Stephen

Tomorrow is the last of the two-landings-per-day touring in the Antarctic – after that we head back for Ushuaia across the Drake. There may be storms and gales and massive crashing waves, God willing. Fingers crossed. So before the final days have slipped away I am going to step through the detail of how everything works.

I was awoken this morning by the cheerful voice of Julio, the tour leader, telling us through the PA system that it was 7.30am. My first reaction, as it always is in the morning, was disbelief. For some reason I have found it very hard to sleep on the ship and almost every night has been a fragmented mess of an hour here and two there. This morning I was particularly tired. And I have found that I can safely ignore this first message anyway, as they will make another announcement when they are actually serving breakfast. So I turned over and went back to sleep. My roommate, Glenn, was up and about and getting showered and out, but I was able to tune out his noise and movement with the skill of long practice.

About seven seconds after the first announcement the woman who is known as the hotel manager came on the mike to say that breakfast was ready. Somehow my watch agreed with the idea that half an hour had passed, even though it clearly could not be true. With much sighing and groaning I pulled myself upright and sat there for a moment, like a boxer recovering from a particularly spectacular knockout, and then made my way to the shower. I’m not quite sure how they generate the water on the ship but I’m guessing there’s some sort of desalinsation facility as there is an effectively unlimited amount of it. The heat of the water for the shower is a tad unreliable, but this morning was fine.

Once suitable ablations were performed I made my way upstairs just less than 15 minutes after the official start time of breakfast. Every meal is a lavish affair. At breakfast there is American-style bacon and sausages, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, hash browns, various types of fruit, a selection of cereals and breads. The first day or two I had as close as I could get to a fry but the last few days I have had pancakes with maple syrup. My conversation at that hour is a scintillating series of nods and monosyllables.

An unexpected side-effect of Antarctic travel is that you need to be careful about how much coffee you drink. Due to the restrictions to protect the continent, if you need to pee you can’t just wander off behind a rock but have to come back to the main ship. That means you need to get on the Zodiac to be ferried back, and they need to position the main ship to receive the Zodiac. Then you need to go through all the various procedures associated with coming back on board (which we are getting to) and finally go back out again. You could lose a very significant portion of your total landing time.

Once breakfast was over I went back to my cabin, which in the meantime had been tidied by Albert, the guy who does the cabin tidying. He has a title but I am not sure what it is. I have never seen him anywhere else on the ship bar the immediate vicinity of the cabins he looks after. The tourists are divided into four groups, called Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and Ross. I am in Shackleton. They call two groups at a time to the mud room to get ready. They alternate who goes first with something less than total reliability but it makes very little difference.

Back in the cabin I put on the thermal top I bought in Ushuaia at the last minute, which has been incredibly useful, and waited to be called. My cabin is less than 10m from the mud room so once Shackleton was summoned I was there only a moment later.

The mud room is a big space with long benches, each with raised wooden beams behind to hang lifejackets and other stuff on. On the floor at each side are numbers from one to 126, one for each passenger. This is your tag number, which was assigned to each person at the start of the trip. Mine is 28. Its primary use is to keep track of whether you are on land or on the ship. That happens through the tag board, a small wooden board on which there are hooks holding one tag for each person, each about half the size of a credit card. When you are on the ship the white side of your tag faces out. As you leave the ship you turn it around, showing the blue side instead. (As I write these words I deeply suspect I have already explained this, but as usual I can’t check.)

Far more importantly though the tag number is also used to order stuff at the bar – when you ask for a drink you sign for it with your name and tag number and at the end of the trip they present you with a bill. Mine will doubtless be significant.

Back to today. Once we were called I went to the mud room and sat down at spot 28 to get ready. We were all issued with what they call ‘gum boots’ early on, which to my eyes are indistinguishable from wellingtons. You put those on over your jeans, and then put the waterproof trousers on over the boots, so even if the water on landing goes over the top of your boots it won’t immediately flow into them. Once gloves, scarf, hat, jacket and sunglasses were in place I walked over and turned my tag, then queued up to leave. The queue takes you through a basin of disinfectant to prevent any cross-contamination between Antarctic sites, like for foot and mouth disease a few years ago. Once through that you come to the door to the outside world.

There are steps leading down from door but they are not permanent things – they hang from a crane above and clip into holders on the side of the ship, meaning they are very secure. At the top is a GAP staff person and at the bottom are two ABs, who we remember from yesterday as the able-body seamen. The Zodiac is lightly roped to the bottom of the steps, moving up and down. In choppy water it moves up and down rather a lot. Once the guys at the bottom of the steps are ready for you the person at the top gives the go-ahead to go down the stairs. The ABs then take both your arms in the ‘sailor’s grip’. This works by them grasping your forearm and you grasping theirs, resulting in an outcome not unlike Bill Clinton’s handshake. The idea behind it is that if something happens, like a very large and unexpected wave, you might lose concentration and drop their arm but they won’t drop yours. They don’t look like much would surprise them.

You step down into the boat where the driver is (they do call that person a ‘driver’, to my surprise) and they show you where to sit. They load the boat evenly, alternating people to each side, five to each in total. Then the driver stands with the engine at the back. I am reasonably sure they stand just because it looks cool; sometimes when I see them in the Zodiacs on their own they are sitting down. The ABs release the ropes and the Zodiac takes us wherever we are going. They are super things, the Zodiacs, stable and strong and fast. The ones we have are powered by a 50HP Honda engine, but I see no reason you couldn’t step that up a notch or two. They are just the kind of thing I would like to have part ownership of, along with someone who had some idea what they were doing.

Today the destination was the station on Port Lockroy. During World War II the Brits set up several stations in the Antarctic to keep an eye on Fritz, as Biggles might say, and more specifically on whether any bays or islands in the region were being used to supply U-boats. Out of that grew scientific research, and it was at stations like this that the hole in the ozone layer was initially identified. But Port Lockroy was abandoned in the mid-1960s and fell slowly into disrepair. People came and looked at it and left the doors open. The windows got broken. Penguins moved in. Penguins, as we have discussed, have a gift for producing and distributing guano. The building was not a pleasant site or sight. People complained to the British government. The government agreed that Something Should be Done, and a non-profit trust focused on Antarctic matters was given money to put things right. Sometimes you really have to love the Brits.

The initial plan was just to tidy it up a bit but the project grew in scope and eventually produced what we saw today. The main building is about the size of the traditional Irish National School, but with lower ceilings and divided into a larger number of smaller rooms. They have restored everything to much the way it was in the 1950s, so in the kitchen the shelves have tins of food and original products from that era. There is a very old packet of Bovril in a cupboard in the hall, and there is Lifebuoy soap in the bathroom. (I have finally remembered just this instant where I have seen that before – there is an ad for it on the wall at the back of John Doddy’s). There are no ropes and nothing is behind glass, so it feels real and immediate.

My enthusiasm was possibly spotted, as one of the girls who works there and was on our ship last night came over to talk to me. They volunteer for four and a half months, and she clearly loved the place. We were standing in the bar at that point, a large room that deserves deep-voiced conversation and the smoke of pipes, and she showed me the gramophone. It is an original item, festooned with ‘Do not touch’ signs. She opened the polished wooden lid and wound it up with a handle from a cluttered drawer beneath, then put on a record. I did not know the song but it was just as I would have hoped a song from that era would be, upbeat and written for dancing, the sound scratchy and wonderful. The girl told me that a man in his 60s had been there a few weeks ago and when he heard it he declared it to be a foxtrot, and danced with her around the bar. It was a glorious moment to hear it, like eavesdropping on the past. It’s another of the memories from this trip that I will treasure.

Also in the building was a gift shop, the proceeds of which are used to run the station, and I emerged from it significantly poorer than I went in. Among several small pieces of ephemera I bought a set of stamps of the great British explorers, which for some reason I am inordinately pleased with. There was also a functioning British post office, as promised, and I wrote as many postcards as I had addresses for and dropped them in the letterbox. We were rushed out of there far earlier than I wanted to leave; I would have spent hours there, wandering around.

But onward we went. We got back in the Zodiacs for a two-minute spin to a very nearby island, on which there is a colony of Gentoo penguins. One of them had a black front instead of a white one, a condition apparently known as NAME!!. He is probably the most-photographed penguin in Antarctica. There were also some little baby penguins, which were exceptionally cute, though the site is rather shadowed by the fact they will almost certainly not reach adulthood. When the winter comes, at a certain point the parents will go back to the water and leave the breeding ground regardless of whether their offspring are ready or not. This is because in winter the ice around the continent freezes to a scarcely-credible distance of 200km from the coasts – that is to say, in winter you can walk 200km out to sea on solid ice which then melts into lumps and icebergs in summer. So if the adult penguins don’t leave in time they get stuck on the ice and can’t fish, and everyone dies rather than just the offspring. The abandonment strikes me as bleaker still than the red of tooth and claw.

Further over on the island there were numerous whale bones. Back in the day the whalers would let the non-useful remains of the whale bodies drift off to sea, and many of them collected here because of the currents. Someone has partially reconstructed a whale skeleton from them and I got the obligatory photograph beside its skull. We had quite a while there so I wandered around and randomly met another Irish guy, who has been on the ship the whole time. We talked about cars and economic depression.

We got back on the Zodiacs and returned to the ship. The process with the stairs and the ABs was reversed. I went back through the basin of disinfectant, took off the various additional items of clothing (I usually leave my jacket and the waterproof trousers in the mud room), turned my tag back to show the white side instead of the blue, and went upstairs for lunch. Today was fish and chips, along with the standard salad bar and other bits and pieces. There was soup to start which I skipped, and ice-cream for desert. Given that dinner is another multi-course extravaganza the volume of available food is extraordinary.

Lunch was over by 1pm or so and nothing was due to happen until three, so I went back to the cabin and fell asleep. My throat is better today but still provides a convenient excuse to snooze in the afternoon. I was awoken by an announcement from the expedition chief (Julio) that humpback whales were visible off the port bow, and I fairly hammered it up the stairs with my camera. I was among the first there. The prow of the boat is usually closed off to the tourists but they open it when there is something special to observe, so I headed out there. There were two whales, a mother and calf, and we could see them clearly. They stayed within 50m of the ship for probably a quarter of an hour, sometimes diving and displaying their tail on the way down, sometimes rolling and waving a fin. The tour leader came back on the PA to tell anyone who was not outside they were missing the best sighting of the trip. I would have loved to jump in the water and swim over to them, but several significant obstacles prevent that daydream from becoming a reality.

We left the whales eventually and kept going to Paradise Bay. This is a wide stretch of water which is speckled with floating ice and icebergs, and around which mountains rise up in an almost-complete circle. Some of the icebergs are the size of cathedrals, to use that image again. The overall effect is crazy beautiful, the Angelina Jolie of bays, an exposition of beauty so extreme it almost becomes mundane in its remoteness.

At three o’clock we went through the standard process of getting dressed and into the Zodiacs (though no disinfectant was required as we weren’t landing) and cruised around the bay for an hour. I took many photographs of the mountains and the water and the icebergs. We saw a huge iceberg that has an arch in it, with a channel of water passing underneath inviting the Zodiac to pass through. We didn’t, of course – the icebergs turn over on occasion, and if it happened at the wrong moment the Zodiac driver would have a difficult job explaining his actions to the board of inquiry. But if I had somehow been there on my own in that boat, you can be damn sure I would have chanced it. The surrounding mountains emerged from the fog and then disappeared again, as if peeping from behind a curtain. Everywhere I looked there was beauty.

Not far from the boat we spotted what looked at first like a brown rock, about the size of man’s torso, which turned out to be the head of an elephant seal. We had, if you recall, seen adolescent versions of these before, but this was the full-grown variety. It was huge. When we saw it swim it looked like the Loch Ness monster. The expert on these things estimated it weighed 3,000lbs. We were very lucky to see it because they are usually underwater. This one had come up for air and was relaxing to slow its heart rate and catch its breath, floating with its head up before diving again. Eventually it disappeared again beneath the surface, the star of a thousand photographs.

Once more back to the ship. For the Zodiac tours they divide the entire group in two because there are not enough Zodiacs to have everyone on the water at the same time. (There are enough life rafts for everyone though, or so I have been assured.) As I was in the first group I had some time to kill and started to write these notes, sitting in what they call with Discovery Lounge, the largest space on the ship. There are lots more people here now. Quite a few people have asked me what I am writing, and I have told them I am working on my memoirs. They seem to think this is plausible. I have glass of red wine on the table beside me, and in a few minutes the briefing for tomorrow will start. I think we are to visit Deception Island tomorrow, where among other things you can go for a swim.

**

It’s now a few hours later and I have just had dinner with a table of mostly Australians, where the food was excellent and the conversation variable. There was a family of Antipodeans who I had not met before, and the father was fascinated by the fact I am Irish. He asked several times what I thought about ‘the troubles’ until finally I explained the resonance of that phrase to Irish ears and asked him if the meant conflict in Northern Ireland or more recent economic woes.
‘Is the potato famine over then?’ asked his presumably teenage daughter.
‘It ended around the same time your penal colony chose ignorance as its main export,’ I managed to not say, and instead smiled at her comment and suggested it was not in the best of taste. At the earliest opportunity I slipped away from the table and am now back in the comfort of the library.

Tomorrow is indeed Deception Island, and the opportunity to swim in the relatively warm zero-Celsius waters rather than more common two-below waters will present itself. The young guide Matt was at my table and he had a crack at explaining why Antarctic waters have a lower freezing point than normal, which I did not quite follow other than to understand the ice produces higher levels of salinity in the remaining liquid water. Either way I will try and man up and run in tomorrow, but I am not confident of having a positive result to report.

I forgot to mention that we also saw two leopard seals today, one on an iceberg from the ship and one on an iceberg from the Zodiac. These were the creatures that Shackleton’s crowd ran into and didn’t recognise. They were briefly frightened of one before filling it full of holes with a revolver and eating it. They were tough, those guys.

It’s 9.30pm now. For the rest of the evening I will read and write and possibly go for a late drink and try not to insult the Australians, tempting as it might be. Through the library window night is slowly falling on the ice, bringing with it a covering of fog, and it is with this image I leave you.

Goodnight.

When I looked out the porthole this morning the first thing I saw was a small iceberg. Today we are in the Antarctic proper.

Our first landing was not long after breakfast, at a place called Cuverville Island. There were two possibilities – stay on the beach with the penguins, or go up a rather steep hill for a walk. I chose the latter. It was pretty cold, but the main issue was rain – it fell heavy and steady, making any materials not specifically engineered to repel it sodden and heavy.

We had not landed at our original target spot because the seas there were too rough, and instead we had landed down the coast a little bit. On the way from the ship to the shore in the Zodiac, we pushed our way through a field of floating ice, with the occasional room-size iceberg requiring us to detour around it. The landscape of the island was breath-taking. Glaciers run down from the mountains to the sea, and sometimes ice will fall in a crash to the water below, sending waves running in every direction. When a huge bit falls – which unfortunately didn’t happen today – it can cause a small tsunami. The ice and snow were sculpted and twisted with the wind and the countours of the landscape, and in places the ice was a bright, shining blue, one that seems impossible to properly capture with a camera, and not all that far off how I remember the sea sponge at Neruda’s house.

The second landing spot meant that we had to walk quite a long way to get to the bottom of the hill we were to climb, and it involved some doubling back when he found our way blocked by a nest of skewer birds. So when we got there I was already a bit tired. It emerged then we were short on time. The guide, who is in the low digits of his early twenties, kept talking about things like ‘the point of no return!’ and ‘we must move quickly!’ as if there was anything at all riding on us getting to the top of the hill. He was very confused on the difference between making himself look good and helping the tourists enjoy themselves. I would have cheerfully thrown him in a crevasse. The pace was very fast, and a lot of people turned back at various times, no-return point be damned. The path switch-backed up the mountainside, over and back, and I found it very hard going. If I had been able to take my time, I think I would have been fine. But as I laboured up it, watching the heels of the person on front of me and not looking up very often, I wondered what is the crazy impulse that means I seem to keep finding myself dealing with severe inclines despite repeatedly proving to myself I don’t like it and am not good at it.

Finally we were looking at one straight shot to the top. I managed it one step at a time, concentrating only on that. I would like to say that there was a feeling of euphoria at the top but my primary emotion was irritation at having being rushed up there for little good reason. Once I got over that and had a look around I felt better though. As I faced the path we came up the sea was behind me and the mountains on front. The tops of the mountains were lost in cloud, and the slopes themselves receded into mist. It is impossible to get a photograph that captures the subtlety of the light and shade, or at least impossible for me. Turning to sea, there were small pieces of ice no bigger than your hand, than pieces maybe the size of your head, then much larger pieces about the size of my head, and then on up to icebergs the size of houses and office blocks. Some of the bigger ones are carved and moulded by the wind and rain in Rorschach shapes. I saw an anchor and a plane and a raised fist, and in the minds of the others there must have been a thousand more.

Sometimes there will be a distant sound like a gunshot as the ice shifts under pressure, and the sound of the ice falling into the water is like a great waterfall that flows only for a moment, thunderous but definably liquid.

