Cycling Round The World

Ruta 40 Argentina

2011-10-31T21:21:00.002Z

Crushed dry and unreal, papiermâche mountains under a pinkening sky. And the billowing yellow grey clouds turn blue and dark, and the grass I see is golden. Though I see it as a small bright square in a blackened border.

I am sleeping under the road again. Though it is only as the full fat light of the setting sun shines through my shelter that I realise I am seeing for the first time today. I have spent 10 hours blind and pedalling - stoned tired eyes, not a grimace, not a smile, as slowly the gravel road runs below.

I will sleep as well under the road as in a bed. Better perhaps. And I won´t be scared as the motor of a truck slows and stops above me, nor excited by the dawning day.

For hours, like a desert, I have seen nothing but soup and risotto and garlic bread and salad. Close-ups, steaming and constant. And a vague notion of meeting up with Joe and seeing Debbie again in El Calafate. And then soup and garlic bread and risotto.

People say in the desert that, for lack of external stimuli, the mind turns in on itself and you can see some true essence of your soul. Well, I´ve seen it - and it´s soup. If I wanted something better perhaps I should have brought more food.

Now, in the sun, face golden, but unseen, soul of tomato and basil soup, stoned eyes and legs untired, I have reached it again; the rarely mentioned danger of travelling. I am used to it. The world changing every day. And now, and now, I don´t see it.

Chile

2011-10-31T21:19:00.002Z

Soggy bark. Bearded moss. Dripping wet. Silver misty droplets. Squelching mud. Soaked hair, hands, feet. And the sky, a constant drizzle, grey.

Six days of constant rain and wild camping, and my fingers and toes and skin are wrinkled, as though I live in a bath.

After a month of no rain in Argentina, the dry harsh air had traced light dusty, spider-webbed marks all over my skin. Now after 6 days in Chile I feel like I´m becoming an amphibian. Only that I have less inclination to crawl back into a cold wet tent than a toad perhaps might have.

I stop at a shop in Mañihuales. "This may be a strange question," I say "But I´m looking for the ummm... the cyclist hunter?"

"Aaah, Jorge! El cazador de ciclistas! La casa de ciclistas!" And they draw me a map to his house, and I arrive on a bicycle laden with things dripping wet and soaking.

When the door opens I don´t say anything. Jorge smiles a real smile and hugs me and tells me that I´m the first cyclist of the year. And his wife Diana and daughter Nickole come to greet me. "Come in, bring you´re bike, this is the kitchen, there´s a shower and hot water - you can wash and dry your clothes. This room´s used as a church, but not until the weekend. Help yourself to cake. Do you want a cup of tea? This is your house - you musn´t pay anything. We´re happy to have you here."

And in such warmth, in the cold wet grey of the Carretera Austral in early spring, I make myself at home in Jorge´s house, and flick through the pages of messages left by the many cyclists who have stayed there over the last three years, and begin to write my own.

Patagonia.

2011-10-31T21:17:00.001Z

To be clear, we were not talking about the necessities of farming, or those small places to keep out Old Killer Thomas More and Nasty Marx, but fences the length of small countries, stretching without end, and locking up mountains, and all the sky above, and the desert far beyond. Taut rotten wood and wire across rivers and streams, with the water always escaping and being caught again; owned to unowned to owned again, and always by the very, very few.

"There are just two things I don`t like about Argentina - the wind and the fences. And I guess you can`t do much about the wind." But always along the road the wire fences run, without public right of way, stuck in a world that moves. Like an international border that stops one walking because two hundred years ago an old man drew a line.

I spend my days riding parallel to wires, and thinking You´re ugly wires You´re ugly wires and wrong.

While all the world is blocked away, in a landscape so huge I feel contained and ordered in my movements, when movement has come to mean freedom. And I am one of the lucky ones in a world where the freedom of movement for all is a forgotten, ignored, repressed, basic human right. We were born walking and stopped. We survived because of our adaptability that we are slowly surely losing standing still.

Homecoming!!!

2011-10-11T19:27:00.000+01:00

Just a quick entry to say... I´m almost finished and I´m coming home!!!

There will be a BBQ at St Aubyn Arms Pub on Saturday 12th November at 1pm in Praze-an- Beeble , Cornwall.

Would be great to see you there!!!

