with anticipation as drove up; apparently they love going out on the horse treks.

It was hard to believe that we were so close to the city, as we rode out into the badlands near Tito's ranch - there was no sign of any other people, alone civilization. The horses walked through narrow quebradas and dry gulches, stained with salt deposits leached by the occasional storm waters which had created the pathways. Amidst the brush and cactus there were splashes of red, yellow and white wildflowers, and every so often the single flowering bulb of a cactus. After a while I began to relax on the horse. "Have a cigarette if you want" called Tito. "It tastes completely different on a horse...I can't, because I've got a sore throat right now".

We broke into the occasional trot, climbed up and down little rises, then some steeper hillocks. At first I was a little stiff with fear, but gradually gained more confidence. The horse knows what it's doing, I told myself. And it's not actively trying to throw me off,in fact it knows full well that I'm supposed to stay on it...what have I got to worry about? Overhead, a condor floated. "It knows me" said Tito. "Sometimes it comes down closer and teases the dogs".

On the way back we spurted along the flat bits, breaking into a couple of gallops. Well,canters, I suppose. I didn't really have any choice about whether I followed, as my horse, well aware that I didn't really know what I was doing, prioritised following Tito's horse ahead of any instructions I might give it. Still, a little out of breath, I survived. I think I might even do it again one day soon.