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San Pedro de Atacama, Chile The point is, I think I am crazy but, if not, I am clearly off-beam. Yet I challenge anyone to walk the Villama River without concluding that cacti can speak. To reach the place, tucked somewhere impossible and a short drive from San Pedro, you pass through a landscape that has a zillion colours, shades and pigments that even an artist would have trouble to describe. These are geological colours, sat there for more than 20 million years. Rocks and formations, volcanoes, geysers, old mudslides, and a[...]

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia There is a problem with a salt flat even if it is the largest in the world. The Salar de Uyuni may have an area larger than the country of Lebanon, 11 billion tons of salt and a crust up to ten metres thick. By any standards that is impressive. But the problem, quite simply, with a salt flat is its flatness. And flat, should you have a bladder, is a problem. It could have been the breakfast tea, or maybe my most recent bottle of water. It[...]

Putre, Chile I am so terribly sorry. It is me who is to blame. Hands up, I have been caught red handed. Sorry, Miss, it was me who washed his underwear in the bathroom sink. Clearly, in Chile’s Putre, this was simply not done. I blamed myself, of course, as I knew I should not have mentioned Fawlty Towers, that John Cleese wonder, when checking in to the hotel. Perhaps it was the lofty altitude of 3500 metres and the diplomatic portion of my brain had defunctioned. Perhaps it was simply too[...]

Santiago, Chile How I wish our Maker had given us three arms, or in my case had made me an octopus. I have insufficient hands to complete each task and there is always something undone unless I focus. t was mid-day and I was standing in front of an elevator’s tightly closed polished metallic doors, on the head-spinning 38th floor of a 63-storey Santiago hotel. The doors were scratched and part dented, acting more as a fairground mirror. My body was stumpy, my face deformed, and the flesh of my hands appeared[...]

Somewhere over Cayenne, French Guiana They call it a Dreamliner, do they? Well you could have fooled me. I know it is big, I know it is light and I know it flies extraordinarily high. But believe me, sleep did not come easy on my 14-hour, British Airways flight to Chile. I tried, honest I did, but all that happened was my head began to loll, my tongue flopped sideways and I started to attract bemused looks from passengers nearby. The bloke beside me, somewhere in his early forties, balding, with his[...]

Umm Suqeim, UAE The solution is simple. They should predict my errors, I should not have to try. After all, the manufacturers of modern, high-end technology must by now be aware that idiot doctors at the end of idiotically long days are bound to be exhausted. So knackered, so exhausted, incredibly tired, barely making sense, that the most natural thing in the world is to drop a dictating machine into an undrunk mug of healthcare coffee. Dear me, healthcare coffee, now there is a topic for debate. It was a latte, steaming,[...]