I was thinking to myself that this had been a wonderful day, one of those that will flash before my eyes in the event of a life-threatening predicament, when we got what I have sometimes heard called a helping of awesome sauce. At the top of one of the very steep sections that we had climbed up, one by one we sat down on the snow and slid down. There was a gentle slope for a few metres, then the slide disappeared over the edge. Some people went slowly and carefully. I swung myself into it and launched over the edge hard enough to lift off in a spray of ice, and laughed and laughed when I got to the bottom, pulling myself up and picking as much snow and ice from both inside and outside my clothes as I could. Later on we slid down another slope, and it was just as much fun the second time.

Ah, good times. However. When I got back down from the mountain I made a discovery that I will recount as lightly as I can, but has actually upset me quite a bit. My good camera was safely in my backpack for most of the time I was out, and for the parts where I was sliding down hills the backpack was cradled carefully in my arms. But the persistence and heaviness of the rain meant that a lot of water got in, much more than I would have thought possible. The camera got soaked. When I tried to test it, the mirror got stuck in position, where it remains still. And now the camera will not turn on. The screen remains blank. I believe it is, in the jargon of the industry, shagged. It has served me well since I bought it in India in 2005, and it’s just a thing, and things in the scheme of life are not important. But it’s yet _another_ thing sacrificed on the altar of this trip, with the associated expense of replacing it or the choice to go back to non-SLR photography. Sigh.

Anyway. From a photographic point of view all is not lost as I still have the compact Canon, which I can assure you I will be keeping dry as an old bone, so we shall say no more about it. We came back in from the landing and I had a shower and then lunch and then a sneaky snooze. Shortly after we were back out again, this at time at Neko Harbour on the Antarctic mainland proper. Inexplicably I found myself walking up another hill. I just don’t know what makes me do it. But this one turned out to be easy. At the top were views of the Antarctic landscape were of the sort you would imagine for yourself if asked to picture what such a thing would look like. Everyone was taking each other’s picture. There was much laughter. It was fun, but I wanted something a little more contemplative, so I followed some people further up the hill and the four of us sat in quiet for a while, looking out over the ice and the icebergs and the water and the land. This will be our only visit to the Antarctic mainland – everywhere else we stop is on one of the many islands.

A while later a guide arrived who had been clearly sent to get us, and we all dutifully trooped back down. It emerged we were not supposed to go up there. We may be officially given out to later in a gentle sort of way. But it was completely worth it to sit there in the quiet and the cold and the rain and just take it all in.

There was another slide to get back down to the bottom. This time I tucked my coat into my pants, gaining in utility what I lost in aesthetics. It was a steeper, longer ride, and I couldn’t see much of where I was going due to the clouds of ice that I was somehow causing to form around my head. It was bumpy, but not hard enough to bruise. Some people did it head first, which provided much comedic value when their face collided with a pile of snow. I was on one of the first Zodiacs back to the ship. I took off everything that was wet and retired to the library, where I write this now. In ten minutes our evening briefing starts, at which we will be told what we are doing tomorrow, and there will probably be a reminder that you should not wander off on your own. Dinner follows, and about nine or ten they usually show a film, which I have not yet attended given the allure of the mobile library. Later this evening we are dropping off some fresh water at a Chilean research station, as apparently they are running low.

As I write this, still in the library, there is large window to my right. About 400m away – maybe a drive and a wedge or a nine – is the coast of an island whose name I do not know yet. There is a glacier that comes down to the water’s edge from the mountains above. The water of the sea is grey; if you did not know water could be blue, you would never guess it from this view. It’s very calm, just rippling slightly. At the edges of the glacier, possibly 60m or 70m up from the water though it’s very hard to tell, the ice has fallen away over the aeons, forming the icebergs we have been sailing by and leaving a sheer cliff behind. On that cliff there are pure whites and dirty whites, sometimes changing to the electric blue I mentioned before where I can see straight into a crack or crevasse. In places the cliff leans out, where new icebergs will fall, sooner or later, landing with a mighty crash and splash and wave. Some icebergs are already floating in front of the cliff, close by site of their formation maybe, if they come from here. The snow of the icebergs seems whiter than the snow of the shaded cliffs behind, but at the top of the glacier the snow as of the same brilliant white as the glacier below.

Once in New York I saw a pencil drawing by da Vinci that he had done was he was about 15 and still an apprentice with Verocchio. It was of a blanket folded over a box; or was it of a blanket folded over the knees of a person? It’s strange how memory can store and reject. The point of the drawing was the folds of the cloth, how they affected light and shadow in such complex ways, and how they could be recreated on paper. It’s that kind of complexity that defines that shades of white and grey on the cliff opposite me now – the grey of a face angled slightly differently to the sun, the grey of an uneven area where an iceberg has fallen away, the grey of a split or crevasse, and in the smaller cracks just the faintest hint of the blue that in others is bright and strong.

This is a wondrous place. The gap between the words and the meaning behind the words is vast here. I am lucky, lucky to see it.

[Note: Data is crazy expensive; will post as many updates as possible here but am not checking email]

Just after four o’clock this afternoon Zodiacs started to leave the Expedition for the rocky coast of Aitcho Island, one of the South Shetland islands. Excitement was high. Up ahead on the shore we could see thousands of penguins walking around or lying down or running after each other in their consistently comical way. It was cold, but not painfully so.

As we got closer, we made the interesting discovery that penguin colonies stink. From several hundred metres out we could smell the stench of what the guides delicately call ‘guano’. Later on I discovered that when a penguin excretes, the stinking viscous substance travels approximately three feet from the originating orifice. If the penguin keeps walking throughout this process the end result is a line on the ground, the first section of which is perfectly straight before it ends in a wider, wavier section. Depending on what the penguin has been eating, the line can be white or red.

The first colony we saw was of Gentoo penguins. They are roughly 60cm tall with a characteristic orange beak. They are intensely curious creatures, reminding me of the mockingbirds in the Galapagos. Only a moment or two after I had reached land, one of them came over to investigate. I stood still and he had a peck at my boots, then checked to see if my waterproof pants were edible. Finding they were not, he had a look up at me directly. Apparently seeing little of interest, he continued on about his penguin business.

It is now coming towards the end of breeding season, so what we were seeing were offspring that were on the verge of being able to go into the water and fend for themselves. Once they enter the sea they will stay there for the next eight months, re-emerging only to breed for themselves towards the end of this year. Before they can do that though they need to moult, losing the cuddly outer covering of fur. As we visited today many of them were very nearly there, and the chief guide later said that when the Expedition is back here in two weeks, the island will be almost abandoned. The patches of fur can look quite funny, and I saw several Mohawks. It’s a stressful time for them, apparently, though presumably less stressful than being eaten by one of the skewer birds, many of which we saw flying around. These large dark-brown birds steal the baby penguins whenever they can, but now all of the penguins on Aitcho are big enough to defend themselves from avian attack.

Aitcho is a tiny volcanic island, hardly land at all. It curves east to west, and we walked out to the western edge. At that part of the island there are elephant seals. The ones we saw were still adolescent but were already massive creatures, multiples of times bigger than anything we saw in the Galapagos. They get up to two tonnes when fully grown. Thankfully, they can’t move very quickly on land. On the way over we saw whale bones, their original owner long deceased. The rib was about the size of a telephone pole. There were several vertebrae also. If you were cutting a section from the trunk of a large tree with the intention of sitting on it later, they were about that size.

It was great to walk around and smell the smells (you get used to the penguin odour very quickly) and feel the air and look at the bleakness of the island. There really is nothing there but penguins and seals – no trees or vegetation or water. It’s beautiful, but it’s a very stark beauty.

Earlier in the day we had a pleasant surprise when some whales turned up and showed an interest in the ship, swimming around it for a while about 100m away. I happened to be outside on the top level at the time – the first sign was the famous jet of water up in the air as they surfaced and breathed out. It’s more of a puff of mist than the geyser-style expulsion I had in mind. The resident expert said there were at least three whales and maybe as many as seven, and he was able to identify them as fin whales. When they were close you could see the top of their backs, like a small low-lying temporary island, and then when they dived down again the fin on their back was evident for a moment. They grow up to 20m in length. And I was particularly pleased that these were fin whales as I am almost certain that that is the species of the whale skeleton on the ceiling of the Natural History Museum in faraway Dublin.

While we were up there looking at the whales we also saw an albatross, which circled the boat repeatedly. The resident bird watcher was not able to give me an entirely convincing explanation for why this would be so, though he did say that the albatross had been around the boat on and off since yesterday morning. Or at least, he was almost sure it was the same albatross. The bird watcher is a nervous sort of creature himself, bouncing from person to person and conversation to conversation without leaving many traces of information behind.

We had one lecture early in the day, and one after. The first was on Shakleton, and was a standard but well-told tale of his adventures in this part of the world. The speaker clearly knew a lot about polar explanation in general and Shakleton in particular. He also had copies of many of the photographs of Hurley, the photographer, which make the story live again. I had never seen many of them before.  The evening lecture was on photography, a series of useful tips on how to inject more life and interest into your pictures.

Just before dinner I was in the cabin when my roommate came in, and I had a chat with him for a while. His opening comment was that today was good, but he had travelled so much and seen so much that he hadn’t felt any ‘adrenaline’ (his word) from it. ‘Is that so,’ I answered, looking from my pillow to his thoughtfully. I told him bluntly that if he was looking for adrenaline bursts off a GAP tour in the Antarctic, he had signed up for the wrong trip.

But we talked more after that and he clarified his position somewhat. He is young enough to work but doesn’t have to, as he has various bits of property and what not that keep him going. He gave me lots of tips on how I should be managing my finances, and said he has often thought of writing a book on the subject. He spoke as though he is very wealthy, although if he was that minted he would not be sharing a second-floor cabin with me (and there should be a third guy). But he is bored, and does not know what to do with himself. He has no wife and no children, and I understood from the context that he has never been married. He spent quite a while telling me how he had withdrawn from technology, doesn’t have a mobile phone, doesn’t use the internet, even though he used to work in telecoms until he retired a few years ago. In the end I felt sorry for him. He’s in the position that many people dream of, not having to work and having the freedom to travel. But everywhere he looks he sees boredom, and I think he has found that the race he has won is not the one he should have been running.

Anyway. He went for a shower and I made my egress, and I had a very pleasant dinner at a table for 10 at which myself and a man called Warren were the only males. One of the girls at the table has a particularly enormous zoom lens for her camera, a 100 – 400mm, which I had seen her with earlier. I asked her about it, and in the course of her answer she mentioned in an off-hand way that if you’re spending ten grand on a holiday, you might as well spend another two grand on a lens to get good pictures. Quite so, I answered. I would imagine her cabin is not down on the second floor, but I was not indelicate enough to ask.

Once the conversation fragmented I spent most of the meal chatting to Warren, who I have spoken to several times now. He’s on the ship with his daughters, of which there are either two or three, but he never eats with them for some reason. He’s a thoughtful chap and I enjoyed our conversation.

And so to bed, early and tired and happy. Right now we are in the lee of Deception Island, which is keeping the seas calm. Great day, great introduction to this part of the world, and onwards towards the ice tomorrow.

Mr Drake, it seems, was not home. As I write this we are roughly two-thirds of the way from Ushuaia to the north tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, almost all the way across the Drake Passage, and the seas have been relatively very calm. These are the most stormy waters in the world, and I must admit that on my List of Things to Do is to see a storm at sea. But it is not to be this time, unless something very unexpected happens overnight.

That is not to say, though, that the ship has not rolled – ‘calm’ for the Drake Passage does not by any means mean ‘flat’. I am sitting in the library as I write this, where I have spent many of today’s hours, and as I look out the windows opposite me they dip first down to the sea and then rise upwards to the sky. Generally the horizon is visible, moving up and down, but if there is a particularly big roll the view is entirely water or air before it regains equilibrium around the horizon. Looking out the front of the ship earlier today I thought the roll must have been about 15 degrees either side of the horizontal, meaning there is a decent overall distance to travel through. The period is approximately six seconds.

Every few hours a particularly large swell will hit us and the ship takes a much bigger swing over and back than it normally does. And on average, apparently, every seventh wave is unusually large. I woke at 3am last night with the movement, though I am not sure exactly when it started.

My principal discovery today, which is rather obvious in retrospect, was that the roll is significantly worse higher up the ship. What was a gentle pitching as I got up in the morning in my cabin on the second level was an energetic swaying on the fifth level where the dining room is. People were staggering around drunkenly, much to the amusement of the crew who were still pretty stable. Frequently they remind us to keep ‘one hand for the ship’, i.e. not to carry things in both hands in case the ships hits a bad roll and you arrest your unwanted motion with your face.

The difference in the roll at various levels has the odd side-effect that the more expensive your cabin the worse the roll is, as the best cabins are at the top. The poor crew get to stay on the first floor, below even myself and the other penny-pinchers, very close to the engines.

There were a series of lectures organised for today, which I was looking forward to. But when I got to the first one, not long after breakfast, I found that I was starting to feel rather unsettled. And then I found I was feeling quite ill. The problem was not the amplitude of the rolling but rather that it is relentless, never pausing or stopping. I went outside for some air and that helped, but as soon as I was back in the rather hot and airless interior environment, I felt bad again. Being seasick feels just like being regular sick. For some reason I had thought it would be different.

I went back to the cabin and lay down. I took a seasickness tablet and feel asleep for a few hours, skipping the second lecture also, but I was up and about and feeling much better in time for lunch and then the third and fourth lectures. They were on penguins and seals respectively, about which there is much to know. Ever since I have taken the pills every six hours as specified, and I have felt fine.

I went outside for a while, read for a while, went outside again, read again. I have met lots of people on the ship but not formed any acquaintance lasting longer than a meal, and I must admit I found the time a little long. I was hungry, and dinner at 7.30pm seemed far away. The wait was not exactly worth it, but it was not bad when it came – salad to start, onion soup, beef wellington and a small scoop of potato with mixed vegetables, cheesecake for desert. I would have eaten 30% more of everything if I could have got it.

The sun set rapidly, burning itself out in a thick bank of cloud that turned it to a red-orange disk. It doesn’t get completely dark for very long at this time of year, which is a pity, as in the total blackness the stars from here should be heart-breaking. The nearest human habitation of any significance is Ushuaia, which I think is about 500 miles away by now.

The good news though is that due to our swift crossing of the Drake Passage we have arrived earlier than expected, and should be able to land somewhere tomorrow. I don’t know yet where, or what we will be doing. But that will be very exciting.

This day has certainly piqued my interest in what long sea journeys are and were like. I have found on the longer bus journeys we took that I could generally fall into a semi-conscious state and the hours drifted by as I stared out the window in between phases of sleep. Here, there is nothing to see out the window but water. I imagine though that when you get used to it the days drift by easily and comfortably.

Incidentally I found out today that there is a sailing ship that goes from South America to the Antarctic, one with three masts and hopefully people who say ‘Yarrrrr.’ I think I have a new aim for the future.

And sin a bhfuil, really. I have the library to myself, as I have had for most parts of the day. After this I will go to the bar and see if anyone I have already met is around, or just find some new people to talk to, and then to bed. My poor roommate is having a miserable time with seasickness, and has been in the cabin almost the entire day. Many people are finding it pretty bad, so I am thankful to get off so lightly.

And then tomorrow, footfall on the Antarctic, or at least on the South Shetland islands. Either way, it’s the day that a dream becomes real.

The Antarctic trip includes one night in a hotel called the Cilene del Faro, which is on the opposite side of Ushuaia from the hostel. So this morning I walked from one to the other with my roughly 20kg of stuff. It was most probably the furthest I will carry the rucksack during this entire trip, if all goes well.

I was a bit later setting out than I had planned, despite the fact that I was up early, as over breakfast I met an Argentinian family on their holidays, two parents and two kids. In the course of the conversation I told them that I was going to the Antarctic tomorrow, and from their reaction they would dearly love to be going themselves. I almost wished they were going instead of me, so clear was the desire, and I hope they get there at some point. The mother spoke perfect English and translated for everyone else.

We had got a basket of toasted baguette slices as part of the meal, one per table, meaning I had as many for myself as they had between them, and I had only eaten one or two. In a funny moment, the son of the family took some of mine, and the parents were scandalised. I tried to hand them all over and indicate I didn’t mind in the slightest but they were having none of it. But on the way out, I put the whole basket beside the son and told him to have it at, and everyone seemed pleased with the final outcome.

When I made it to the hotel it turned out I was sharing a small apartment with two bedrooms and a large living area. My roommate is Colin, an Australian chap who has just turned 70, though he seems younger. His wife has gone to London with their granddaughter, and he has come here to head to Antarctica. He was a salesman for a large company I had never heard of that sell the descendants of asbestos among others things.

I met him in the afternoon when I had come back to the apartment to get more money. Since the Quito wallet debacle I don’t carry much cash and generally don’t bring the card either, and everything here is expensive, so when I had got to the door of the maritime museum I realised I didn’t have enough money on me to get in. I invited Colin to come back with me, if he was interested, and he was, though eventually he left me at it.

I spent several hours there poking around. The building was once a prison. One wing of cells now forms the main body of the museum, with a separate little exhibit in each cell. A second wing has been left much as it was when the prisoners were there, though, and it’s a bleak place to be. I paced out one of the cells and it’s six feet by ten, so the same width as a snooker table but two feet shorter. The cells were designed for a single occupant, but generally had two. There was a high window with two sets of bars on it.

