Kerry from Derry

So first stop in Peru was to be Arequipa and not a bad stop at that! After an introduction to 2nd class (crap) bus services and a 3 hour wait stranded in the middle of the night on a godforsaken end of the earth type road, with the local women praying that bandits weren´t going to turn up and rob, strangle and eat us (I kid you not......well maybe not the eating bit) we eventually arrived in Arequipa at 4 in the morning and then had to find somewhere to stay......but as luck would have it our taxi driver took us around to his mate´s house and woke him and his family up in order to make up our room bless their little cotton socks.

A couple of hours later (or at least it seemed that way) time to get up and explore our surroundings. The city itself is very quaint with the usual churches and museums and is also the place most people come to to arrange trips and hikes to the Canyon del Colca or as us gringos refer to it - the Colca Canyon, one of the deepest in the world (more so than the Grand Canyon) and famed for the regular morning appearance of the Andean Condor.

We opted for a 2 day 1 night trip to take in the local surrounding villages, markets, stunning scenery on the way through and of course the condors as well as the by now common llamas, picunas and alpacas (all handy for making a woolly jumper out of and eating!). The landscape on the way varies wildly from day 1 to day 2, day 1 is barren scrub and rolling mountains with views of the Volcano Misti and stops at various miradors (lookouts to you and me) on the way through until you descend from the dizzy height of around 5000m to the village of Chivay at 3633m. It is here the terraces the Inca´s are famous for begin to be seen with the river snaking through the valleys thousands of metres below -beautiful.

Chivay itself is a small andean town which (you´ll love this) has an Irish pub! My god - what is this world coming to? I managed to avoid the temptation and after taking a shower by candlelight (yep the power cut out) we all headed out to dinner and to watch some traditional Peruvian folk dancing. Have to say the candlelight gave it that little bit of extra atmostphere and the dancing, if somewhat unusual was entertaining, particularly the one where the bloke goes round trying to hit the woman with what looks like a big sausage (control those minds people.....) but basically is a cyclindrical shaped bag filled with sand - and bloody hurts when it gets you as I was to find out some weeks later! So off to bed with folk music ringing in my ears - a 5.00 start the next morning ensured an enforced early night.

Next morning a quick breakfast and then back to the bus in order to make it to the Canyon del Colca and La Cruz del Condor, the highpoint of the trip and a wonderful reminder of the beauty of nature and all that entails. A mere 2 hours from Chivay will bring you to the mirador where around 8.30 in the morning the condors rise on the warm thermal airs and circle a mere 5 or 10m above you - a completely mesmerising sight it has to be said. I was lucky enough to be sat on a rock about 10m away from where a condor landed and preened himself, basically showed off for those watching - he spread his wings, plucked a few feathers, then turned around did the same, closed his wings and sat there staring at us with his beady little eyes. He must have been there a good 10 minutes (and 100 photos later) which was perfect - don´t think I´ll ever get to see anything like that up close again (unless I take up twitching that is). As I mentioned before the Canyon is one of the deepest in the world and is formed by an enormous fault between the Coropuna (6425m) and Ampato (6325m) volcanoes. In fact on the way there you´ll see signs warning of seismic activity - very encouraging........especially when you can look over the edge of the road you´re driving on and look down several thousand feet knowing a slight miscalculation could perhaps end up being a serious one!

So that was the Canyon and the Condors - a complete bargain at $18 including accommodation. Highly recommended!

Back to Arequipa - one of the most beautiful cities in Peru. What else there is to do? As mentioned before lots of churches and museums but are they worth investigating? Well in a word - yes. The Santa Catalina Convent is here and although a bit of a steep entry price at 30 soles, it is definitley worth exploring. It´s been in business as a cloister for just over 400 years before opening its doors nearly 40 years ago to the public. Inside it has been restored to almost perfection and with a maze like setup and named streets it is a minature city within a city. With colourful courtyards and flower covered patios it is an oasis of peace and tranquilty. There are still some nuns living here but as they live a cloistered life we don´t see them and they don´t see us. If you´re not sure what a cloister is basically when you enter as a nun that´s it - the only people you see are your fellow nuns, all transactions with the outside world are conducted via screens and rolling screens to allow the transfer of goods - you are even buried inside. So beware! Other holy things.....the cathedral is extremely ornate, the art galleries of the nearby San Franciso church are full of holy art and the locals themselves seem to strictly observe catholicism (more than me anyway....).