2011-09-23T14:59:00.000+01:00

Sorry... very blurry, but lots of nice people in Argentina. These guys gave me a medal!!! ...it was a medal for 1st prize in swimming, but I was very happy with it ...

2011-09-23T14:58:00.000+01:00

A less blurry ´after´ photo... some strong winds in Patagonia!

2011-09-23T14:57:00.000+01:00

and me ...again...

2011-09-23T14:56:00.001+01:00

A slightly blurry ´before´photo...

2011-09-23T14:56:00.000+01:00

Volcán Tromen

2011-09-23T14:55:00.000+01:00

Along Ruta 40

2011-09-23T14:54:00.000+01:00

lots of space for wild camping in Argentina when the fences disappear...

2011-09-23T14:53:00.000+01:00

Canyon Atuel

2011-09-23T14:52:00.000+01:00

this photo is here because the cactus pictured caused 7 punctures ... in China I once had 8 in a day, but 7 is a new record for 1 second!

2011-09-23T14:51:00.001+01:00

sunset

2011-09-23T14:51:00.000+01:00

...reservoir, Valle Grande

2011-09-23T14:47:00.000+01:00

Girls, maté and cake....

2011-09-23T14:46:00.000+01:00

Roberto and Marta - thanks for lunch!

2011-09-23T14:45:00.000+01:00

Valle Grande, south of San Rafael

Argentina

2011-09-23T14:44:00.000+01:00

It starts with an absolute unthinking happiness. An effortless movement; more sailing than cycling. Carried through a sunny day on an immense and blustering wave, I feel its hands upon my back, and I am pushed all along the great flat road at fifty kilometres an hour, not even the light and ticklish touch of an air resistance on my face.

After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a heaven of small and wonderful things. The bread here is fresh not chewy and stale, there is cheese that tastes of cheese, and olive oil, and apples that are not powdery deceptive lies, but apples, and meat that melts, doesn´t stretch and string and crumble as old worn out leather boots, and wine, cheap wine, that doesn´t make you grimace and wince and shudder at its scent.

Everything is good. Glossy, shining supermarkets, shelves piled high with food. Clear cold drinkable tap water and strong hot showers. Signposts, cleanliness, order and receipts. Queues and politeness and priority seats for the elderly. Real coversations, interest and an understanding of what I am doing, and time to stop and talk and do nothing. Everything is good. And the wind keeps pushing at my back. The sun glints off windscreens, hands wave, horns sound and carry me easily south.

And then there is a change. The wind flails and twists around. And it is there in front of me, its cold breath fierce like a wall and fighting. And whipping up sand. And robbing happiness with an inhuman unkindness, and with a relentlessness slowly emptying me of everything.

After Peru and Bolivia, I have fallen into a hell of terrible things. Food is expensive and markets have disappeared, to be replaced by cold impersonal fluorescent lights, and loyalty cards, and car parks, and queues. And billboards everywhere saying stupid things. And everything closes for four idiotic hours in the middle of the day. And the countryside is a monotonous desert full of sand and nasty plants and barbed wire fences, and wild camping is a nightmare. And traffic jams and roundabouts and ring roads.

The wind sweeps me off the road, over and over, and I can´t lift my bike against it. I´m on my knees and screaming, furious angry words in capital letters, that tumble lost behind me, and I´m learning that the wind here doesn´t listen, even when you scream.

The wind keeps pushing and holding me down, and like a play thing, like a plastic bag, like nothing, I´m thrown all over the road. The sun that glints off windscreens laughs, and the hands that wave and horns that sound smack only of schadenfreude, and I am fighting slowly south.

2011-09-23T14:33:00.000+01:00

toward San Rafael...

2011-09-23T14:32:00.000+01:00

Leaving Mendoza, heading south... looking out towards Aconcagua, but maybe not at Aconcagua, not sure!!

2011-09-05T17:51:00.001+01:00

£10,032.12!!!

We´ve raised ten thousand pounds for Shelterbox.

Quite quite amazing.

Thank you to everybody who has helped.

miles so far - 34,174 (54,997km)

2011-09-05T17:31:00.002+01:00

Climbing away from Carloz Paz.

2011-09-05T17:30:00.002+01:00

Cathedral, Cordoba.