In the height of the operational prison security was relatively light, as even if you escaped you had nowhere to go. The land around was too inhospitable, and you couldn’t light a fire as the smoke would betray you. So most people that did escape just returned of their own volition.

The prison was part of a penal colony when originally established, and the whole idea behind that is one that should give us pause. The British had been shipping people to Australia for years by this point, in the mid 1800s, and so the idea was not without precedent. It is, though, a terribly odd one, to create a society of thieves and criminals who are bad enough to exile but not quite bad enough to execute. Mixed up in there is the fact that keeping people in prison is expensive, and that offences of the day seem ludicrously slight by modern standards. But I find it very odd to think that the idea of a penal colony seemed a reasonable one, a good solution to a difficult problem.

There was a very small exhibit on Shackleton with a beautiful scale model of his ship, the Endurance, and even an accompanying model of the open craft they used to travel from Elephant Island to South Georgia Island across the worst seas in the world. Shackleton himself, after his great adventure, had something of a bitter end, with much booze and tobacco. It was a heart attack that carried him off eventually. I suppose after something like he did, all the rest of your life is telling the story.

After the museum I went in search of a light rain jacket, given the disappointments of the one I bought on Easter Island, and found that you could choose any two of thin, waterproof and cheap. The top-end ones were the equivalent of E200, astonishingly. I eventually found one from a line that has just been replaced for about half that amount, but even that seemed very expensive to me.

I went back to the hotel and picked up my new septuagenarian friend and we went out for dinner. I had steak for the third night in a row – in my defense I had a very light lunch – and it was excellent, but not quite in the same league as what I had in BA. That said, if it was in Dublin I would cross the city to get it. We had a beer with that, and then headed back.

I spent the next few hours getting my stuff organised for the Antarctic. Frustratingly, South America’s habit of relieving me of my possessions is continuing unabated. The T-shirt from the Galapagos that I really liked never emerged from the laundrette in Santiago, but I only realised that today. And also, the lock on my rucksack must have got caught in something on the way through the airline system to Ushuaia, as it has entirely disappeared and taken the zip fixing with it. The zip is still somewhat operational, as the base is in place, and I can lock the bag in a less secure way by using a fabric loop at the bottom. But it was a combination lock that was very handy to have, which Dad had given to me just before I left, so the whole thing was rather irritating. And indeed on top of that I realised with a thud today that I was not wearing my hat when I should have been wearing my hat, but when I went back to the bookshop I had been in earlier it was there. I was very relieved.

The bookshop, incidentally, was excellent and had a large English section, and I went in without the intention of buying anything and with the intention of not buying anything. I came out with a book by Theroux on a journey to Patagonia – Katie and I had seen the very same volume when we were going through the book-famine in Banos in the cafe where it was for rent but not for sale, and I couldn’t resist it. The number of books though has reached unmanageable levels again; I will regretfully have to leave a few in a suitable new home after I get back from the ice.

This last week I have felt that I have lost a lot of time in logistics and not taken advantage of what time I have had, and I guess part of that was just waiting to go to the Antarctic. Tomorrow, things should move back into a higher gear in terms of exploration and newness. In the morning I am booked on a four-hour tour of the Beagle Channel on a sailing boat – I had hoped to do that today, but they were booked out. Then at 4pm we board the Expedition, and later tomorrow night we sail south. Earlier today I went to docks with the small binoculars and had a look at the ship on which we will be sailing. Given my knowledge of nautical matters, all I can confirm is that it floats. But I very much look forward to getting to know it.

This evening I read the welcome pack and it turns out there is satellite internet access on the ship, but it may be prohibitively expensive. If it is not, I will try and post day by day, otherwise I will put everything up when I get back.

I have just checked on Wolfram Alpha, and today is the 40th day of my trip, with 40 remaining. As I write this I am sitting in the sixth-floor bar of the hotel in Ushuaia, which has decent music and an amazing view of the water and the city and comfortable couches, and indeed its only drawback is that it doesn’t have a barman. If it did, I would have a glass, and if I had a glass I would raise it, as this has been quite the experience. Google Analytics tells me that some of you are still with me, reading along; I hope that you too have drawn from these pages some of the excitement and newness and occasional frustration that I have felt, and that something of the magic of South America is with you too.

At six o’clock this evening I set sail for Antarctica, which is not something I can say very often.

Things began rather inauspiciously with a walk in the rain due to the fact I arrived at 4.10pm for the 4.00pm bus, and it turned out four really did mean four. It was only a ten-minute stroll to the port from where I was, but the heavens chose that moment to open. The best that can be said of it is that my new jacket is indeed entirely waterproof. My jeans are not.

The Expedition was still moored where she has been since the day before yesterday, and I walked up the gangplank to find in the region of 20 people directing me where to go. The corridors were high and bright and not entirely unlike a hotel. I arrived at the main reception desk on deck four, and was then shown to the cabin. It was much larger than I had been expecting, with two single beds and an upper bunk that folds down from the wall. I chose the bed opposite that, as I was first into the room.

A while later my first roommate arrived, and in roughly ten minutes of conversation I learned that things he doesn’t like include, but are not limited to, sharing rooms, talking to people, working and not working. He also seemed to think in a passive aggressive way that by taking the best bunk, I had somehow impugned the honour of his mother. I wondered what were the chances of getting away with it if I quietly strangled him during the night. But I spoke to him more later and I think he is probably a decent old codger, if undoubtedly odd. He worked in telecoms for years and is now retired. But of course, he doesn’t like the word ‘retired’.

He’s among his people, though, as many of the people on the tour are retired. The average age is almost certainly north of fifty-five. Once we had got on board and settled in they talked us through the safety arrangements and gave us a demonstration of the sound that means we are in trouble – six short beeps followed by one long one over the PA system, which can be heard at any point in the ship. I think if such a cacophony actually started up unexpectedly we would lose half the passengers to heart-attacks before they ever got near a life-jacket.

The safety information took on something of a new resonance later on when I learned that a few years ago the previous version of this ship struck an underwater iceberg and sank. All of the passengers and crew survived and ended up with a good story for parties, and apparently the captain was not at fault.

Once I was settled in and we had had our safety briefing I went off to explore the ship, finding that below decks many places look the same. It is very easy for me to lose my sense of direction, look out a window, and wonder why the ship is going backwards. Most of the facilities are on deck four, which level with the main deck of the ship. There is a library with large windows and a few hundred books, including a bizarrely large number of Lonely Planet guidebooks – I suspect it is in fact the full set. There are also lots of books on the Antarctic, one of which I have borrowed. The room is comfortable and welcoming and not far from what I would like to have in my own house one day.

Near the front of the ship on deck four there is a large assembly area with firmly-anchored chairs around low tables, which is where the safety announcement was. The chairs rotate, which tends to happen with the movement of the boat whether you want it to or not. There are a few screens to project slides, so there was a touch of a bizarro-corporate presentation about it. Directly above this area, on deck five,  is the dining area. Dinner was served at half seven – four courses plus coffee. I had pork, which was pretty good. The company was excellent. I ate with Lindsey (a guy) and Deidre, Jenny, Jag (a girl), Jay (a girl), Andrea, Anthony (who has been travelling for 23 months) and Jenny. I made a special effort to remember the names.

After that I went up and watched the final light fade from the sky about 9.30pm, the sun long since below the horizon.  I got a lovely shot of the moon reflected in the water. On the top deck there is a compass to see which direction you are headed, mounted behind glass at the top of a short post. On the way down I saw that the bridge, which had previously been closed, was now open for visitors. I knocked and was let in, but then they didn’t tell me very much and I was left wandering around trying to figure out what things were. They told me to come back during the day and I could have my picture taken in the captain’s chair. Make it so.

It’s a little after 11pm as I write this, and about 2am we should expect to hit the waters of the Drake Passage. In the briefing folder in the room it says that in a storm on a ship there are two kinds of items – things that are on the ground, and things that will be on the ground. So keep your camera and anything else breakable low down, is the message. The man in the bridge said the wind on the passage is 20 knots from the starboard side, which his tone made clear is a wind suitable only for little girls. Around 50 knots is when he gets interested. From the other side, though – i.e. from port – things are different, for reasons that are not quite clear to me, and a relatively low wind can have  bigger impact. In the bridge I spent a long time looking at two screens, one showing a map and one (which he turned on especially to show me) showing the sonar. There were many acronyms and pieces of information that I did not understand. This whole world is very nearly entirely unknown to me.

To finish off the evening I went to the bar at the stern for a drink after dinner and chatted to an Australian woman who used to work with disabled people, helping them find the will to live, which sounded wrenching. She stopped doing it a few years ago. I had the feeling that in the right circumstances she would talk about it for days. Form there I came back to the cabin, and my roomie has just come in, so it’s time to settle down. Not a lot to do tomorrow, but we’re up at 7am all the same, presumably to get us in on the routine.

And tomorrow, as the captain said in his welcome speech, Mr Drake is waiting for us.

It was with much relief that I slid into my seat at the window of the exit row for the flight to Ushuaia, because at every stage of the process I was expecting something to go wrong. Especially given my place on a flight which was supposed to be full. But everything was painless.

After writing the post yesterday I went out for another walk around the city. Again I felt there wasn’t enough time for a proper itinerary and contented myself with random wandering, but that was very satisfactory. A short while in I heard a distant booming and I followed it for several blocks, the sound getting louder with each turn, until I came on the source: a small group of people with two very large drums and some other instruments out practicing in a park. The drums were audible from a remarkable distance. Later on I came across a little bookshop that had a shelf of English books, a discovery not that much more unusual than tripping across a stack of gold bars on the footpath. As English books are so hard to come by here they are very expensive when you do find them, but to celebrate the serendipity I added a book of short stories form Marquez to the mobile library, called ‘No One Writes to the Colonel.’ I love the title. Oddly enough there was not one but two editions of the book on Shackleton that I read earlier on the trip, but nothing else on the Antarctic region unfortunately.

Once the steakhouse opened (it is called La Plata, by the way, on the street called Chile) I wandered over, bringing the Easter Island book for company, and I had the steak that was medium rare this time, and I have been thinking about it since on and off.

Humour me for a moment, gentle reader, and imagine that you have grown up playing the game of golf, but in your universe there are no professional golfers. There are no Majors and no USPGA and no Ryder Cup and no 1980s Greg Norman heartbreak. It’s just you and the other amateurs working on your handicaps. Some of you have low handicaps and some of you have higher, and the same few people tend to win most of the competitions, and all is well and pleasant.

Now introduce into this odd little world Tiger Woods. It’s still fundamentally the same thing – he drives from the tee-boxes and approaches from the fairway and putts on the greens. But he is playing the game at such a high level compared to anyone else you have ever seen that really it’s not comparable at all. It’s like comparing a Bullet Train to a 1840s steam-engine, or a BMW M3 to a bicycle, or my acoustic version of Black Hole Sun to Chris Cornell’s. That feeling of disconnection between all that had come before and what was happening now was the impression I had of the steak. It was perfectly cooked, medium rare to a nose, distinct from medium or rare. It was lightly seared on the outside. With it were three sauces, though that’s not quite the correct word for them – one of mixed peppers, one based on broccoli and one with a mixed vegetable and garlic base, and they each harmonised with the meat in a different way, like the perfect additional note in a piece of music. So overall, I would certainly say the experience was unique to this point in my existence, and probably localised to this part of the world, and probably one of the top ten things that any carnivorous food-lover should do in their lives. Steak in Argentina is not like steak anywhere else.

I ate alone, which Benjamin Franklin described as being like eating in a tomb, and then as I was having a coffee afterwards (given that I was in no particular hurry anywhere else) a guy sat down beside me with a magazine which I recognised to be one of the Nordic languages (I’m not sure they can go three words without an ‘og’) and which turned out to be Norweigan. Given that I had been steered to the ‘medallion de lomo’ by the American guy the previous night I thought I would return the favour, and we ended up chatting. His name was Uwe, and he was retired from the Norweigan Navy and now worked with the merchant navy. He could get long periods of time off, and is on one of those right now. He’s also going to the Antarctic, though in a more luxurious style than myself by the sounds of things. We ended up talking for most of the evening, and I joined him at his table, and we shared a half-bottle of wine. I very much enjoyed the conversation. At some point the Irish couple from the previous evening happened to take the table beside us, and so the four of us talked for a while.

Time slipped by unnoticed, and when I got back to the hostel it was close to 1am. The taxi was coming a little after 2am. So I packed and had a nightcap from the hostel fridge (seven pesos for a beer there, USD2) and in the end, bar an afternoon snooze, I never slept in the bed I paid for. D’oh.

I was at the airport about three and there was nothing going on. Everything was closed, including the check-in desks. I waited until they opened and then found that security to get to the gates was closed and would not open for another hour and a half. So I walked around, and I noticed that a lot of people were asleep on the ground. Some of them had bedrolls and other items that made it look as though they had planned to sleep at the airport. As I was tired, and as there was nothing else to do, I found myself an out of the way spot and joined them. I lay down on the floor, slipped the strap of my bag around my neck and lay my head back against it, put the Indiana Jones hat over my face, and snoozed comfortably and well.

I woke a bit before my alarm an stiffly got up and checked in, slept most of the flight, and was picked up by the nice people from the hostel at the airport. The hostel is a family-run place in a nice house in a nice area, so it’s like staying with a well-to-do aunt this time. My room is large and spotless.

Ushuaia is similar in layout to Valparaiso in that there is a large bay and a curve of flat land around it, and then the hills build up from not very far inland, culminating in mountains. But in every other detail they are opposites – Ushuaia is clean and orderly and prosperous, and reminds me of a European ski resort, especially with the mountains in the background. There is one long central main street on which there are banks and restaurants and shops, so there’s a pleasant mixture of tourists and locals. The waterfront displays the various boats and ships that are moored there, from small sailing boats at one end to giant cargo ships at the other.  As of last night I know that a boat is a small boat, a yacht is a large boat, and a ship is a very large boat, without any formal delineation of where one category starts and the next begins. Thanks Uwe.

I spent a few hours in the evening planning what to do once back in Buenos Aires, looking at places myself and Mick might go when he gets here, and realising that Argentina is enormous. It is, as the guidebook says, almost as big as India. This produces a certain logistical interest when interesting things are in opposite corners of the country, as is the case with the glaciers and the waterfalls. But we’ll get there, literally and metaphorically. I went for dinner in a place recommended by the hostel people which looked nice – lots of tasteful Argentinian kitsch on the walls – but the food was disappointing. If you engineered an unholy union between pita bread and normal bread, and then used that to make a burger, and added a standard sandwich-cut of ham and did not serve it with chips, that’s what I had.

When I got back to the hostel the family were sitting around watching the beginning of Inception, and I stood and watched a moment of it, and then they waved me to a seat and I ended up watching the whole thing with them. It really is excellent. I still suspect the entire thing is a non-reality as per Total Recall, if for no other reason than the ending is too fairytale for Nolan to believe in.

It’s late now and I am tired from my disrupted sleep pattern, so I will get to play with some dreams of my own soon. Goodnight.

I got to the airport this morning three hours in advance as requested. The woman at the check-in desk was reluctant to check me in but did so eventually, and I went through to the gate. There was no-one else around. In fact there seemed to be very little point in being so early, as when I asked  if I had a seat on the flight I was told shortly they would not know until the flight had ‘closed’. In other words, shut up and sit down. So I did.

I had my laptop and the Easter Island book and so the time passed quickly. The seats around the gate filled up as the departure got nearer. I got to see the air hostesses doing air hostess stuff, which seemed to involve a lot of counting pieces of paper. By 12.50pm, the same time as when I arrived at the airport yesterday, the flight had still not closed, and I wondered if maybe they could have rushed me through yesterday if they had tried.

Myself and a crowd of other people on standby were gathered around the desk as the last of the passengers went through, rather like we were begging for something, and being mostly ignored. There was an older woman with what looked like two daughters and two grandchildren waiting there also. The older woman was talking to the LAN staff and I don’t know what the signal was but all of a sudden she started to roar and shout and occasionally screech. I thought I was an angry crazy person in the boat in the Galapagos, but this was the game played at a much higher level. She shouted – almost screamed – over and over about the same thing, pointing at her watch, saying something about ’15 minutes’ but I couldn’t get any of the rest. The woman on the receiving end reacted with superb grace under fire. She didn’t raise her voice at all. I couldn’t understand anything she was saying, but she was calm and composed and if I had a company of my own I would hire her in a second.

I didn’t think that the woman’s shouting boded that well for my own hopes of departure. Earlier a young lad of around 12 or 13 was boarded, hugging what seemed to be his father goodbye, and I guessed he may well be the only one plucked from the beggars. I quietly asked another LAN lady if I was going to get on, and she said I was not. I asked her also what the woman was screaming about, and it turned out that she had been supposed to get a flight yesterday but missed it because the motorway was closed. I said that sounded annoying.

It took quite a while to get my luggage back, then I went back to check in yet again and get a ticket for tomorrow, and that’s when the wheels damn near came off the whole enterprise. There was a very long line and I stood in it patiently and read the Easter Island book, and the thought idly crossed my mind that maybe I would have been better getting a confirmed seat for tomorrow instead of a standby seat today, but I thought little of it. Then I heard a very familiar howling and wailing of protest from one of the check-in desks on front of me. That, I thought, cannot be a good sign. And a slender thread of dread suddenly caught around my throat. The Antarctic part of this voyage is the jewel of it for me, and it seemed suddenly at real risk.