Museums - (although I didn´t go myself because the girl I´m about to describe was in the fridge at the time) the Museo Santuarios Andinos where you can see the famous "Juanita, La Niña de los Hielos", (the girl of/in the ice) a 550 year old Inca girl who was sacrificed in her childhood. Her body was found in 1995 by mountaineers in the ice on the summit of a nearby volcano and she has been preserved for all the world to see. Her discovery gave up a lot of information about the practices of the time, in particular of course that of human sacrifice.

Well - that was Arequipa, not a bad start to Peru! Next stop Cusco.

After leaving behind the thoroughly uninspiring Santiago time to spend some love and attention on the body by subjecting it to 40 degree heat on a beautiful sandy beach! Those of you who know me well know that would never happen.....the skin just can´t take it! So Iquique then......about 18 hours north of Santiago on the West Coast and famous for surfing - yippee, back to the Ocean - was having withdrawal from it so really good to be back in the water again.

The journey on the way up was pretty - on one side the coastline, on the other the edges of the Atacama desert so beautiful sunset and sunrise. Iquique itself is a nice enough town but with quite a lot of development going on, as appears to be the case in most of South America, but has plenty going for it too (mainly the beach).

I stayed in the usual HI hostel and its here that I met my travelling companions for the next couple of weeks - Claudia from Venezuela and Elena from Spain who both bizarrely enough had spent the last 4 years living in Dublin! Great girls who I had a great laugh with and shared murderous thoughts with towards the local canine population - how much noise do dogs need to make in the middle of the night eh????

Was also glad to note that I wasn´t the only one who was capable of being burnt alive by the sun....Claudia - the one with the dark Venezuelan skin got absolutely toasted - swollen legs, nausea, need for antibiotocs to bring the whole thing under control and take some of the pain away! I was amazed - as was she! Never happened before so she didn´t think it was possible! Anyway - the thing we all shared that week was a dire desperate need for the loo every hour or so if not more often.....very pleasant eh? Not quite the diet I was looking for! That put paid to doing anything too adventurous so had to lay back and take the time to recover - first time though so I couldn´t complain too much.

Apart from that I did get to go swim in the sea and get knocked over by huge waves (nearly losing the bikini in the process and giving the locals an eyeful after a particularly large wave sent me into a tumbling spin and rearranged the position of the aforementioned bikini!). The water temperature was pretty similar to home which was quite surprising but apparently that´s common on the coast of Chile - to get warmer water you need to go north to the beaches of Peru.

The other thing that you can do in Iquique is paragliding which the girls did but I didn´t due to restrictions on the old budget - still might get around to it before I leave the continent if I can find a better deal elsewhere.

On nightlife - well there is one particular area filled with nightclubs, bars, etc which to our credit we only visited once. Pretty good bar with live salsa and a singer all the way from Cuba - excellent. Our night out also coincided with the local football team who were celebrating winning their national football division so plenty to look at.....if you know what I mean (mullets once again in force). This town like everywhere else only comes alive after midnight and that includes the shops and stalls along the seafront - many many opportunities to spend your money on the way to or from the restaurants/bars. In the town centre usual things apply - dodgy shops and even dodgier toilets! Beware!

Oh one other thing of interest - an aussie soap ´star´ came into the hostel I was staying in looking for a bed......never thought I´d see that! For the Irish/Brits amongst you it was Leah´s brother from Home and Away - wierd eh?

Not much else to tell you here - next stop Arequipa in Peru.

Well this was my third trip across the border into Chile although it has to be said it lasted a lot longer than my previous times (about an hour each - if you recall I had to cross the border on my way to and from the end of the Earth). Destination this time Santiago - the most exciting place on earth...... The trip there from Cordoba was pretty non-eventful as per usual, just another 20 hours on a bus and the usual official nonsense crossing a land border - although it has to be said the trip through the Andes was beautiful if not a little repetitive as I had done the majority of the trip before on a day trip from Mendoza.