2011-09-05T17:29:00.002+01:00

horrible, horrible cold...

2011-09-05T17:28:00.002+01:00

winter!

2011-09-05T17:27:00.002+01:00

The gradual climb from Caicha del Valle, Tucuman provincia.

2011-09-05T17:26:00.000+01:00

Quebrada de las Conchas

2011-09-05T17:24:00.000+01:00

Iglesia San Francisco, Salta

2011-09-05T17:23:00.000+01:00

Salta from Cerro San Bernado

2011-09-05T17:22:00.002+01:00

Salta

2011-09-05T17:21:00.000+01:00

crossing the tropic of capricorn

2011-09-05T15:47:00.005+01:00

first night, camping in Jujuy prvince, Argentina.

2011-09-05T15:47:00.004+01:00

horseriding...

Southwest Bolivia.

2011-09-05T15:47:00.001+01:00

"Pzzfk," he says. It sounds like pzzfk. With the eyes glazed and shining, and white frothy saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth, head rolling on neck, tottering on legs, and feet small-stepping - the ground a ship at sea. "Pzzfk," he says again, the watery swimming eyes staring through me.

"Pzzfk?" I ask. "Pzzfk. Qué es eso?" Though I know what it is I ask him anyway. Beggars where I come from stand in front of whole carriages of people and offer eloquent accounts of misfortune, hide intoxication, and write succinct messages on appropriately impoverished squares of cardboard. They don´t just stumble and ramble, "quizzf..quer...que quiffz" at your face.

"Pzz... pzzfeeto," he says, his hand held out.

"Pesito? Para qué? Para emborracharse más?" And he smiles, almost toothless, head rolls, eyes close, and he gathers himself and nods, once - and his head hangs staring at the ground. Yes. A peso to get more drunk.

He looks up, I shake my head, and he stays there, fixed, with a smile.

We are standing in undeveloping Bolivia. On the altiplano that stretches across the south west corner of the country, and turns its back to the internationally adopted race towards round abouts, supermarkets, pension schemes and ring-roads, sign posting, heating, sanitation systems and all those thing by which we measure development.

It is doing nothing. It is too cold and too poor. It is sat outside a hut, staring at a sandy, washboard road, and across at deserted buildings and broken glass, throwing stones at a dog to teach it something, shouting at children, hitting a goat with a stick, and sitting outside a hut waiting for the men to come home. And the men are drinking the 96% alcohol that I use as fuel for my stove. And the villages are dead and empty, or dying. And the countryside has moved to the city.

2011-09-05T15:46:00.003+01:00

2011-09-05T15:46:00.000+01:00

Tupiza

2011-08-09T18:27:00.001+01:00

red and blue mountains, Tupiza

2011-08-09T18:19:00.000+01:00

near Tupiza

2011-08-09T17:16:00.000+01:00

the end of the altiplano

Salinas de Garcia Mendoza, Bolivia

2011-08-09T17:06:00.005+01:00

It was the first time it pleased me to see a street parade in Bolivia. Although perhaps street parade is the wrong term. Around the corner, as promised by the deafening, blasting brass, the drunken horde stumbles and dances. Gigantic women made only of pork fat, and young stick thin boys. Ancients all of wrinkles, sun-blackened , hardened skin. Men with shining, round brown faces, huge bellies and dirty shirts. Wide-skirted-bowler-hatted-women. And all of them in some wonderful drunken oblivion.

One of the pork-fat-ladies tears from the crowd, half-dances to the music, and waves a plastic bottle of about four litres in the air; almost empty, the last remaining contents swilling around, lime green, with the movements of a flabby arm. Others behind her wave glass bottles, those too, half empty, the glistening golden dregs of 5pm.

A sober plaza watches the parade. The melody is simple and repetitive, but the band are struggling. Round, sweaty faces, and staggering feet. The band wear white sashes around suit jackets - on them written the numbers, 2009. And though the music wavers, slows down, falls apart, and finds itself again, each player seems to be enraptured as though you might be watching something brilliant.

The pork-fat-lady is drawn back in, unfalling and backwards, glee or drunken joy shining on her face. What is remarkable is that the crowd of all ages, shapes and sizes has become one thing - one gloriously drunken being that has forgotten how to dance, its many legs keeping vaguely to a beat, its hands waving bottles of all kinds, and its many faces beaming, as the afternoon air grows cold.