I got to the desk and explained myself and the guy looked at his computer screen and said that both flights for tomorrow were full. I had to work to remain calm. Tomorrow is Sunday the 13th of February, and Monday the 14th is the first official Antarctic day, but we don’t actually leave until the 15th, so I figured I could still get a flight the day after tomorrow. I asked him for one then instead.He checked and there was only one flight and it was full.

I emitted a long, low, drawn-out ‘Noooooo’, a stretched and unpleasant sound that I don’t think I have ever uttered before. He tapped at his computer. I took out my South America guidebook to see a map to try and find somewhere at least in the southern region to fly to. I looked at the distance from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia and wondered how long it would take on a bus. From conversations I’ve had I was guessing several days.

Then from nowhere, the chap behind the desk said he had got me a seat on the flight tomorrow. He didn’t speak very good English, but he said ‘There are no seats but I got you a seat.’ I think he saw how unnerved I was, and there must be some sort of stock of emergency seats maybe. I thanked him very deeply and the relief bubbled up and made me smile.

The flight is at 5am so I will not get a lot of sleep, and indeed it is hardly worth getting the hostel. I am sitting here now crossing my fingers that nothing will go wrong. I have just checked and the bus from BA to Ushuaia takes 50 hours. If I could leave this afternoon I would just make it in time; tomorrow will be too late. So say a little prayer that everything will go well for me, and tomorrow I will be safely in Ushuaia.

I should be writing this from the chilly airs of Ushuaia, but instead I am sitting on a terrace in Buenos Aires. I missed the flight connection today and am on standby for a flight tomorrow. If that doesn’t work it will be Sunday. But I’m not Antarctica bound until the 14th, so I have plenty of time to get there. If could have picked the slot to have delay in my plans, this would be it.

To go backwards: I couldn’t make it to Isla Negra and Neruda’s last house because of time and buses – there is no bus from Isla Negra to Santiago, so I would have had to go back to Valpa from Isla Negra and then from there to Santiago. I considered it, but ultimately got a bus straight back to the capital instead. I got a hostel online that is not particularly near anything, and when I got there I found I had a really nice room and it seemed far more tempting to chill out there and read and write rather than get a train back into the city centre. So I did.

I met an Irish guy there called Alan who was a nice chap, and other people started to trickle in as the evening wore on, so there was much nodding and smiling. About six I went out for dinner – the owner of the hostel had given me an annotated Google map with a bunch of restaurants marked on it. I went from one to the other and found, with an increasing sense of despondency, that each of them was either closed or undergoing renovation. I ended up doing almost the complete circuit twice looking for somewhere, getting hungrier and more irritable as I went. Bang on time for the pathetic fallacy, it started to rain. Heavily. It emerged that my waterproof jacket from Easter Island is not in fact waterproof. I ended up eating a small pizza outside a small shop, the equivalent of eating outside the Spar in Ballsbridge. Something was better than nothing. On the way back, I noted that one of the places I had checked out twice had finally opened.

Not to worry. A hot shower later, I wandered to the common area to find other people to talk to and then someone suggested a drink and I thought that was a fine idea. There was a ‘bottle shop’ nearby and Alan and I went down there with a girl from England and her boyfriend from Zimbabwe, and we got some hooch. We went back and sat outside at the back of the hostel. More people joined. The owner produced pisco sours for everyone. Conversation and craic were excellent. I had to be up at 5am for the flight to Buenos Aires, but that seemed distant. Everything flowed. Somehow, there were only five of us left and it was 3am, and I dragged myself off to bed.

Packing this morning at 5am was challenging, but if I have forgotten anything I haven’t yet realised it. When I got to the airport I found the flight was leaving 35 minutes later than in my original itinerary. I figured I could still make the transfer to the other flight. I needed to change airports, but it was only 45 minutes by taxi from the main airport to the other one. Then my name was called on the tannoy, and I wondered what I had done wrong. I presented myself to find they were giving me an upgrade to ‘premium economy’, for which I offered heartfelt thanks. Perhaps my complaining the other day had more effect than I realised.

Premium economy meant that of the three seats on each side of the aisle, only the window and aisle seats were filled, with no-one in the middle. And the food was much better, served with actual metal cutlery. There was always an air hostess (are they called air hosts now?) hovering around. So it was very pleasant. I slept much of it.

When I got there I got through immigration and got my bag quickly and figured at that point I would surely make the transfer. I went to the desk offering official taxis, and there learned that a long stretch of the main motorway was closed. No-one seemed to know why. That meant the 45-minute transfer would be an hour to an hour and a half. Coupled with the later departure, I was guthered.

The taxi driver in fairness did everything he could for me, dodging and weaving through traffic in a way that would have been very alarming had India not taught me zen traffic calm. I still missed it by half an hour though. I went up the LAN desk and explained that I had missed my connection, and they were half way through getting me a new flight when it occurred to them to ask why. I hadn’t offered any information on that front, given that I was not entirely sure to whom blame could be successfully assigned – the LAN flight from Santiago was on time, and it was really the motorway that was the problem. But in the end they gave me a standby slot on the flight tomorrow. I have to turn up at 10am and wait for three hours and hope for the best. It’s a bit of a classic case of it’s either a dive or a penalty – if it was my fault I should not have got the free replacement, and if it was their fault they should be paying for my hotel and all the rest of it. But I am happy enough with the settlement.

The hostel I am staying in now is not far from Plaza de Mayo. I went there for a look around and saw the cathedral, which was amazing. The ceiling arches far above, and the decoration all makes sense in a way that the decoration of the churches in Lima did not. It’s a peaceful place. There is a central dome that is beautifully painted. From there I walked around more or less at random. BA is much closer to a European city than Santiago. On the way through the edges in the taxi things were properly south American, but the centre could be dropped unnoticed in Spain.

I had been recommended steakhouse near the hostel and I went there to check it out. I randomly met an Irish woman outside who was doing the same thing. It turned out that dinner didn’t start until eight, two hours from that time, and so we ended up going for a drink nearby. Her name was Barbara, and she had got a two-year absence from work and gone teaching English in Santiago for a year. She was now on her way home, travelling a bit in South America first. She was 43 and had a 24-year-old daughter, and we had a nice chat – first over drinks and then over dinner – about work and travel and Ireland and all the rest of it.

The steak was superb, but due to some confusion with my ordering, entirely my fault, my steak was not as rare as it would need to be to do it justice. So while it was good, I will return with Mick when he arrives, and reserve full judgement until then. I had the scent of greatness.

Since then I got back to the hostel and discovered, in the common area, that South American cockraoches are huge and incredibly quick and they significantly freak me out. An American girl laughed at me. I went upstairs to the outside terrace instead. I can only assume that even now the cockroach is nestling in among my socks and things.

So it has been a funny sort of period where not a lot has happened but I’ve met loads of people and had a great time. Hopefully I’ll get the flight tomorrow, but if not I will be back at the steakhouse. So really, whatever happens is a win.

The closing realisation of last night was that I had lost the charger for the compact camera, probably on Easter Island, and the opening news of today was that I had also lost the ticket for the laundry. The morning was spent in sorting both these things out. The two women behind the counter at the laundrette were not amused by my carelessness, and there was much serious talk and shaking of heads. Then a third woman appeared, remembered me from yesterday, and sorted everything out. The camera charger was harder, but I finally got a replica of the original device. My success in following directions to a large electronics shop was much more to do with luck than judgement.

All that took longer than expected, as everything does. But I was packed and out of the hostel by 11 and on a bus to Valparaiso before noon. I was close to not going and instead staying in Santiago to get to know it better, but what swung it was that Neruda had a house in Valparaiso also, and I wanted to see something other than the capital.

The bus took us through hilly, hot country, low vegetation exposing the sandy grass of the steep slopes. At one point we went through a tunnel that must have taken three minutes end to end. It was motorway all the way. I dozed intermittently, and then we were coming into the town. Valpa, as the Lonely Planet abbreviates it, is based around a crescent bay. The town is sandwiched in between the water and steep hills of the Andes behind. The bus brought us in past a huge outdoor market, stretching for block after block, and then dumped us at a terminus not particularly near anything.

I got a taxi to the hostel. All I could establish with the driver was that he spoke no English and I no Spanish. He dropped me at the corner of a square with much gesturing that I should go down an alley off one corner. I wasn’t too happy with that but didn’t see any way around it. The alley turned out to lead slightly upward for twenty metres or so and then become steps. The steps turned 90 degrees left after a while, so I couldn’t see what was up there. It was the kind of place I normally would not have gone without a company of soldiers.

When I came around the corner in the steps all that was there to greet me were more steps and a cat. At the top I could see the sign for the hostel. It’s not a bad old spot – the room is large and reasonably clean and the house itself is nice, dominated by the family who live here. I think I am the only guest. It’s like staying with someone else’s aunt. Though the shared bathroom makes me glad I don’t necessarily have to shower here.

I went back out into the town and set out walking for casa Neruda. After a few blocks I realised that was going to take forever and it was way too hot, so I got a taxi instead. That seemed like an even better decision when I saw that the house is at the top of one of the very high hills that surround the town. Oddly I again had trouble figuring out how to get in, but once I did I found that at this house the tour was by audio-guide and you could proceed at your own pace.

And just as yesterday there was Neruda’s uncontainable personality and life bursting out of every corner. He bought this house, he didn’t build it – it had been designed by an eccentric Spanish guy but he had died before its completion and the house had sat as a shell for ten years. Neruda felt it was too big for him so he only bought the top floors. From there though the views across Valpa to the bay and the ships beyond are inspirational. Neruda had a chair by the window of sufficient comfort that he missed it when he was away – while on a diplomatic mission to France, he wrote to a friend that he would rather be sitting in the chair watching the light on the bay than arguing over copper. He called it ‘the Cloud’. Neruda always wrote in green ink, and in front of the Cloud was a footstool which still has the drops of ink of that colour that fell from his pen.

As with the house yesterday there were hundreds of meaningful items of all sizes and types, from the fireplace that Neruda designed himself to the plates on the wall to the glasses at the bar to the toy horse that had been originally part of a carousel. Neruda had brought it back from France and installed in pride of place in the living room. In his study at the top level was his first typewriter. The audioguide said that when the wind blew the windows in that room would shake and rattle, and it was here that Neruda wrote his book of poems about ships and the sea.

Neruda’s humour was everywhere. Beside the bar on the main living level was a small toilet, but the door to it was a decorative grill so anyone outside could see into it. At the top of the house the stairs turned a corner and finished in a wall; that was never mentioned or explained by the guide. I saw a woman automatically turn up the stairs to keep going and get quite the surprise to be facing something so solid. I bet Neruda would have laughed.

There was the same prohibition as yesterday on photographs, but I managed to circumvent that rule slightly. I set the camera to record video and tucked it in the side pocket of my bag and took a walk around, and the result of my espionage is not bad for a first-timer. I think Neruda wouldn’t have minded. If we meet in the afterlife I’ll ask him. Hopefully the Chilean tourist board won’t be there too.

Leaving casa Neruda I felt that main business of the day had been transacted. I walked back down the hill and wandered around at random for a few hours and thought about Santiago and Valpa. Santiago is like a European city that has been beaten with a South America stick – things work much as they do at home, and it looks similar and many things are familiar. But there is enough about the architecture and the people and the graffiti and the number of dogs asleep on the streets that you know you’re not in Europe. Valparaiso on the other hand is the full South America experience. The streets are winding and dirty, there are people selling all sorts of things on the streets, there is the huge market and its attendant smells, there is pollution that leaves blackness in its path, it’s full of the unfamiliar and the exotic and things that don’t exist in the West.  To pick a random example, the wires for electricity and telephone are chaotic, as though they grew up as needed organically with no central planning. Valpa and Santiago are worlds apart economically and aesthetically at least.

Anyway. In the late 1800s and the early 1900s the city of Valpa installed public elevators to help people get up and down the steep hills, and they are still functioning. The one I took was 300 pesos, so I imagine that only the tourists use them now. It works by connecting two cars with a were over a fixed wheel, so the weight of one going down pulls the other one up. I assume there is more energy injected into the system somewhere, though it could be that they always load more people into the car going down, I guess. It was interesting to see it. It comes from a time when science and engineering were so much more understandable in their impact on daily life than they are now.

I stopped for coffee a few times – I asked for a cappuccino seeing as they happened to have it on the menu at one place, and it came with a giant squirt of whipped cream from a can on the top – and walked along the shore and thought about taking one of the boat tours, but didn’t in the end. The boats are open and very crowded, and I wasn’t in the humour. I went looking for a place for dinner, even though I wasn’t really hungry, and eventually ended up in a place far more notable for its booze than its food. But I partook of both nonetheless.

It’s 9.20pm now and has been dark for an hour; I was in the hostel half an hour before that, as I imagine that the streets of Valparaiso at night are not the best place for a luminously white person in a North Face top on their own. The guidebook says its safe enough but to keep away from the streets with the stairs. Given the location of my humble residence, that would be difficult for me. Earlier in the day I suspected the evening may be a bit short on diversion given the need to be home before dark, so I procured a shoulder of dark Bacardi and a small bottle of Coke. Shortly I will have some of the combination out of an empty water bottle; I’ve always tried to conduct myself with a certain casual glamour.

Cheers.

I am sitting out on the windowsill of my mini-apartment as I write this. To my left the window is almost closed to keep out the flies, and to my right, night is falling on the square. The post apocalypse hasn’t set in yet as there is light left in the sky and I can see an open restaurant in the near corner. But there are much fewer people around than an hour ago, when there was a huge crowd gathered for a street entertainer.

When I woke up this morning I was feeling if anything a shade worse and it was very sore to swallow, and I decided there was no point in dulling my precious days in South America for the sake of a doctor’s fee. I went upstairs to where the hostel reception is and asked the girl there if she could help me. She told me that seeing a doctor would cost 50,000 persos – about USD100 – and I would be better off just going to a pharmacy.

That made sense to me, and I went back to my room. On the way I met the young lad from last night, who was on his way home, and we chatted a few minutes. I was roughly right on his age – he’s 21. He studied three years of English but has dropped out to study photography instead.

Once in my room I decided once again that I really needed to talk to a doctor, given the Peruvian antibiotics had also failed, so I went back up to the girl. Again she repeated the price, with the kind of look that suggested she could not believe there were people in the world who were willing to spend so much money on such frivolities. Then she tried to explain to me where there was a clinic but it involved getting multiple trains, so I thanked her and quietly checked the internet and Lonely Planet instead.

The end result was a taxi quite a long way from here along the river, in which I got to see more of the city. The clinic was in a prosperous area, surrounded by nice houses and buildings and well-tended streets. On the way we passed a place selling quad bikes among other things, and I discovered for future reference that there are even larger ans sportier-looking quads than the one I had in EI. Hmm.

The nice taxi man dropped me off at the door and I went in to find no-one spoke a word of English, and they kept talking to me in Spanish as if by some miracle of tongues I would suddenly understand what they were saying. Then a woman came out from behind the counter and led me through the building to where there was another, similar counter. An English-speaking woman was duly found and she asked me what was wrong, and I told her. All around me were people who were clearly properly sick, and I started to wonder if maybe I was in the wrong sort of place.

But they took my details and told me to wait until my name was called, and I sat and stared idly around. I could easily have been sitting somewhere in Spain, or somewhere in the US if they spoke Spanish there. People came and went with clipboards and white coats, the paraphernalia of busy importance. They called out James Flanagan in the end, with the pronunciation on the latter word creative enough that I missed the call entirely, but eventually we connected. I was taken to a back room and made to lie on a trolley while they attached a proper hospital-style nameband to my wrist. I again thought I was in the wrong place, but the nurse assured me I was not. She took my blood pressure and temperature and left, then a doctor came in. He spoke fluent English, and after more poking and prodding and listening to my chest he decided I have an infection, the previous antibiotic hadn’t cleared it, and he would prescribe me a new one. Once I had paid my bill I was free to go, and was delighted to be leaving.

I got another taxi back to Plaza de Armas, and between the two taxis and the prescription itself the whole adventure cost roughly 85,000 pesos. Possibly I can get some back off the travel insurance, but my hopes are not high. The best thing to do would be just don’t get sick.

On the south side of Plaza de Armas there is an arcade with lots of little shops selling fast lunches, and I had lunch there standing at one of the counters. At first glance I seemed to have ordered a giant dollop of guacamole, but on further examination there was a hot-dog under it. Thus braced I set out on the circuit of museums I had planned in the morning.

The first was the pre-Colombian musuem, and it was easily the best. There were examples of pottery and ceramic and statues of various purposes and designs from many of the civilisations that have risen and fallen in South America over the last seven thousand years. The descriptions were in English, and it was clear that for some of the statues no-one has any idea what they were for or what they symbolise. The museum gave a great sense of the complexity of it all, multiple peoples and belief systems mingling with each other. It made me very aware, as all good museums do, of how little I know. Even the names of the civilisations were mostly new to me.

