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Toronto, Canada I could only feel sorry for her, a wave of pity shooting through me like an arrow to the gut. She was perhaps 16, blond locks falling to shoulders, short tartan skirt rolled at the waist to take its level above mid-thigh. Bare legs, naked, no tights, no stockings, just tiny pale socks. And on her feet I could see unlaced, light brown walking boots. The girl was a serious contradiction in fashion, something clearly ignored as she stood on the Toronto street corner tapping bare handed on her mobile.[...]

Denver, USA There is a problem with Canada, however lovely it may be. You see the people appear not to want you. Their defence of the realm, for realm it still is, starts way before you get there. In my case it began in America. Their tactics are simple. If you make it hard to enter Canada, with luck you’ll go somewhere different. It was Denver Airport, deepest Colorado, and my mind anywhere than the States. I had blindly handed my passport to a rapid-fire United Airlines check-in station. A guy in[...]

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[...]