So anyway I rock up to Santiago and the first thing is to get the bag of the bus (now weighing 22kgs - am I strong or whaaaaaaaa?) and try not to lose my temper with what seemed like hundreds of taxi drivers vying for my business. 15mins of haggling later I persuaded one of them to take me and use his meter instead of trying to charge me the rip off price of 5000 pesos, turned out the rip off price was pretty spot on....... after taking me on a magical mystery tour, surprise surprise, the price came to 4950 - convenient eh? The hostel had advised it shouldn´t have been more than 2000 but what can you do apart from swear loudly at them for ripping of visitors to their country and hope their conscience plagues them for....oh at least 5 minutes! Let this be a lesson to you - travel in pairs and argue loudly and preferrably in fluent spanish! This experience of taxis drivers continued throughout so not a one off - complete rip off merchants. And talking of Spanish the accent here is much different to Argentina so trying to tune in was very difficult, most chileans speak a million miles an hour and don´t finish the end of their sentences or even sometimes their words, whilst of course absolutely normal there it was a little frustrating but that can´t be helped can it!

So on to the hostel - I stayed in a little place called La Chimba in the Bella Vista part of town which is kind of the artsy area, lots of theatres, galleries, etc and apparently really dangerous - my ass - never saw anything untoward happen in my week in town around the area. The hostel was spot on and I´d recommend to anyone wanting a homely feel, friendly staff, comfortable beds, cleanliness, etc.

In terms of things to do....well the post colonial museum has one of the best collections in the world and is well worth a visit, as is the musuem of contemporary art (although contmeporary can sometimes be used too loosely!), managed to do this with my american friends Abran and Carrie who I had arranged to see again after the fun and games we had before - always good to see familiar faces. Shopping opportunities are bountiful, as are restaurants and bars, but its just missing something - there doesn´t seem to be any soul to the place and generally the people I encountered were not particularly helpful or friendly. Maybe it was down to the fact it was just after xmas and new year was approaching so all the nice people were off on holidays! The one good thing I will say is that you get value for money when you buy a drink . my god....how big are the measures - too big! Did the trick though! The smaller bars around Bella Vista are good too particularly if you can find one with live music. My other favourite thing about Santiago was the Cerro San Cristobal - St Christophers Hill. The most immediate striking image is that of the 15m high statue of Mary (the mother of God), it can be seen from almost everywhere - especially during the night, when the statue is perfectly lit up. The area is designated a Metropolitan Park and is hugh. There are a few ways to get to the top - by foot....mad eedjits, take a taxi up.....much more sensible, or the best way.... you can take the funicular and then a cable car to give spectacular 360 degree views over the city and further afield to the snow capped peaks of the Andes - bootiful! The other excellent thing about this place is that it has 2 hugh swimming pools surrounded by gardens where you can easily while away whole days topping up your tan (did I mention the heat - again regular 35+ days), lying back taking in the views, swimming and of course generally eyeing up the local talent. Why oh why does the mullet hold such a firm grip in ther imaginations of the south american male???? I just don´t get it - WHY? Around the city there is quite a lot of green space so not as suffucating as it could otherwise have been.

Santiago was the place I spent New Years Eve in and it wasn´t a bad night/day (carried on til 8am......). The hostel held an excellent free barbecue for all residents and even threw in a few drinks to add to the mountains previously purchased. Needless to say much fun and frivolity was had by all and many a 2 day hangover was shared afterwards. They also have an interesting way to toast the NY - basically you have a glass of champagne and put 12 grapes in it, which are a way of symbolising the 12 months to come and a wish that they be good ones - thought that was rather nice myself. Not really much to add to that - the main celebrations were being held in Valpariso which is a couple of hours away and home this year to the biggest fireworks celebration in South America - think is was something like 17kms worth of continuous shows along the coast but don´t quote me on the distance. Anyway a couple of days later when all was back to normal I booked my ticket north to Iquique and the beach. Nearing time to leave the big smoke I decided to join in on the hostel wine tasting night and learn a thing or too about the local viticulture - as an extra the owner had invited in a couple from next door who were in the process of setting up an arts centre to sing some traditional folk songs and what a good night it turned out to be. The singer lady - Angelica, was an absolute gem and had a pretty good set of lungs on her too. Gassed the evening away with her and arranged a night out the following evening, so contrary to my previous statements there are a few good people in Santiago! Now Irish people - well we were let down down by an extremely pissed 50+ old man who tried to pick fights with everyone and even tried to push the aforementioned Angelica off her seat for having the cheek to say hello to him - what an arse! And on that note....time to leave Santiago!