From there I went to the National Museum on the main square, where almost nothing was in English, and I wasn’t able to puzzle out much of the Spanish. But it was a charming, rambling place, along the lines of the Smithsonian in Washington, with exhibits on all sorts of aspects of the country. There were coins and old uniforms, a 1950s black phone, swords, a revolver in a box, small cannon not even as big as my leg, rifles, model ships, pictures, furniture, a ship’s wheel and mast, a small steam engine, a chariot for a horse. There was a room with many example of the grills you see on the windows all over the place, lending weight to the guide’s story in Arequipa that the grills date from colonial times, and there was a 1973 copy of the Observer with headlines on the coup, though I found the rest of the page just an interesting as it was about the IRA. My murderous countrymen had released a statement to the effect they would continue to ‘strike’ wherever they ‘saw fit’ until the British withdrew from Ireland. The tone of the language seemed to me designed to inflame and aggrieve, rather than towards any purpose of resolution.

In the article on Chile it said of Allende that stories of his suicide were untrue, and that he had died ‘with his helmet on and a machine-gun in his hands.’ A resonant phrase. So overall the museum very enjoyable, even though I was missing an entire dimension of the experience by not speaking Spanish.

From there I went to the Gallery of Fine Arts, and I suspected in advance that I wouldn’t like it, and when I got there I found I didn’t like it. Well, I liked the space – a huge, high glass ceiling like a Victorian train station, a balcony encircling it about half way up, pillars in the form of classical statues. Taking up most of the floor space was what I initially thought to be detritus from a building site, but which turned out to be an exhibit. It was made mostly of what seemed abandoned wood, planks and pallets and sticks of it. There was a large platform, underneath which ‘shelves’ had been created in places, and the space between the shelf and the platform had been crammed with battered old clothes and bedding and an ancient football and things of that nature.

I am sure that it represented something, probably something profound, probably something I would care about it if someone would explain it to me. I know that this is about ideas, not necessarily execution. To me the clothes spoke of the downtrodden and the oppressed and the poor, and the wood of the forgotten, unseen, unwanted places, and I understand that my interpretation is as valid as anyone else’s. But I still wonder: what will future generations value of the art like this? Will they say of us, ‘What giants were they to have created such masterpieces of wood and clothes’? Maybe they will. But I find it hard to see it.

Somewhat dispirited, I trudged the hot kilometre or so to Pablo Neruda’s house. The sun was strong and there wasn’t much shade, and I didn’t have very high hopes. When I got there I could find the coffeehop and the bookshop but could not for the life of me figure out how to get in to the museum. I eventually asked someone. They explained you could only enter with a tour, at which point I recalled that I had read that in the guidebook not one hour previously. Happily there was a tour in twenty minutes. So I bought my ticket and waited in the coffee shop with a cappuccino and a slice of cake and read about Benjamin Franklin, and then they called all us non-Spanish-speaking morons together, and so began the single best tour I have ever been on, and one of the things I will remember about this trip for all of the years that I get hereafter.

The guide led us down some stairs and through a low door into a living area. There was a long table set for dinner with blue and white porcelain plates. The glasses were of bright red and blue and green, and didn’t seem to follow any pattern. On the walls were paintings, one of them of a watermelon. At the end of the room were two long, narrow doors. Over the doors were small dolls. The guide began to explain things to us, and he had the passion and energy and detailed knowledge of the genuine enthusiast. Neruda, he said, wrote poems that were exceptional enough to win him the Nobel Prize, but he was not a serious, aloof man like you might think a poet would be. He was an extrovert, a collector, a lover of company and people. He collected the glasses that we saw on the tables (I’m afraid you weren’t allowed take pictures in the house, or I would have hundreds) and he collected pictures with watermelon in them. He had written an ode to the watermelon.

There were no ropes or signs in the room, and standing there it seemed Neruda himself had only just left for a moment and would be back in a second. His presence jumped from the place, the presence of someone full of life and energy and fun. He had the house built to his own specifications and he wanted it designed like a ship. On the way in we had passed a small bar, and it was the bar from a boat. Some of the windows were round, like portals. We went upstairs to another room, and it was designed to be like a lighthouse. It even had a lamp in it shaped like a giant lightbulb of the sort you would find in a real lighthouse. And you had to go outside to get to the stairs going up – the overall house is built on a hill, but not all the sections directly connect with one another. When Neruda lived there, the lighthouse room would have looked directly out to the Andes in the distance, though a building blocks it now.

On the level above that again was where Neruda had had a bar with one wall entirely open to the outside, and a long bench with a table on front of it on a small courtyard, where there would have been a barbecue. It was harder to imagine the place without people than with a crowd, the presence of Neruda in the middle of it all, laughing and helping and talking. On the final level was the library. His Nobel Prize sat in a small glass case, and there was a metal copy of a hand. The model for the hand was Matisse, I think. Neruda collected things shaped like hands. And in the outdoor bar he had a pair of giant shoes, a meter long each. In another case in the library was a sponge like you would find in the sea painted blue by the artist who had invented that particular shade of blue, Yves Klein. It is apparently now worth four million dollars.

The house used to be full of paintings and gifts from the foremost painters and writers and thinkers of the day – there was a still a Picasso displayed in one of the rooms. But sadly, terribly, in the coup of 1973 the soldiers came and trashed the house, destroyed the art and burned the library. Masterpieces of immense value were lost – as the guide said, the finest art collection in Chile, and all of it given to Neruda for free. Neruda himself had been ill, and whether or not it was related to the gutting of his home – both here and in the other two houses he had – he died little more than a week later. In that time of slaughter, when it was unsafe to be outside, when the army specifically told the people to stay away from his funeral, 15,000 turned up and walked with his body.

In the bookshop, they had this book, but it cost USD40. As soon as I can though I will get it, and maybe I should have bought it there to support them, for they have given me one of the most magical experiences of my life. How alive he was, how vigorous and fun and interested in things and in love with his wife just radiates from everything in the house.

That was the highlight of the day, by a distance. I went from there to the big hill, which is very high and very steep, and I took the train-thing to the top of it. I have forgotten the name of the hill and the word for the train thing, unfortunately; I will try and dig them out later. From that height, Santiago stretched into the near distance to where it became lost in smog, and the Andes were dim shapes on the horizon.

I went looking for a cable car that is supposed to go from the top of the hill, and got talking to three people who told me that it hadn’t been working for two years. ‘The part to fix it is in France,’ a guy a little yonger than myself explained. I asked why they couldn’t bring it here. ‘It’s very expensive,’ he said. ‘Welcome to South America.’ I enjoyed our brief chat, I have to say, and he welcomed me again later on in a non-ironic way.

It was starting to get on in the evening, and I was watching the sun like a man in a vampire movie, so I headed towards home. I wanted to check out an English language bookshop, but when I got there it was closed. I had a look for somewhere to eat around the square, where the guidebook says there is nowhere, and there is nowhere. I ended up retracing my steps to a large degree and eating in a pizza place. I was the only person inside, but all the tables outside were full. Travelling alone means meals assume a rather utilitarian function, and I didn’t stay that long. It also means you don’t have a lot to do in the evening, and blog posts can ramble to ridiculous lengths.

I was back here safely before the dark hours, as you already know, though I have long since abandoned the windowsill. I am not yet quite sure what to do tomorrow – I have two days, which is an awkward amount of time, but I may make a break to get a little way out of the city. I will definitely get out of this hostel, which is getting on my nerves for no particular reason. But whatever happens, you’ll hear it here first.

Getting up early is always something of a hit and miss strategy for me, but I was packed and out on time with a taxi ordered for twelve bells. It’s about two minutes in a car to the airport from the hostel if you go the direct road, but that still costs four dollars.

I went into town and found the crafts place was open, so I bought a cheaper version of the wood with the local script on it, rather than the very expensive version I have already mentioned. Not that ‘cheaper’ was ‘cheap’ – it was still nearly 50 dollars US. It’s nominally a copy of one in the museum, and its creator showed me a picture of the original so I could see the resemblance. I compared the two, and found a symbol on the photograph that was not on the wood in my hands. Then I found another missing one. Then I realised loads of them are missing. But still. It gets the idea across, and if you are not moved by the idea of a lost message in a forgotten script, you are an idiot or dead.

I went to the pharmacy to try and get something for my throat, which has become quite painful, and they gave some pills which I have since decided are not really working and so tomorrow may mean another brush with the South American health service. Hopefully though a good night’s sleep might see me right. I had lunch in a cafe I had often passed but not gone into before, and it was excellent, though I could probably go to my grave a happy man if I never had any more avocado. And then it was a final stroll along the coast back to the hostel.

The taxi was 15 minutes early and the driver kept asking me was I ready as I was packing the last few bits, so the net result was that my goodbyes were very rushed and I brought the key of my room with me. I will try and post it back to them.

On my way to Easter Island I was not successful with my pleas for the exit row on the plane, so I went in this time with a new line of attack. At the check-in counter I said politely but firmly to the rather unfriendly woman that I had booked eleven flights with LAN in South America, and I wanted a free upgrade to business class in recognition. She said there was not a chance. I said that was disappointing, and the very least I would expect then was the exit row. It was duly provided.

Bar the meal I slept the whole way, though I was awake long enough after take-off to get some nice good-bye pictures from the air. Last night for some reason I mostly tossed and turned and saw nearly every hour on the clock, and so I was wrecked. We landed early, and then frustratingly there was no-one to pick me up as I had been promised, even though I was paying USD32 for the privilege, and given this is Santiago rather than Quito it’s probably entirely unnecessary anyway. Several phonecalls and an hour an half later a guy emerged with ‘Stelen Flanagan’ on a sign, and I was correct in my assumption that he was there for me.

The hostel overlooks Plaza des Armas, which I think is the main square, and which was the name of the main square in Cuzco also. The hostel itself is called Plaza des Armas Hostel. The taxi dropped me outside a two-story ornate door of metal and glass, and I went through the section that opens to find myself in a lobby of high arching ceilings and faded 1940s glamour. There was a receptionist there who directed me to the lift, and inside the lift was a man whose occupation it is to push the lift buttons for you. He didn’t seem all that happy with his lot, but he pushed number six for me all the same.

I was checked in by a guy who is probably into his 20s but not mentally free of his teens, and he showed me to my room on the fourth floor. It’s actually a small private apartment – they must have had no normal private rooms free, or maybe they don’t have any at all. The door to it is off a long hall where there are other apartments where people actually live, as far as I can tell. Inside they have managed to get four beds into the space – a double on the right, two singles on the left, and a miserable-looking single in a small loft. The main light doesn’t work, and there is a fan which makes an annoying high-pitched sound and rotates over and back but seems to have a little to no impact on the overall airflow. The kitchen area is approximately equivalent in area to a wardrobe that has been laid down on its back, and there is a decent-sized bathroom. Just inside the door is small reception area of sorts, which includes a desk that would be at home in the police chief’s office in a Raymond Chandler novel. The light in that area does work, so it’s where I sit now writing this.

Santiago is two hours ahead of Easter Island, so by the time I got checked in it was 11pm local time. I asked the young hostel chap where I might get some late food, and he had no idea. Perhaps he doesn’t eat. So I went for a wander around the square and saw that practically everywhere was closed. I went to the door of a fast food place that looked open and a woman at a till waved me in, then a man behind the counter signaled it was closed, then they started to yell at each other. I left. There was another place around the corner with lights on but they were cleaning up, so my hopes were low. But a nice man communicated to me with much pointing and nodding that I could have pizza or a sandwich. I chose the former, and it was excellent. It included asparagus, which I think is a pizza first for me.

While I was waiting I watched the TV over the door, where they were showing clips from films dubbed from English into Spanish. It might have been an ad for a movie channel or similar. So I got to hear Tom Hanks and Philip Seymore Hoffman and Leonardo DiCaprio and all the rest of them in their full South American glory, which was quite strange. Tom Hanks’ guy sounds nothing like him.

As I was sitting there watching that a transsexual chap came in, dressed in a short skirt and tights and a sort of corset. I presume he was entirely committed to the lifestyle as his actions and voice fitted the appearance, but it looked as though today had been his first crack at putting on make-up. He, or I should really say ‘she’ I suppose, sat right beside me and said occasional things in Spanish and I nodded and smiled politely. On my other side was a girl who was listening to music through the speaker on her mobile phone, an activity which points to a strongly ego-centric view of the world. I was happy to leave, but so pleased to have found something to eat that I left a tip even though it was a just essentially a chipper.

I came out and made the short journey back to the hostel, going back a different street to the one I had come and inadvertently passing some seasoned members of the oldest profession, who called at me for at least fifty yards. In the square itself a few homeless people were settling down for the night, and not very many other people around. They had closed the outer door to the hostel, and had to unlock it for me. There is nothing near the same sense of threat as Quito, but there is the same dim light and quietness, and I doubt I will be out much at night.

It’s coming up to 1am now local time and I am not remotely tired, but I should try and sleep so I can be up and about early tomorrow, hopefully in full health. Good night from Santiago.

A reasonably carefully edited selection from several thousand, with some captions. From now on I must really try and do this day by day.

Easter Island

The Galapagos

Plus: videos!

ATV-cam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6-EcHPkQqk

Cave exploration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpa-LPxPTTQ

Enjoy 🙂

Another very pleasant day is drifting to an end with the sound of crickets and the nearby sea and the music from the festival down the coast. Benjamin Franklin would approve neither of my industriousness nor frugality, but I have had a splendid time all the same.

I got up and had breakfast with Colby and Sarah and then took the ATV to the museum, which is at the other end of the town down roads which are sometimes signposted for the museum and sometimes not. But I found it OK. When you go in they give you a bound collection of printed sheets in English, as the signs on the walls and the explanations on the exhibits are all in Spanish, and you make your way slowly around the room.

I really should have gone there earlier in my visit to the island as it gives a good summary of the history, and answers something I have been wondering about since I got here – who knocked down all the statues? It turns out that the tribes on the island fought with each other for much of the 1700s and 1800s over resources like wood and water. They have a belief in a sort of magical or religious power that can be used to do things, and that power is centred in or magnified by the maoi, so they went around knocking down each other’s statues whenever they got the chance. Pity. But at least for once it wasn’t slaughtering Europeans who came and ruined everything in the name of God.

And in fact Peru stepped into the role of villain for today. Some of the originals of the wooden carvings with the lost script on them that I mentioned yesterday are in the museum (though oddly, some of the finest are replicas, and it does not mention where the originals are – any bets on the British Museum?). That language, it emerges, was active into the 1800s, known to a small collection of men on the island as it was a sacred knowledge. Then Peruvian ‘slavers’ arrived – I cannot think of a more unpleasant epithet – and took many of the men of working age away from the island to be slaves elsewhere. That included all the men who knew how to write and read the script, and so it died with them. All we know about it now is that each symbol reflects an idea rather than a sound, but we don’t know what the ideas are.

To restate, it then: just 200 years ago, a mere flicker in the history of our race, it was acceptable under the international ways of doing things for men of one country to go to a weaker country and take the people there by force and sell them into slavery. Those men of learning and intelligence and standing in their community on Rapa Nui were suddenly not even fully human in the eyes of the people around them, and had to work for no pay and were ‘owned’ by someone else. And that atrocity alone comes before we consider what means were used to coerce them and what type of work they had to do. It’s just boggling, to use that word again, that this is so recent in the history of our affairs as a people. What kind of men were these ‘slavers’ I wonder? I would like to know, but I don’t think I can bear to find out, no more than I can think of all the thousands of other places where acts like these were carried out.

The museum, then, was a thought-provoking success. I went to the other end of town and filled up the tank on the ATV, and then reluctantly left it back. Oddly they made a great ceremony of presenting me the receipt for my costs; maybe I will try submitting it to Google. The ATV looked a bit sad and forlorn sitting there as I walked away, but by tomorrow it will be happily roaring out the eastern loop once again and it will be some other tourist’s turn to stall it outside the rental shop.

I went to the internet café then and sent a few emails about accommodation and generally caught up on my correspondence with the learned men of the world. That took longer than expected so I had a late lunch one final time in my usual spot. I am now officially tired of tuna, cheese and mayonnaise. They always make a specific point of asking if I want mayonnaise, as if this was a subject of tremendous potential offence.

As I ate I read more of the Lonely Planet. Robinson Crusoe Island looks like the next place for me, though it will have to be a future trip. It’s as isolated and desolate as Easter Island, but without the statues attracting the tourists, and so it’s much closer to the Polynesian roots of its culture. I am also looking at a few things to do in Chile, and I hope some of them will work out. There is something to be said for planning in advance.

After lunch I came back to the hostel. As I had given up the ATV I had to walk, like some sort of a sucker. But I found that quite pleasant I have to admit, and I took loads of pictures on the way so I could narrate my path. When I got back here I spent a few hours organising the photos from Easter Island, and then it was time for dinner. So I went out again and picked a place I hadn’t been to.

On the menu was a traditional Polynesian dish of raw fish served with sweet potato, which I had dodged last night in favour of the steak. Tonight was my last chance to try it, and I can have steak any old time, so I gave it lash. In the event it was not quite what I was expecting. I thought there would be lots of potato and a little fish, but it was the other way around. And the fish was in large cubes and chunks, dowsed in salt and lime and a vinaigrette-type sauce, so it was hard to taste the fish itself. The entire dish was cold – I had thought the potato might be hot – and the texture of the fish was like the flesh of a large fruit, which is not one of my favourite things. I ate much of it, but not all of it, and I’m glad I tried it but won’t be trying it again immediately.