The same sequence of notes stumbles slowly up the street and I go back into the cafe and carry on talking to Alexis.

"Every day?"

"Everyday this week."

"What´s it for?" I ask, referring to the several gigantic drunken beings marauding outside.

"It´s a festival for... for..." she doesn´t know. "We have so many festivals in Salinas." Alexis asks around the cafe. Nobody seems very sure. A middle-aged man, sat alone, offers a a vague answer. "It´s a festival for a saint."

"It´s a religious festival?" I don´t know why I´m surprised, but I am.

Alexis wants to go to Paris. She wants to go there more than anywhere else in the world. She likes the way they talk.

"How do you say te amo in French?" she asks.

"Je t´aime, I think," I say "but maybe that´s more like te quiero." and the words stick out and hang loud in the room. People glance round to look at the gringo who just said ´I love you` to a 17 year old girl he just met, and drunks make obscene gestures, laughing behind her back.

A perfectly timed crescendo outside fills the cafe; a wail of trumpets drowning out all words, and the attention commanded falls away.

Alexis wants to go to Paris, but doesn´t have any money. And I have that thousandth conversation - the one that goes, it´s much harder for you than us, and I´m sorry I was born in Europe, but if you really want to, and you really try, it´s possible.

"Yes," she says. "It´s my dream to go. I´ll try." There is silence. "Where do you go tomorrow?"

"The salar. It´s beautiful, right?"

"I don´t know."

"You´ve never been?"

"No."

"But you live here. Why not? It´s supposed to be one of the most incredible places in the world."

"I don´t have any money," she says, looking straight at me.

"It´s 10km away. You can walk. I´m cycling there tomorrow. You don´t need any money." And she doesn´t say anything and I begin to doubt that she will ever go to Paris at all.

As I fall asleep later tireless trumpets, tubas and trombones sound. Still the bottles fly in the air, now in the frozen black of night, and shouts filter through the window from the street.

In the morning I wake to the same tune. Outside, a man already falling about alone is directed again towards the gathering hordes, and as he joins them I see that the drunken being is already alive, and haggard.

2011-08-09T17:05:00.000+01:00

abandoned villages

2011-08-09T16:53:00.000+01:00

leaving Atocha

2011-08-09T16:34:00.000+01:00

Towards Atocha

Bolivia

2011-08-05T00:54:00.002+01:00

I have a dream that my teeth are falling apart. It´s a recurring dream. Nothing much happens. The time scale is unclear. I usually see myself as though in a mirror. I am inside white walls. It always starts as a chip in one of my front teeth. Nothing causes the chip. It is more like my teeth are crumbling by themselves. Then I notice more chipped teeth. Some teeth are broken in half. The front ones by now are no more than small triangular spikes. I never feel the pieces of teeth inside my mouth, but I feel them break away. I am always annoyed in the dream that my teeth are falling apart.

When I wake, I bring my hand to my mouth and am relieved to find my teeth in tact.

It is 2.43am. Outside it is minus 15°C. And inside it is minus 15°C as well because the zips don´t work anymore on my tent. The frozen midnight breeze swirls around me, invisible in the night, like a cold unwanted ghost. I think I am having this dream because almost everything I own is breaking.

It is camping equipment, and people are supposed to go camping for 2 or 3 weeks, not 28 months.

In the morning I swear, half laughing, half actually angry, at the cold and useless sun, and the bottled blocks of ice, at the leaking mattress and rusty pans, panniers full of holes and ripped open tyres, and at the spaces left by lost things.

I am jumping because jumping warms you up, and I´m too cold to do something useful. I am singing Smiths´songs, well bellowing and shouting, because around me there is nothing and nobody, and I can see all around for miles. And in the bright cold light of morning, singing, screaming and jumping, I realise I am happy. And not just that, but excited too, about where I am going next, and where I am, and it´s a very simple joy.

Hours later I have packed my tent, and a man rides past on a rusty bicycle, herding one hundred llamas. Exactly, he tells me. We complain about the cold, and he asks if we can swap bikes, and I tell him, no. I tell him that in England with all those llamas he´d be a rich man, and he tells me that in Bolivia with all those llamas he isn´t.