Again the names thing......Alan from Limerick, Hayley the aussie living in London, Jack the hostel owner and Angelica from next door.

So second year running I got to have a hot Christmas, although this year thankfully there were no broken bones involved - only lots and lots of mozzie bites and humidity that could knock you flat on your back. The temperature averaged around 40 most days so we were extremely grateful that we had a small swimming pool in the courtyard to cool off in when the need arose.

Cordoba is Argentina´s second city and is home to just over a million people although the population increases in term time as there are thousands upon thousands of students here, hence its reputation as a party city (not bad for shopping either). The city is quite pretty particularly around the main square but then that is true of most cities I´ve been to in South America - that would be the Spanish influence then!

It is also close to Alta Gracia - a smallish town about a 45min bus ride away and home to the house where Che Guevara grew up - now of course a museum. Did you know Che was Argentinian? Well now you do! Pretty interesting little place and it also has the famous motorbike so of course had to take the obligatory photo with the legend that is La Poderosa II ("The Mighty One"). Hopefully I´ll get around to posting it before I manage to wipe it of the memory card this time - sometimes I am so computer illiterate I surprise myself! Alta Gracia also has an old very well preserved Jesuit monastery dating back to the 1600´s but bloody expensive to go in and have a look. I´m still of the mindset that you should not be charged to go in to places of religious backgrounds - surely thats against the point of being inclusive to all??

Anyway Christmas....what was that like? Well i can only say different and (queue dramatic sad music here) no presents! Christmas Eve is more the thing here so we had a huge barbecue with so much meat I surprised I didn´t turn into a steak myself and a hideously equal amount of red wine so not too bad at all! At midnight there were fireworks set off all across the city which continued for approx 2 hours and this was then followed by nature´s own fireworks - yep, yet again thunder and lightening and an enormous amount of rain but at least that cooled things down a bit.....for ooh maybe 2 hours or so before the humidity kicked in again. Chistmas dinner sadly was not a curry as the guy who was going to cook it decided him and the wife would go off into the mountains instead - how inconsiderate! So back to the old favourite....pasta and tuna with a bit of salsa thrown in for good measure. Christmas Day involved go for a little wander and then back to the hostel to play cards while cooling off in the pool - the evening was the old staple of settling down on the sofa to watch some truly terrible christmas films - ahhhh normalcy! Boxing Day was a wander through the streets as well as the rather onerous task of tying to find a cheap bus ticket to Chile (another 20hr journey) but I persevered and got a good enough deal - left on the 27th on my way to Santiago for New Years, more about that later!

Well I moved on further north to Salta - pretty close to the border with Bolivia, after hearing from numerous people along the way that it wasn´t a bad place to hang out for a few days....and true enough it wasn´t.

This is the first place I had been too which felt like genuine South America, pretty much everywhere else was essentially coloured by its colonial history and hugely influenced by the west (with perhaps a few small exclusions in Patagonia). The first thing that stuck me was the people, very much more indigenous than anywhere else I had been before - the second or maybe the first actually was again the heat, dripping dosen´t even come into it! Anyway I digress - arrived at stupid o´clock in the morning and hotfooted it to my hostel, the imaginatively named Salta Backpackers which turned out to be not a bad little place but operating under a somewhat two tier price system....basically if you were Israeli you got a bed for 10 pesos a night cheaper and then when you challenge it it was a simple shrug of the shoulders which basically meant piss off - you´re not getting it any cheaper! No fair eh? So I checked out the next day into somewhere a bit cheaper and with a one price fits all policy. How annoying is that eh?