On the way back from dinner I sat and watched the surfers for a while. Their agility and balance are marvellous. The tide was coming in and the waves were strong, hitting the shore hard and spraying up where they were constricted by the rocks. On the walk home from there I ran into the first American guy from last night – the chap who didn’t stay long – and talked to him for the few minutes our routes coincided. His name is Vlad, and he has been to all the sites on Easter Island that I have, which is all of them bar the national parks, and he has four days left here and only one book. As we parted he wished me luck, and he said in that way Americans have sometimes of sounding like he really meant it. I wished him luck too, and I hope it sounded as sincere.

When I got back to the hostel there was a barbecue and much beer-drinking in full swing, and I joined in. As far as Colby and Sarah had worked out it was the son of the owner’s birthday. He’s in his 40s, I would estimate, and has long hair and very dark skin and was going around tonight with a crown of flowers in his hair. He has the quick, jerky movements of someone who doesn’t go long without what the British tabloids call a ‘hand-rolled cigarette’, and indeed soon he was off to do just that. I had a pleasant evening with them all, and then went off to write these notes.

Tomorrow I intend to have a last look around in the morning, then get a taxi to the airport around 12. So come to think of it I may end up with one last blasted tuna sandwich. I arrive in Santiago late, but I have already booked accommodation. I emailed a few places and only one got back – it’s more expensive than I would like but I booked in for two nights, and they are picking me up from the airport.

Easter Island has been wonderful . I didn’t have any specific hopes coming here and I have enjoyed it very much – the driving on the ATV, the statues, the skies, the sea so close, the mystery and newness of everything. I feel like we’ve had a good run, and it’s time for me to move on. I hope all will go well tomorrow, and by this time in the evening I will be in the hostel in Santiago de Chile. I first saw the name of the city on map when I was about ten years old, and I’ve planned to go there ever since.

Strange sort of day today that never really took off in some ways but was great in others. I woke to find I was coughing and sneezing and my throat was a bit sore once again, and I really didn’t feel like getting up early. So I didn’t. The festival events were not starting until the afternoon, and so I had a morning ‘off’ instead. I got up about half ten and spent a while looking at accommodation and logistics for the rest of my trip. I wonder why it seemed a good idea, when I was sitting in Dublin, to have three days in Ushuaia before the Antarctic trip, and then another four days after? I may try and get the flight to Buenos Aires changed.

I went into town, deciding on the way that with the blinding heat and my slightly delicate state I didn’t want to hitchhike, and so I rented the ATV for yet another day. The woman in the shop told me she had no scooters, motorbikes or cars left, as everyone was renting them to get out to the festival event, and in general she did a wonderful job of making me thankful to have any sort of motor at all.

I had lunch in the place I went before at the edge of town. I have been there quite a few times now, and they nod and smile when I come in. Then on impulse I went into the big warehouse-type space where the local artists and craftsmen sell their wares, and there was some lovely stuff there. I was very taken with a copy of an artefact that is now in the museum, a piece of mahogany traced with an unknown script. No-one has the faintest idea what it says or who created the script. I talked to the guy who had made the copy for quite some time – he spoke very good English – and I would dearly love to buy it, but like everything else here it is very expensive. Tomorrow morning I am going to the museum and will see the original, and I will probably have to be satisfied with that.

I got petrol for the ATV – there is a friendly chap there who does all the pumping for you, so you just have to sit there – and hit the road for the festival. I discovered that though the ATV has many strengths, it is not wonderful at twenty continuous kilometres, and I was rather glad to reach the site. It was a lot busier than when I had last seen it. It wasn’t immediately evident where to go, but a friendly Chilean guy showed me the path up the hill. At the top I found myself looking into the crater of a volcano for the second time in two days. In this one there was a lake, deep blue and still. It was just across the hill from where I had been photographing the statues two days previously, and I had had no idea.

Unfortunately, though, I became aware over the course of the next hour that I had in fact missed the event. It was due to start at 2.30pm, and I arrived about 3.30pm as I had thought it would begin late and go on all day. It turned out to have started bang on time, and to be short. There was still probably a thousand people there when I arrived, but I think they were waiting for the confirmation of the time or something of that nature, because at 4.30pm there was an announcement in Spanish and everyone clapped and then left. So that was rather disappointing.

Seeing as I was at the site with so many statues, I tried to go in again for another look around, and they unceremoniously told me my pass did not allow re-entry. If I wanted to go in again, it would be another USD60. I declined.

Thus foiled again, I drove the 20km back to town, stopped by the museum to see what time it opens tomorrow, then went a few miles out a random road I had spotted on the way to the museum, passing local houses and farms. Came back to the hostel and slept for a while, and then about 8pm I went out for dinner. I picked a place I hadn’t been to, close to my usual haunt, and sat outside. There was another man sitting alone at a table also, and then we were joined by a third guy at a third table, and conversation broke out eventually. The guy who was there first left, and I shouted over and back to the third guy until finally I picked up my drink and joined his table.

His name was Jay, and he was a retired VP of marketing. He had worked for Sun for years, and it turned out he was on nodding terms with Google’s erstwhile CEO Eric Schmidt. Jay was very curious as to why Schmidt would stand down, but I had no additional information to give him bar my own opinion. We ended up having a very pleasant chat about technology and the industry for about an hour. He told me that he was in a meeting at Sun in the period where Steve Jobs had been forced out of Apple, and at that meeting they talked about buying Apple for in the region of USD750m. If that had gone through, would Jobs have come back to Apple? Could be a different world we live in now, with no iDevices, or at least not the same ones that we have. But it’s possible that Jobs would rather be first in a village than second in Rome, and we would have no recognisable Apple at all.

Jay also told me that at the height of Sun’s success they had a global party for the sales force in Versailles , where everyone had to come in period dress. It sounded excellent. Jay was part of a group here on Easter Island (though he never did explain why he was eating alone tonight) and one of the other guys had a satellite phone, which Jay had used. He said the handset was not much bigger than a cellphone, though you still need to be outside to use it and it has an antenna, like an old-school mobile. The phone he used was based on the old Iridium satellites, put in orbit with much fanfare and the use of many billions in the late 90s, and then sold for a song when the rise of mobiles phones rather shredded their business plan and the company went bust. Jay said the reception was perfect, with no lag.

So I much enjoyed dinner. It had got comprehensively dark since I left, and it was with some relief I discovered the ATV does have headlights. On the way back I stopped to get water and picked up two beers when I happened to see them. When I got back to the hostel Colby was up so I offered him one of the Heinekens and we sat on the comfortable chairs at the front of the hostel, beside the couch where I have written most of these entries. Over the course of an hour or so Colby increased my knowledge of the US military by several orders of magnitude. He had some excellent stories. One time he was in a camp in Afghanistan when there was a rocket attack. There is a protocol that says you’re supposed to grab your body armour and head for the bunkers, but when Colby looked around none of the experienced guys were moving. The tents they were staying in were surrounded almost completely by concrete walls to protect from shrapnel, so unless a rocket happened to hit dead on top you were safe enough. So actually most people just slept through the attack.

His work in Afghanistan involves keeping the mobile phone networks working 24 hours a day, as right now insurgents will force the operators to shut the network down at certain times. Partly this is to demonstrate their own control over the environment and services there, and partly it’s so they can operate without people being able to alert the police or US military or any other similar party. The complexity of the world out there and its dissimilarity to the world I know is just boggling.

I would have loved a few more beers but none were to be had, and so we said goodnight and I wrote these notes.  To end as I began, it was a curious day in that I didn’t see the main event that I intended to see, and I didn’t do much else, but I still had a very interesting time and very much enjoyed it, and learned a lot. And my cold is much better. So overall, I would call it a win.

More of the same, sir? Why yes please, I think I will. It turns out that there are two more quad-friendly routes I could take on the island, so I rented the ATV for a second day.

Before doing that I went to the tourist office to ask about the festival and what the highlights of it are, and apparently one of them is tomorrow, when the young men of the island compete with each other in various festival games. There are tests of strength and agility and general tough-guy-ness, and it is all held at the site where I was yesterday, Rano Raraku, where there are dozens of statues. So I will go to that. The only slight issue is that it’s probably 15km out of the town and there’s no formal public transport. I could rent the ATV again but that is a rather expensive hobby, or I could rent something motorised but cheaper, like a scooter, or I could just start walking and try and hitch a lift. I am leaning towards the last option.

The young chap in the tourist office was astonishingly well-informed and helpful, and so I asked him if there were any books he would recommend to learn more about history of the island. He suggested one called The Mystery of Easter Island by Katherine Routledge, first published in 1919, and also told me where I could buy it. I went and had a look, and picked it up for the bargain basement price of 18,000 pesos, or a shade under USD40. They were practically giving it away. But it’s a lovely edition, and indeed a lovely addition to the mobile library which has grown back to its original numbers after a temporary fall-off. I find I would rather carry the books than be without anything to read. On that note, from the very volume we have been discussing wherein the author is talking about preparations for her trip:

Our books had of course to be largely scientific, a sovereign’s worth of cheap novels was a boon, but we often yearned unutterably for a new book. Will those who have friends at the ends of the earth remember the godsend to them of a few shillings so invested, as a means of bringing fresh thoughts and a sense of civilised companionship?

Quite.

The route today wound up the west coast and then circled back inland to come back to town. Nominally the second half was paved but I didn’t see any difference in the surface quality, which was rough and rocky all the way, and meant top speed was less than 20km/h. It was very hot again today, and during yesterday’s adventures I somehow managed to get sunburned on the back and sides of my neck; I think I must have wiped off the sunscreen when aiming to remove only sweat, and then forgotten to re-apply. Anyway, the only top I have with a collar is a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, and the only way I could use it to protect my neck was to pop up the collar. So I went around Easter Island today looking like a south-Dublin rugbyist.

Today’s route sees much less traffic than yesterday’s, and often I had the road and the sites to myself. There are five statues in a line at Tahai in various stages of repair and weathering, and there is one on which the eyes have been painted and its hat is in place, so it looks very different to all the others. At Hanga Kio’e I was on my own for a while (and took another sneaky touching-the-rock picture) and then a very nice Belgian lady showed up. She told me she had been to Tahiti, which was similar to Easter Island, but that EI was much better. She was curious about the ATV, but didn’t seem to entirely approve.

I drove on, bumping along the road that gave spectacular views over the black-rock coastline, crashing waves and giant skies. I took a video from the ATV to try and give a sense of what it was like, but it doesn’t come close.

I came to a place called Ana Kakenga  about an hour out, the first of the caves. The guy in the tourist office had said they were easy to visit without a guide as long as ‘you go a little way in the dark’, and I had brought my torch just for the purpose. I initially walked right past the entrance, which looks like a bunch of small rocks in a big hole in the ground. Two people were standing outside it, who emerged to be a guide and a woman who was afraid to go down. The entrance to the cave was a small hole with steps going down inside, giving just enough room for a man of my size to pass without crawling.

I waited for the other people in the group to come back up, and as they did I saw they were wielding torches of the kind that might be used for signalling aliens or projecting the Bat Signal. My keyring-friendly device seemed rather inadequate by comparison. But finally they were all out, and my time had come, and not giving myself too much time to think I ploughed in.

It became silent almost immediately – just a few metres in I could hear nothing of the wind or the sea or the other people outside, and my breathing seemed loud. It was very hot and very dark. I turned on the torch and it cast what seemed a feeble beam. The ground was rough and the going was slow – I had to put my bag down in front of me and go forward a yard, then repeat. The light of the entrance disappeared behind me, and I felt suddenly entirely alone in a way that is difficult to describe but was very intense. I must admit to a shiver of nerves.

And then ahead of me there was light. I made my way carefully forward and found that I could stand up, and around the corner I found that the cave ends in two openings like the top of a Y. Through each I could see clouds and sky. Edging forward I found that each opening was high in the cliff overlooking the ocean, the blue and turquoise of the water crashing over the shore maybe 30m below. It was a beautiful place to sit and stare and think of nothing. Though it was a devil of a spot to photograph and I never managed to get anything that reflected how nice it was.

The dark part on the way back was short and easy and I felt silly for thinking it was hard, and then I was back on the ATV again. The next stop was Ana Te Pora, another cave. This one though was bigger and brighter from the entrance, and much easier to walk through.  Both it and Ana Kakgenga are lava tubes, just as we saw on the Galapagos, and in Ana Te Pora you could clearly see where the flow had started and finished. Light burst through a hole in the ceiling at the far end.

Possibly the most notable thing about that second cave was a side-passage which led off just inside the main entrance, and which was as dark and cramped as you could wish for. I crouched down and followed it a little way but it just got smaller and tighter, and I was happy to turn back. My hat is off to anyone willing to go all the way down it. They clearly didn’t grow up reading Stephen King.

One final cave and more statues followed before I got back to town. The northern section of the island, at least a third of the total area, is a national park in which you can either walk or take a horse but you can’t drive. The road I came back on today skirts the edge of it, giving a good sense of what the central part of the island is like. There are rolling hills and big trees and small houses with corrugated iron rooves, but they’re clean and neat and well looked after. When I was in the tourist office today I asked how to get into the national parks, and the long and the short of it is you need a guide, and guides are expensive, so you need a group to hire the guide and it’s STILL expensive, just less so. For a guide to bring just me for eight hours would be the bones of USD200. There is a company that occasionally organises trips and I will talk to them tomorrow – I would like to see the far eastern part of the island, which is also restricted to visitors – but I won’t be heartbroken if I can’t make it happen.

It was after 3pm and I was starving but I dropped back to the hostel to get a book, and while I was there Sarah recommended a place they had eaten which they had enjoyed. When I got there though lunch seemed finished, so I went randomly to a place across the street instead. I was greeted by a seemingly gay barefoot man with long grey hair whose opening words to me were ‘We have meat, chicken and fish, which do you want?’

I asked for the meat, and he told me to take a seat. He spoke perfect English and seemed pleased that I was from Ireland, as if that somehow rounded out a set in his head. The meat turned out to be beef, cooked medium-well, served with rice and salad. I don’t know what they had managed to do to the salad but the entire thing, including the onions, tasted like the pickle in an Eddie Rockets burger. But the rice and steak were perfect. The owner (assuming he was the owner) then came over and gave me a free slice of watermelon for desert, which so cold and liquid and welcome that I had to resist the urge to stick my face in it. The whole thing came to 9,000 pesos, which is about as good as you can do here I think.

One final road on the map lay untaken, and I made for that. It was rather a long run, out past the airport, then I started climbing. After while there were good views out over the town. I was on the only drivable road in another of the restricted zones. Trees towered and spread on the side of the road, and the hills rolled into one another. Everything was green and lush, not like the coast, and very hot. And on we climbed.

Then I saw one of the familiar signs on the roadside to indicate you have reached an attraction of some kind, and I pulled over and stopped the engine and walked up the small incline and was looking out over the crater of the volcano, which was like a smack in the face it was so unexpected. How had I not realised I was driving up one of the volcanoes? But I hadn’t. And now there was the crater. To my intense surprise the bottom of it was wetland, with patches of water and what looked like rushes interspersed, creating a speckled pattern of water and vegetation. And all the way around it were the sloped walls of the volcano itself, just the way you would picture them surrounding lava. But the diameter of the crater is 1.5km, and the distance from the edge where I was standing down to the wetland below is 200m. It was vast. I had no idea of the scale of a volcanic crater. It seemed just too big to be possible, too big to be there. It dwarfs anything manmade I have ever seen. I sat and stared for a long time and laughed to myself occasionally like a crazy person.

The road continued upward, and I followed it to what was once a village of the indigenous people, but they only used it for a few weeks a year. That was when they had the birdman competition, in which they competed to be the first to get an egg from a particular bird species that nested at the period, and then the person who got the egg won special privileges for their tribe. It must have been intense stuff if it was worth building a village for.  The last one was held in the mid 1800s, which his more recent than I would have thought. I really need to get reading that book.

From the very top of the crater you have wonderful view over a small island and a standing, jagged rock emerging huge and vicious from the oean, again similar to the Galapagos, so I took far too many pictures of those and then made my way back to the hostel.

I was tired so slept for half an hour or so, then as the sun was setting I found myself once again at a bit of a loose end. I tidied and re-packed all my stuff and had a shower to wash off the grime of the road (my backpack is filthy from being at the back of the ATV), and then I had a solitary dinner of cheese on pita bread, washed down with cold water. It was actually a lot better than it sounds. The Americans came in from somewhere (they didn’t say where they were, so I am going to assume they were apprehending terrorists or in a shoot-out with a drug gang) and I talked with them for a while. Then I wrote this, and now here we are. I am back in my favourite position near the window, and the sounds of the sea are close and reassuring.

[I changed the title of the blog this evening to the Michael Crichton-influenced ‘Travels’; the old title is a nice phrase but made no sense in my context. The new name is duller, but holds out for the long term. – SF]

Today I rented a quad bike and toured the island and saw all the sites and then watched the opening ceremony for the festival. This is phase two of my trip, wherein I am travelling alone, and I declare the first full day a resounding success.

