Peru is less expensive than Chile but the buses are just as comfortable and, unlike in Chile, they come with a steward or stewardess who serves snacks and drinks. With low-cost airlines challenging them for business, they've had to augment their service. They even have announcements over the internal public address system telling you this is a no-smoking flight...er, trip...and to keep your chairback in an upright position. At first I thought it was for takeoff, but I realized they meant you should do so while eating. I arrived at Arica at 22h00 and took a taxi to where Isabel Villanueva [View Full Entry]

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Even unremarkable towns are called home by some people, usually with a sense of pride and affection that is mysterious to those who aren't from the place. Iquique (pronounced ee-KEE-kay) is like this. I had only two reasons for being there. It was on the way to Arica, which is further north, and it had been home to my friend Juan Villanueva, who lives in Geneva, so I stopped by for a short visit. In this part of Chile the land is a high plateau that drops abruptly to sea level. Iquique is a city of about 200 000 people that [View Full Entry]

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Bus hell comes in different forms. What you find in Chile are not chicken buses. The cross-country ones have air-conditioning, overhead Tvs and comfortable seats in three classes: normal, semi-recliner and nearly full recliner. But from Valpo to San Pedro de Atacama is 1 350 kms, which means 28 hours of legs slowly turning to stone. There is a plane from Santiago to Iquique, a few hours' drive from San Pedro, but it was too expensive. The small town of San Pedro de Atacama huddles around the only water and bit of greenery left in the region. The rest has been [View Full Entry]

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Anyone who thinks San Francisco is hilly should come to Valparaiso, or “Valpo” as locals call it. I asked a guy from Oakland if he thought San Francisco was hillier. His vote went to Valpo. For non-hispanophones, it's pronounced “Balpo” and it's a place with tremendous character. It seems like two cities, lower and upper. The lower is the flat part, a narrow ribbon of stores and offices that winds along the seafront where most of the business gets done. The upper part consists of houses clinging to steep hills along twisting cobblestone streets. The cobbles have bee [View Full Entry]

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Eleven-hour flight from Auckland to Santiago. I arrived with granny ankles - all swollen up. As I went through customs they X-rayed my bags and a stern woman wanted to know about a couple of electronic items and some electric cords. She was entirely without humour as I explained to her what they were. She said she wanted to see them. Playstation and iPod, not drugs. But in Mumbai about a week earlier there had been attacks by terrorists entering the city by boat and I suppose she was being vigilant for bombs, not dope. She reminded me of a security [View Full Entry]

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Here is the route that I took in Australia and New Zealand. [View Full Entry]

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I spent a couple of days in Wellington and a day in Auckland as I got ready to leave for South America. I didn't have anything new to see in these cities so did little of note except to pack my warm clothes into a box and send them to Switzerland. On arriving in Auckland I walked up Queen Street with my two packs on, backpack and day pack, weighing a total of about 30 kilos. My pack was made by Mammut and at times that's what I felt like I was carrying on my back...a mammoth. Clothes, books, odds and [View Full Entry]

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Kaikoura is a little town on New Zealand's east coast with snowy mountains as backdrop and a rocky seashore giving onto a green and cold sea. One main street with hotels, hostels, shops and cafes and a few backstreets. I went to a place called Dolphin Encounters, changed into a thick wetsuit with a cowl and sat through a short film about swimming with the local Dusky dolphins: what to do, what to expect. They emphasized that we were here to entertain the dolphins, not the other way around, and the way to do that was to make noise, dive, swim [View Full Entry]

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Big, gothic cathedral in the middle of a town set on the broad, flat Canterbury plain, this is a city of 380 000 people. Plenty of neoclassical architecture here set amongst contemporary glass and concrete cubes and blocks. There's a very European feel to this city as the cathedral sits on a large, open square of granite paving stones where buskers entertain you and small, temporary stands sell jewellery and other crafts. Here you find tourists with cameras, cafes with outdoor tables and trees with benches where people sit to people-watch. I sat at an outdoor cafe to enjoy the sun. [View Full Entry]

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Lake Tekapo is a tiny place set among pine trees on a beautiful lake with brown hills rising to peaks still cloaked in the remains of winter snow. The lake, like others in the region, is turquoise thanks to glacial flour. Glaciers have ground the rocks into a powder as fine as flour, which hangs suspended in the water to reflect sunlight. Because of the size of these particles, it's the turquoise band of the spectrum that's reflected out of the lake. The community consists of a few stores along the highway, a couple of hostels and motels and a handful [View Full Entry]

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