OK - moan over, more about the place.....historically it was populated by the Incas until the Spanish arrived in the 16th century and commenced rule and oversaw the collaspe of the Inca empire. The name itself means ´pleasant place to settle down´ and I´d tend to agree. The city is pretty with parks spotted throughout, the mountains around dwarf the city and you´re only a short way from some of the most beautiful scenery that northwest Argentina has to offer. The main square in the city is called 9 de Julio and its here you see the locals come out after the sun sets and relax over a mate with friends or if you´re like me and the other tourists you´ll pick a nice cafe and sup a cup of ´tea´whilst putting the world to rights. The Cathedral is pretty spectacular and goes back to the late 1600´s (so I´m told) and definitely worth a visit. You can also either climb or take the cable car up Mount San Bernardo - particularly beautiful as the sun sets and the city lights start twinkling in the twilight. At the bottom there is also a good local craft or as they are called here - artisan markets, selling all kinds of local products, it must be said that its very difficult to maintain control on the purse strings but the thought of trying to pack anything else into my already overstuffed backpack is a pretty good incentive not to go buying too much. The nightlift is pretty good too and there are lots of options to sample the local cuisine and folk music - Balcarce St is particularly good. So that´s the city, what about the surrounds?

The one activity that draws a lot of visitors to Salta is the opportunity to take a trip on the Tren a las Nubes- the train to the clouds but it hasn´t been running for the last 18 months due to engineering works on a section of the track. The next best alternative is to go by road so that´s just what I did. I booked a 2 day tour to take in the mountains, the local towns and the Salt Flats. As usual an early start was called for - was picked up at 7.30 and on our merry way we went. The trip took in fabulous scenery along the way with the road snaking up through a valley where you can see the tracks of the aforementioned Tren a las Nubes and the El Toro viaduct which stands some 19m high and is 150m wide over the river of the same name.

With the climate being what it is there are also an immense number of cacti on the highlands (the soil not being rich enough in nutrients or moisture to support much else). Some of them were absolutely huge, probably aroung the 7m mark I reckon. And did you know that some cacti are actually made from wood?

Anyway the towns which we went through were San Antonio De Los Cobres, Santa Rosa de Tastil, Chorrillos, Cafayate, Cachi, Tilcara, Pulmamarca & Humahuaca. Tilcara has several interesting museums that hold lots of artefacts from the local area that date back many yeras and show the culture as it was way back when. It also has the ruins of an old Inca settlement which is worth a look if only for the spitting llamas and huge cacti garden. Purmamarca is where I bedded down for the night and what a night it was! When I arrived there was blue sky, hot sun, etc, etc. 2 hours later it was a completely different story - the skies opened, the heavens roared (thunder) and the lightening was something else entirely. The roads in the town (red clay) turned into rushing torrents and the electricity packed in so all you could do was sit back and enjoy the show - and what a show it was. A truly spectacular storm made even more so by being in a small valley with mountains all around - the echoes of the thunder and cracks of lightening seemed trapped by the mountains and the sounds were absolutely awesome - at some stages even shaking the building I was in! Something I won´t forget for a long time - roll on the next one! The only downside was that I went to bed hungry as there was no way that the restaurants were staying open and even if they had been there was no way to get there unless you had a pair of waders handy.

The other thing I didn´t mention was the altitude - at certain stages of this trip you are 4200m above sea level and believe me that can really take it out of you. This kind of height makes it imposible to do anything in a hurry so relaxed and slow is the order of the day- Salta is one of only 2 regions in Arhentina where you can legally buy coca leaves to help overcome the effects so that´s what we did. Can´t say its an entirely pleasing taste or even if they had the desired effect, all I know was that I didn´t feel sick and wasn´t too knackered. For the uneducated this is the plant that cocaine is derived from but believe me you would have to chew a hell of a lot of leaves to get any kind of kick off them whatsoever - I know, I tried!

The scenery that this particular route take in and is particularly famous for is the Hill of Seven Colours and the Skirt - 2 rock formations of natural beauty made up from all the various differnet minerals in the soil - copper, iron, lithium, sulphur, lime, dolomites, etc. As well as these 2 formations you can see the colours dispersed throughout the mountain ranges making it an awe inspiring trip.

The other part of this trip was a visit to the Salinas Grandes and to get there or was it back (can´t remeber it was a little time ago....) we needed to navigate the Lipan Slope which can be found on Route 52. All I can say is that it looked like the most intricate, challenging Formula One track I have ever seen. From a height if 4200 metres it loops its way down the mountain in a series of twists, turns and curves that are a true monument to modern engineering - fantastic! The Salt Flats - well they were reasonably large, very hot and resembled well....salt! pretty impressive all the same.

So that´s that - next time Cordoba.