Last night was hot and unsettled and punctuated by unwelcome dreams, and then at some point in the early hours the heat broke and the rain moved in. I dropped into sleep that was deep and dreamless. My plans of getting up early took rather a hit when I looked at my watch and found it was half ten. I was up and dressed and out in a few minutes, and had a late breakfast or early lunch at the far end of town, where I figured things would be cheaper. They were, but still not cheap.

During breakfast it rained again, and I saw why the drains are so big. It’s not the total volume that’s the problem, it’s the peak load. In the height of the falling water the drains flowed deep and swift, and then not long after that all the water had been carried away and in fact the sun was back.  I had to swing by the hostel again to get my passport, which I had forgotten, and when I finally reached the rental place after a 20-minute walk, sweat was running freely down my cranium, dripping off my nose and damp on my back and neck. I had brought the travel towel with me and used that to wipe away the worst of it, but I still felt like I was stuck in an invisible steam room.

In the rental place they cast a cursory glance over my I-can-drive sheet of paper and told me to choose my weapon. I asked for a quad bike. They made me sign a few forms, and then took me outside to the machine. All this took less than five minutes.

The quad is bigger than I was expecting, with chunky tires and a metal frame for luggage on the back and front. They talked me through how to use it rather quickly, then the lady hopped off and indicated that I should get on and start it. I couldn’t quite recall how to do that, but I managed it with some trial and error. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Enjoy the day!’ And she was gone.

Err, I thought to myself. I tried to edge my way forward and managed to stall it. I was trying to figure out how to re-start it when a lady who must have been well into her 60s came over and started it for me. I said a grateful thanks, and she continued on her way with an expression either amused or annoyed. An American man then stopped (I am not making any of this up) and asked if I was sure I could handle it. I looked at him and said there was only one way to know for sure, and I eased my way gently out into the traffic.

Once I was on the move I was fine. The front brakes are operated by the fingers of your right hand, and the accelerator is underneath the right grip, operated by your thumb. The back brake is at your right foot. The fingers on your left hand are for changing into reverse and engaging the parking brake.  The gears are semi-automatic, so you push the up or down button on the left handle-bar as required.  There is some additional security around getting into reverse, and once the key is in the ignition the machine is started by a button rather than the key itself. And that’s essentially it. There are no indicators or fuel gauge or mirrors or any of that nonsense, but there is a number plate on the back so I assume it’s road legal. The machine I drove was a Honda, and there were warnings written all over it about not operating on public roads.

There is long loop around the eastern part of the island and at roughly 45km round-trip it’s a bit too long for casual mountain biking but perfect for quads and motorbikes. They had given me a map when I rented the quad and I found the right road without too many issues, and once I was moving the air was cold and refreshing and for the first time since I got here I didn’t feel in any way hot. After some experimentation I found that 30km was the ideal cruising speed – fast enough to keep that cool wind blowing but slow enough that I could see everything and feel like I was part of the world I was passing through.

There was a wonderful sensation of freedom on the quad, completely different from driving around in a car. A few kilometres out of town I saw spray rising from waves hitting the shore and there was a narrow, stony track heading that way, so I turned off the main road and made for it. I crawled through in first gear over rocks and sand, and then the trail came out at a viewing spot perfect for seeing the waves. The coast was of dark volcanic rock and the waves slammed into it and sent spray high in the air. Leading from that place was another track, and I followed that one to another cove where the waves were even more spectacular. All of a sudden the idea of small motorised things made sense to me in a way it never had before.

I eventually got back on the main road, and as I drove along I reflected on the fact that if you leave the only town on a small island with just half a bottle of water, it is not in any way evident how to get more water.

Then I came on a large rock at the side of the road, about the size of two cars end to end, surrounded by a circle of smaller stones, shaped a bit like a wedge. I stopped to have a look. I thought at first it was a petrified tree of epic proportions, and then finally the penny dropped that it was one of the maui, the famous statues that everyone associates with Easter Island. This one had fallen at some point in the past and was lying on its face. You’re not supposed to touch it but I did, briefly, just to get the picture of my hand on the rock. I should really stop doing that, but it introduces a tactile element to the medium in a way I find very compelling.

I had known there were wild horses on Easter Island before I came here, but I had thought I might see them from a hilltop in the distance. I hadn’t known that there are hundreds of them, and they are everywhere. As I tipped along in the quad (‘Riding along in my ATV / Giant old heads and little old me’) I passed by dozens of them grazing on the side of the road, sometimes looking up at the sound of the engine, sometimes oblivious. They’re beautiful animals, even more so in groups of adults and foals. There’s something natural and timeless about the sight.

The route took me past all the main sites on that side of the island. Two of them, close to each other, are the main tourist attractions because there are lots of statues close together. The first is called Rano Raraku. On the way in to see it I was relieved of 30,000 pesos, USD60, for a five-day pass to all the national parks. On the bright side, I did find a man selling bottles of water for three dollars a pop.

The entrance path winds along the base of the volcano. Ahead of me and to either side were dozens of the statues. Some of them are bald and some of them have hair, some look almost mournful and others less serious. All of them have very long noses and an elongated face relative to the forehead.  I wonder did the people who created them believe something elemental was centred behind and just beneath the eyes? How nice it would be to be able to go back and ask them.

Some of the stone used to create the statues was quarried at that place, and one of the statues is half-finished where the stone was originally cut, lying on its back and staring up at the roof of a cave in the rock. It seems as though the original creators might come back at any moment to finish the job.  What struck me most about each statue was that they radiate dignity, a peaceful watchfulness. It’s calming to sit and stare at them, and yet again I wished that I could draw.

That site was rather full of tourists because a large cruise ship pulled up this morning and for most of the day sat out in the bay like some sort of malevolent sea-beast, disgorging tourists of the older and generally American variety. There were also lots of Germans around. Over  lunch I got talking to the people at the next table, and they were from the boat. They had four hours in total on the island and had been trying to rent a car, but everyone wanted to charge them for a full day and they didn’t want to pay that. The idea of a cruise suddenly lost quite a bit of its appeal; since our adventures in the Galapagos I have been thinking it’s something I would like to do again, but now I’m swinging around once more to being as independent as possible.

Not far from the volcano, on the coast at Tongariki, there is a row of the statues on a ceremonial base. One of them wears a hat of sorts, crafted from a different rock. Why were they all put in a line? They all resolutely ignore the sea and stare inland, across the hot, flat space to the volcano in the near distance, and they keep their secrets well.

Later on I saw carvings etched into rocks on the ground in ‘pre-historic’ times; no more specific date was suggested. Many of them are hard to see, but they provide little benches like one-sided picnic-tables that you can stand up on to look down and get a better view. I guess this is how you do cave painting where there aren’t any caves. One of them is supposed to be a canoe – it’s two parallel curving lines (can lines be both parallel and curving, or is that a different word? I must ask Dad) about a metre apart, and I think it’s something of a stretch to make a canoe out of it. What it most reminded me of was the track that would be left by a vehicle like my own conveyance, should such a thing be fossilised, and that tripped ideas for a few possible hundred-million dollar action movies in my mind.

I was getting hungry and the day was getting on, but on impulse I turned off the road down the track for a beach called Ovahe, and how glad I was that I did. A curved chunk is missing from a conical hill, as though someone just removed it with a giant cylinder, and the waves flow in to two white beaches divided by house-size chunks of black and brown volcanic stone. Some of the stone looked to be the same as the hat on the statue in Rano Raraku, to my inexpert eye.  I went up on the hill overlooking the beach first and took some pictures, then I went down to the beach proper to find there were two ladies in the lee of a rock sunbathing. Both they and I were surprised to see each other, but there were smiles all around. I walked around in the edge of the waves for a while and then made my egress, wondering as I did why the volcanic islands of the Galapagos turned into such a profusion of life while things here remained so much more muted.

The one final big site to see was Anakena, where a row of statues sit and stare. There’s a nice beach nearby and lots of the locals were there, swimming and sunbathing. The tourists milled about and took picture after picture of the statues. The statues themselves formed a neat dividing line between the two groups.

There was a straight road back from where I was to the town, cutting through the centre of the island and paved all the way, and in the interests of science I picked a suitable spot where I had a good view ahead and found out how fast the ATV would go. If you open the throttle it accelerates hard and loudly, and I topped out at 70km per hour. As that speed the wind is howling and grasping and the road needs to be level and straight.

I cruised back to the hostel and got a book, then drove myself back into town and got dinner. The book was for the wait that I have come to understand is inevitable with every meal. I was in and out in an hour all told. I ordered something I thought was a burger which turned out to be a burger without the bun, served on a plate of chips. Rather randomly there was a fried egg on one side and a hot-dog sausage on the other. I ate the whole lot and swatted my hat at the flies from time to time and read the biography of Benjamin Franklin I got in Quito. I am now, somewhat worryingly, on the third of the four books I bought there. I assume there will be lots of English-languages places to get books in Santiago, but even if I could find such exotic items here on Easter Island they would probably cost as much as a decent second-hand Mercedes. I am taking notes on Franklin to slow myself down.

Drove back here and had a shower, then started these notes, then went out to see the festival kick-off. It was in a large open space by the coast at the other end of the town, and by the time I got there, ten minutes after it was supposed to start, probably only a fifth of the final audience was actually in place and clearly nothing was anywhere near beginning. There was a large stage set up (with a giant chicken as part of the set) and rows of plastic chairs lined up on front of it. Behind the chairs was a solid wooden fence, and I stood up against this, which turned out to provide an excellent and unobstructed view and give me something to rest my elbows on to take videos with the compact Canon.

The first thing the happened was that a flat-bed 4X4 came slowly down the street with people in the back playing drums and singing. Everyone turned to watch. In pride of place over the drummers was a scantily-clad young lady. She waved to the crowd and smiled, and cameras flashed constantly. The truck came to a halt.

Then the big screens around the stage came on and music played, and everyone watched some pictures of the activities of festivals gone by, and then attention shifted back to the woman on the truck again. I had kind of forgotten she was there. Now and again something random would go wrong – at various points the sound cut out, the big screens showed a projection of iTunes, the microphones clearly picked up the sound of a child crying and someone saying ‘Sshhhhhh’, and quite a few people seemed to forget their lines. But no-one minded.

Attention shifted back to the stage as a strapping chap came on dressed in not much bar elaborate paint and a headdress, dancing around in an elegant and light-footed way, carrying a burning torch. He was joined by other men with torches with large smoky flames. There was a much shouting into the microphone in what must have been the local language to Easter Island. The rhythm is short and staccato, reminding me very much of the guide that we had for Machu Picchu who spoke Quechua. When he was doing his giving-thanks-for-the-coca-leaves routine, he sounded very similar.

As the night wore on more people came on stage, and most of them had a few words to say to the crowd, almost none of which I could follow. There were various dance scenes. A queen came on, wearing a crown. She had a beauty-queen smile of textbook perfection. Then she sang, and she might actually have been good if her voice was not magnified to a point where it probably shook seismometers on the mainland. The scantily clad lady from the truck turned up, still wearing very little. At least that showed she was definitely involved in the ceremonies – I was starting to think maybe she was some sort of pre-show entertainment.

I was getting a smidgen less interested, and then the queen started to sing again, and I chose that moment to slide away into the crowd. There were all sorts of stands set up selling food and drink behind the main body of the crowd and so I had a look around those. Immediately behind the crowd there were tables of mostly men having a few beers. In the darkness behind the tables, near the water’s edge, there were teenagers sitting around under the trees, and here and there I could see the light of what we might generously call a cigarette. So everyone was where they wanted to be.

The walk home was rather dark but I had my torch. Yesterday the woman who runs the show here in the hostel saw me playing with the smaller dog. The bigger one was tied up at that moment, and she told me to keep away from him in a rather stern voice. But when I got back here this evening both of them were loose, and both of them had great welcome for me. Since then I have finished these notes, which took longer than expected and it’s now almost 1am. The sounds of the festival are carrying clearly to me from the other end of town, and in the last few moments ‘I’m yours’ from whoever sings that has just finished. Clearly they queen eventually got pushed off the mike.

I don’t have much of a plan for tomorrow yet. I want to see the other side of the island but that means going through the nature park, which in turn means proceeding under either my own or equine steam and being very exposed to the sun and the heat. I will get up early and decide then. I have to leave back the quad before 12, and if there was anywhere else to go on it I would rent it for another day. Riding it really created a sense of freedom and possibility, and I would love to do it some more. For now though, Morpheus is calling. Goodnight out there.

A breeze is blowing across Easter Island, moving the leaves of the palm trees outside the window beside me and rippling the sea. It’s 9.30pm and the sun has finally and reluctantly dropped out of sight. Bluish clouds cluster not far above the horizon, and darker clouds are higher in the sky. The waves on the water are shadowed, breaking in white foam and smacking against the black volcanic rocks when they reach the shore.

All day it has been very hot, far hotter than I find comfortable. Each time I have ventured out I have come back wet with sweat. Even when in my room my skin has been damp. There is no air conditioning or fan or any other concession to the heat, and indeed no one seems to find it out of the ordinary except me. These few days will be an educational experience. The last time I remember dealing with this kind of heat without mechanical assistance was in New York in ’99, when we used to take turns in the cold shower and sprinkle our beds with cold water and try and fall asleep quickly.

I am missing Katie terribly. To talk about it further in this forum I would need to have that Californian gift for public self-analysis, which I most certainly do not. So let it be enough to say that it has shadowed the day heavily. But I am of course happy to be here, and there is the frisson of a new place and new things to see.

From the air the island was visible out of the left side of the plane as we approached for landing, but I was on the right.  By straining to see out past a staggered row of heads I got a glimpse of greyness and water.  The airport is small, similar to the Galapagos, though it does have one luggage belt. A nice woman turned up with a sign with my name on it, and she also had a gift for me: the likeness of the famous statues on a string necklace. I took off my hat and she put the necklace on for me, and then introduced herself as phonetically ’Two-e’. Other people in the airport got similar treatment with garlands of flowers rather than a necklace, but I was much happier with my present.

The airport is on the edge of the town, and the town is not very big. As we drove to the hostel our hostess pointed out useful places like the bank and the tourist office to myself and an American couple who are also staying here.  There is one main street, and the hostel is about a ten-minute walk from it.

The hostel is grand, in the Irish sense – there is no air conditioning, as mentioned, and most things look like they could use a scrub and a bit of paint, but I like it. There is a large garden with the palm trees, and it’s close enough to the ocean that you can hear the sounds of the water. There are two dogs which are large and look ferocious but are actually friendly and playful. Inside the main door is a table on which there are four or five large trophies, all of them a bit rusty and unkempt, and in the cup of one of them there are several Christmas decorations. The hostel is the kind of place where that doesn’t seem so weird. On the ceiling is a wooden board about a metre square cut with a hole in the centre and give narrow channels running from it, allowing you to hang five wine glasses by the stem. Only one is in place, and it looks as though it has been there for years. The board is fastened in place with nails that look big though to have previously been used in shipbuilding, and oddest of all to me is that there is a smaller board beside the main one which only has one hole and one channel, and therefore could only hold one glass.

When we got here I was tired from the overnight flight but wanted to have a look around, so I resisted the temptation to rest and went for a walk instead. First stop was to drop my clothes at the laundrette, solving a problem which had been developing into a crisis, and then I went to the bank. The first screen of the ATM was in English but the second was only in Spanish and had eight options. There was a long queue behind me so I decided discretion was the better part of valour, cancelled the transaction, and went for a look around the rest of the town instead.

The main streets are paved but many of the side streets are dirt roads. The street names are hand-written in paint on the side of the footpath at each end. On each edge of the main streets are drains, V-shaped, about a metre wide and deep, meaning you don’t want to fall into them. They must get pretty significant rain here to make that construction worthwhile.

While I was out I priced rentals of various mechanised transports in a few places – I have managed with Paul’s help to get a document from the occasionally effective Irish civil service explaining that I am a licenced driver, which should allow me to rent a car here. As well as cars and 4X4s everywhere offered me prices on motorbikes and quads also. I am currently tempted by the former but leaning towards the latter; given I have zero experience with either, four wheels might be more prudent. Cost is high but bearable.

After that I went by for another swing at the bank and found a bunch of Japanese tourists in the same confused position as myself. I withdrew for a second time.

From there I went to the other end of the town where on the coast sits one of the famous statues. It is faced inland, away from the blinding sea, watching over a village that has long since disappeared. It had been knocked over since originally ‘discovered’ by European civilisation in a standing position, but about 30 years ago they put it back up. While excavating, they found the remains of human sacrifices. Odd how prevalent that idea was back in the day.

Inspiration then struck on my banking problem and I went to the tourist office to see if they could help, and the very nice woman there actually walked the hundred yards or so with me to the ATM and translated. Once you chose the right option from the eight, everything from that point on was in English.

By then it was after midday and I was finding it hard to handle the heat. It was perfectly still, and the air was heated and dry, oven-door air. I came back and slept for a few hours and when I woke up I found it was just as hot as ever. But I went out again, this time to get food and go for a longer walk around the edges of the town. I ate at a place that overlooked the ocean, and watched the surfers. I had fish and chips and a local beer, and then I ordered a second beer as the first one went down so well. The waitress said ‘Another beer!’ as though she didn’t approve of that at all, but brought it out nonetheless.

After that I wandered through the suburbs, which are not very large. There are nice houses there, much more solidly built and city-planned than the edges of Lima or Quito. I also learned there is a short-cut from the hostel to the main street on a dirt path that leads through someone’s back garden. The garden owners were sitting outside as I went through, but they didn’t seem to mind. The two dogs flanked me all the way like Secret Service agents, turning back only at the main street.

I retreated back to my room again and read for a while, and then went out one final time to get the laundry. The pleasures of having clean clothes to wear are something that I will never take for granted again thanks to this trip.

Aside from the heat, the thing that has most struck me is how much everything costs.  A 1.5-litre bottle of water is 1,700 pesos, or roughly USD3.50. The laundry was 13,000, USD26. Dinner was an eye-watering 23,000, almost USD50 for fish and chips and two beers. I won’t be going back there. A bottle of sunscreen was 10,000 or so, USD 20. The money that I eventually took out of the ATM that I thought would last for a few days is almost gone. It’s an expensive place.

After that I was at a bit of a loose end, and so I read the Michael Palin book I got in Quito for quite a while. It’s called 80 Days Around the World, in which he replicates as closely as he can the famous fictional journey mostly by taken freight ships around the world. Palin is on the road in 1989, and some of the lines really stick out from that time, like when he describes the economic pre-eminence of Japan over the US or the view of Manhattan crowned by the World Trade Centre.

By 8pm the heat was still much the same as ever, and I guess with the tiredness from the flight and the discomfort of the heat and missing Katie, things didn’t seem to be in any way as good as they actually are. But all is back on even keel now. I finished the rest of Palin, even though I should really be trying to spread it out a bit better, and now I’m sitting on the couch outside my room typing this in the common area. No-one else is around. Since I started writing it has become pitch black outside, and only one bulb burns in here. There must be no streetlights in this area, which is worth keeping in mind.

Tomorrow I’ll have a better look around and take the heat as it comes and see more of the statues I have wondered about since I was a little boy. What a strange thing it is that there should be anything on this island at all. For now, though, the sounds of the night are restful and soothing, and my bed is close, and I am tired. Goodnight to all. Katie is on the plane to Ireland as I write these words, and most especially of all, I say goodnight to her.

Almost everyone around me as I write this is asleep, stretched out full-length on the mostly-empty airport seats or nodding over their hand luggage. It’s 1.10am and I am at the gate for the flight to Easter Island. Just over an hour ago Katie and I said our goodbyes for the time being in a nice hostel near Kennedy Park in Miraflores, and the sharpness of that is still cold and near.

When last we spoke on these pages, Katie and I were coming back from the Galapagos and we had four days in Ecuador with no clear plan as to how to use them. In the end we went south, to Banos. Karl, our motorbike-riding friend from Peru, had recommended it strongly, and at three hours from Quito it was within easy reach. The only problem was that it’s notoriously common for people to be relieved of a few of their belongings on the bus to Banos, and given my recent run of loss and larceny I was unwilling to chance it. On top of that we were tired from all the early-morning starts and motion-interrupted nights on the boat. So we checked into the relatively upscale Hotel San Francisco in the old town part of Quito, and had some much-needed R&R.

We had dinner in a place that was recommended by both the hotel and the guidebook, but was in fact the very definition of beige forgetability. After that we just had time to make it to an English-language bookshop that didn’t shut until 6.30pm, by coincidence very close to our old hostel. It was drizzling a little but we didn’t pay too much attention. We should have. By the time the taxi dropped us off the rain was falling in streams that were practically continuous, heavy and soaking. We were wet to the skin in moments, and I finally understood the purpose and glory of a rain poncho. And when we found the bookshop, it had closed up early. Anyway. It took a few minutes to get a taxi back to the San Francisco, and it was a great relief to get warm and dry again and hang up the dripping clothes.

The following morning we packed the bare essentials into backpacks and left our rucksacks in the safe keeping of the hotel. The bus station in Quito is towards the south edge of the city, and architecturally resembles an airport more than anything else, though one where little of the budget was reserved for aesthetics and they got a really good deal on concrete. We hit an annoying window between the very early buses to Banos and the afternoon buses, and so had a few hours to kill. We were almost the only foreigners there, and there wasn’t much to do to pass the time. The bus was supposed to leave from either bay 26 or 28; in the event it arrived at bay 27, and left within 20 minutes of the official time, which I understand is pretty good.

It didn’t take long to slide out of Quito. There was a major two-lane motorway south, and it was hypnotic to stare out the window and watch the towns and villages and occasional city slip by. The light of Ecuador is more golden than at home, and the greens of the plants a deeper, almost glowing colour. About half way there we got caught in a rainy-season downpour that rattled off the top of the bus, similar to the night before. We were in a large town at that point – I don’t have the map with me to check the name – but the streets turned almost immediately to shallow rivers. People skipped and jumped through it as best they could, but everyone was soaked. Buses coming the other way created waves of spray two metres wide on each side. It’s serious rain.

The front part of the bus is partitioned off just behind the driver’s seat, and there is also a seat for an assistant driver up there. Whenever we passed through a settlement of any kind, the bus would slow down and the assistant would hop out shouting ‘Banos! Banos! Banos!’ rapidly, and pick up anyone who wanted to go there.  For those slow-downs or occasional stops, local hawkers took the opportunity to come on board selling water, Coke, Inca Cola, corn, a baked bread thing, sandwiches, chips, fruit and probably many other things I have forgotten. If their transactions were not complete before the bus sped up again, they would just ride along for a bit and then hop off down the road, probably catching another bus back. There was such an easy routine about it that I deeply suspect some sort of kick-back system is in place.

Sharp-eyed Katie managed to spot the street our hostel was on as we came into Banos, so we walked back there from the bus station, pleasantly unburdened by our normal large rucksacks. The place was the called the Princesa Maria, a blue building on a corner. To get in the front gate you reach your hand through the bars and press the button to release the gate lock, which is a questionable form of security through obscurity. But we had no problems during our stay there.

On that first evening we went out for a walk around to see what might be seen, and I tried to get a poncho, which turned out to be harder than I thought and I didn’t manage to find one. What we did find though was an Indiana Jones hat, and it even fits my extra-large head. It is sitting beside me as I write this. I am very pleased.

Banos sits in a valley bordered on all sides by steep, high mountains, the tops of which are often lost in cloud. They are densely covered in vegetation. There are houses scattered on the hills here and there, making me think there is not much in the way of planning permission, and large greenhouses are common. The ground on which the greenhouses sit is so steep that from the level of the town it looks almost as though you are seeing them from above. You can walk from one end of the town to the other in 15 minutes or so. In the centre is a square with a small park and a clock tower, and the clock showed ten past two for the entirety of the time we were there. One of the trees in the park has a tree-house in it, about one storey off the ground, and it seemed to be a popular place to play for the local kids.

To the south of the town is a massive volcano. You can’t actually see it from the town level, or at least you couldn’t on the days when we were there (though we did get one glimpse of it, explained later). And every now and then it erupts – twice in the late 90s, once since, many times before that. Painted on the streets are giant blue arrows that show the evacuation route to take should it erupt again, and in the tourist information place they give you a flyer saying what to do should it blow. The advice is to wear a hat and breathe through a wet handkerchief while getting the hell out of Dodge.

For our first full day we decided to trek up one of the hills to where there is a large cross, a place called Bella Vista, or ‘good view’. The trailhead was just off one of the streets in the town, and after only a minute or two it felt we had the mountain to ourselves. It was steep and the town fell away quickly below is. I led the way, puffing and sweating like a badly-tuned steam engine. Katie had very little trouble getting up.

The views were excellent, though the site itself was in disrepair – wooden steps were broken, litter was everywhere, graffiti covered every possible receiving surface, and the cross itself was protected by a high metal fence. We stayed a while and looked out over the mountains and Banos. For one brief moment the clouds parted and we saw the volcano, hulking and huge and topped in snow. I would love to be able to climb up there, but there are many smaller achievements between here and there should I ever be able to do so.

In the spirit of adventure we decided to go down a different trail to the one we came up. I should note that the map we had, which we got from the tourist office, was not so much a map as an illustration. On it, the trail up and the trail we chose to go down looked much the same length. This did not turns out to be the case in real life. At all. The trail we walked up was a narrow path through the jungle; the trail we walked down was the normal road, so people in cars and vans and trucks passed by and looked at us curiously.

It was still very pleasant though until we started to encounter the dogs. The first bunch were yappy little cowards, and when I took a step towards them they stepped back. The next set were larger. We remembered Karl’s approach and went straight for the stones. The sound of the stones hitting off each other as we picked them up was enough to have the dogs retreating. A little further on I picked up the sturdiest stick I could find, though I suspect it would have broken had I actually hit anything with it. On we went, and we seemed to encounter dog after dog after dog. We could hear the yip yip yip that meant a small dog or the booming bark of the bigger ones. I got progressively more nervous. The dogs seemed to sense our fear. Sometimes there were people outside, and they kept the dogs in check. And most of the biggest dogs were behind fences or chained. But some came close and barked and barked, though the stick seemed to do its job when I waved it around.

At one point there must have been ten dogs barking between the groups ahead of us and the groups behind us, and we christened the whole run Dog Alley. I was mighty glad to get back into the town proper, which came at the end of probably two straight miles of uphill walking past the pooches. Oddly enough when I got back into the town a friendly dog came up to me and kept looking at the stick as though wanting me to throw it. How differently the same things can be interpreted.

That evening we went out with the intention of going to the famous baths of Banos (the name of the town in Spanish actually means ‘baths’), but ended up settled in a nice place and had a few drinks instead.  But the following morning though we were still up relatively early. We had a rather unsatisfactory breakfast which was nominally of crepes but actually based almost entirely on salt and chocolate, and then we rented two mountain bikes, got a map that was of the same dubious scale as the hiking trails, and went on our merry way out of the town in the baking heat of midday. The rental place did their best to find a helmet for me, but they are not accustomed to tectonic-scale skulls such as mine. So my helmet tended to make its way slowly up my head and then tilt sideways, and ultimately served a largely decorative function.

We took the road that leads ultimately to Puyo, about 60km distant, and on the way passes several waterfalls. We intended to follow it to Machay, which is about a third of the way to Puyo, and then get a bus back. Most of that route is downhill from Banos, and so for much of the time we got to sit back and freewheel and look down on the river twisting along the valley floor, the vertiginous green hills on either side, the sun bathing the whole thing in that glorious glowing light. It was super.

Sometimes there were hills we had to labour up, and occasionally there were tunnels. The first tunnel we had to cycle through, but for the rest there were either carefully constructed mountain-bike roads around the tunnelled hill, or there was a dirt trail. Often on the biking trails there were stalls set up where you could buy water and sweets and nuts and what not, and at one area there were quite a few of these and a lot of people gathered around. It turned out that the principle activity of that spot was ‘punting’, an Ecuadorian spin on bungee jumping. Essentially you get tied to a bridge with a slightly elastic cord, then you jump off the bridge backwards and swing over and back underneath for a while until you are pulled back up. We saw a guy do it, and it looks terrifying. You would need to put immense trust into how the operators take care of the equipment.

When we got to Machay we stopped at a roadside place selling drinks and snacks. For one dollar you could go down and see the Machay waterfall, which was not visible from the road. We could see from the outdoor balcony where we were sitting that it would involve quite a long descent, almost to the level of the river below, and we were tired from the 22km on the road. But we decided to go down. The path switched over and back and then turned into steps, so steep was the grade, but then finally levelled out.

And then we saw the waterfall. It falls from maybe 40m, flowing down to join the river proper. Its sound is an endless, changeless roaring, powerful rather than angry. The water has ground out a circular pool over the aeons, and from where the falling water hits the pool spray rushes out in circles, like visible shockwaves. You can feel it on your face from 20 metres away, the same effect as a helicopter landing. And because of the spray in the air and the shining sun, a circular rainbow forms at the bottom of the waterfall, clearly visible in its arc. It’s breathtakingly, wonderfully beautiful. We stayed there for a long time, sitting in the shade and watching it, and watching the reactions of people as they came around the corner and saw it. I seem to be accumulating a store of memories of places of such beauty that I want them to be visible to me always, fresh and clear in my mind.

The climb back up was hard for me, easy for Katie, but caused no lasting discomfort for either of us. There were no buses going towards Banos at the time we happened to be looking for one, but a man with an open-backed truck pulled up and offered us a lift for two dollars each. There were two long benches down either side of the truck bed and beside the cab there was a canvas roof to keep off the sun or rain. We guessed that the driver must cruise up and down that road looking for people in just our situation. We agreed to the fare, he secured the bikes on the purpose-built wooden half-door at the back, we hopped in and sat on the benches, and we were off.

It was a great feeling to sit in the back of the truck and watch the road we had cycled fall away effortlessly behind us. There was just enough danger to make it interesting but not enough to feel afraid. I felt I was really travelling, doing what I have so long dreamed of.

That evening we went for dinner in a place called Café Good, which is a rip-off of another café called Café Hood, which is owned by a guy called Ray Hood. The rip-off version is actually much better, oddly, and I had a steak there of the kind I dream about in idle hungry moments, as good as I’ve ever had anywhere. Entertainingly there was a baby shower going on in the restaurant for the first while we were there, and there was much noise and excitement and oohs and aahs of various volumes and durations as the presents were opened. It was almost all women that were there, and they posed for the sort of group photographs that will be treasured in the years to come.

We finally went to the baths on our last morning in Quito, getting there early enough that they weren’t too packed. It was a similar deal to Peru, but with the mountains forming an up-close backdrop and a waterfall close enough that we could hear it. One of the baths was so hot I could only stay in it for a few minutes – I think that one was 42C – but we felt great after.

Early in the day we were approached on the street by a Danish woman who owned a café, and she gave us her sales pitch, and it was excellent. So we went there for breakfast and the owner was even more charmingly eccentric than her brief street antics would have indicated. She told us that she once met a person whose family had a huge diamond business, and they had told her that if they ever started selling diamonds in South America that would get her to be their representative. The way she told it though took five minutes or so. The food, happily, was excellent, as was the coffee.

We were happy enough leaving Banos on the bus back to Quito because we had had such a pleasant few days of new things and adventure. On arrival in the capital we went straight to our old hostel and picked up my credit card, which Dad had couriered over, and I was muchly relieved to get it. The American Express advance was starting to look a bit threadbare.

From there we went to the bookshop around the corner that sold English books, which had previously been the cause of our soaking in the rainy-season rain. We had arrived in Banos with very little to read and we had scoured the town for somewhere to buy English books, but no such place existed. So once we were back in Quito we were suffering from what Katie called ‘book starvation’, and each of us bought several. The place was run by an English guy who had been there for a few decades, and we had a good chat with him. When I paid I was charged the full value of the books, but when Katie paid she got a discount.

‘I don’t give discounts to the guys,’ the owner said, with a straight face.

‘I would have asked for one, but I lost my nerve at the crucial moment,’ I answered.

A moment later, I happened to glance down at the children’s section that was right on front of me, and I saw a copy of Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I think I actually gasped. I picked it up and tried to explain that I hadn’t seen the book since I was 10 or so, that Dad had read it to me many times as a child, that I have loved it beyond almost any other book I have ever read, even up to the present day. I may have managed to get some of that across. I held it up and said, ‘Can I have this as my discount then?’ And the owner seemed happy to agree. So I even got it for free. I have since read it, and I could write a long post here on nothing but that book. Katie said later that maybe the book was Quito’s way of being nice to me after the unfortunate loss of my wallet, and I choose to believe that is true.

By eight o’clock in the evening we were well settled in our unexceptional new hostel in Quito, and we decided to go out for a walk around. We didn’t get very far. The streets were almost deserted, and anyone who was out stared at us as though wondering what we were doing out at night. Every shop and business was closed up, heavy shutters over the doors, windows barred. The street lights were weak and far apart, the streets beneath gloomy and dull, with the few people who were out moving through hazy dust. I have never in my life felt such a sense of threat, and I was delighted to put a locked door between us and the outside world as quickly as possible.

The next morning we flew from Quito to Lima, and then we had the rather interesting realisation that Katie’s flight was not, as it should be, later in the afternoon. It was in fact the following day. I had become confused – I booked my flight to Easter Island for February 2, but it’s at 3am on Feb 2 so really it’s the night of Feb 1. Katie’s flight should have been the afternoon of Feb 1, rather than Feb 2.

D’oh. So we ended up with a final day in Lima. We re-lived our taxi ride from a month ago, when we were so excited to be arriving in South America. We walked around Kennedy Park again, and we had dinner in the same restaurant with the chess tables beside it (which funnily enough was recommended to us by the people in the hostel). The hours slid by peacefully and enjoyably, and when midnight came my taxi was outside to take me to the airport for the Easter Island flight, and I had to leave Katie there to have one last night in Lima and get the flight home the following evening on her own. It was a parting far more sorrowful than sweet.

I have written the last of this on Easter Island. This blog is my only record of the travel now, as it was too much duplication to keep a hand-written diary as well, hence the length of the posts. I have written of my first day here also, and most likely at this post and that one will go up together once I have internet access on my latop again. Until then, adieu.