I cycle in knee deep water, above salt. A body of water that has swallowed the sky, reflecting it perfectly back. I am lost on the salt, and the sun sinks, and all around me only white, and tiny mountains far away. In the cold white dusk, giving up trying to find out where I am, I pitch a broken tent and sleep.

2011-08-01T22:05:00.000+01:00

Salt mining, near Colchani

2011-08-01T22:04:00.001+01:00

morning; frozen water, salty bike

2011-08-01T22:04:00.000+01:00

camping on the salt flats, evening

2011-08-01T22:03:00.000+01:00

me!

2011-08-01T22:02:00.001+01:00

mountains, water and salt

2011-08-01T22:02:00.000+01:00

blurry lines

2011-08-01T22:01:00.002+01:00

unusual bicycle tracks through the flooded northern part of the salar

2011-08-01T22:01:00.001+01:00

Mongolian roads in Bolivia!

2011-08-01T22:01:00.000+01:00

barrels

2011-08-01T22:00:00.000+01:00

vulcán Tunupa ...north of the salar de Uyuni

2011-08-01T21:59:00.001+01:00

llamas

2011-08-01T21:59:00.000+01:00

Ghost villages, near Quillacas

2011-08-01T21:58:00.000+01:00

Roadblocks, protests, leaving La Paz to the south

sucre

2011-07-20T18:04:00.000+01:00

(1)Pepper, growing near Sucre (3) Dinosaur footprints, in 5 million year old lava apparently (4) Near the crater of Maragua (5) Me...unimpressed by dinosaur footprints. (6) Juice stalls, Sucre market (7) back in La Paz

potosi

2011-07-20T17:55:00.000+01:00

(1) Sophie, ready for the mines! (2)Miners, JOse, left, is 13 years old (3)With Tio, the devil worshipped in the mines (4) Cerro Rico, a mine that has claimed 8,000,000 lives (5) Miners depositing the mineral rich rock outside the mine. For each of the carts they share 20 bolivianos, about $3. In a day they make about $15.

Cusco to La Paz .... travels with Gerard

2011-07-20T17:26:00.001+01:00

So the cigarette clung smoke on hair fell away to the passing breeze, and the taste of a hangover fell too that way, and we left the city in a bright blue day. Thin and shining still the crescent moon - cut as a shining gash in a sunlit sky, and the remembrance of it full and huge, purple bruised and bursting above Cusco when I first arrived, marked the passing of two weeks.

Flat roads and blissful smooth for the first time in hundreds of kilometres and we smiled, Gerard and I, to be moving again, and heading further south.

...

Across from the hostal, a lady sells bread. The owner is not there. He will come back later the lady says.

Gerard, who, even after we have heard the separatist cries, even after statutes of autonomy, is Spanish, asks the question.

" Do you know when he will arrive?"

The lady points, "Over there," she says.

"Do you know what time he will arrive?"

"Over there," again she points.

...

The next day we followed a dirt track from the road, and bounced along the lines of fences. Llamas and alpacas of varying species filled fields, bathed in a frozen sun. Single storey buildings, dirt white, sat around concrete yards; small cracked windows, with the years of neglect visibly hanging from the roofs. The sign from the road had said The South American Camel Research Centre, but what appeared was a ghost village of strange rectangular buildings; the most obvious thing to be surmised from any research carried out, was that at altitudes where these animals thrive, people do not.

Another kilometre along the dirt track and steam rose from the ground. Striped yellow red patterns ran smooth in the earth and a pouring of water swam, bubbling and hot. We spent the afternoon warm in thermal baths, at 4200m, the cold air all around. Sun slipping slowly up the mountainsides.

The light of morning hopeful through tent walls. The swirling of cold breath. The numbness of feet. The falling failing grey of a falling failing light.

Outside Gerard was awake, "It´s snowing!" he said, in a voice half-excited, half shivering cold and cracked. It was snowing outside, a white and cold hand-numbing snow from a bleak and cold grey sky. We made tea, and ate cold pasta, packed wet tents, and left.

The warm mineral water heated the earth, and the steam touched snowflakes, and around the streams of water I watched the snowflakes melt, instantaneously to tears, to sink into the ground.

As we rode along the tracks I watched a slow motion film, a snowflake larger than it was, colourless celluloid silver white, crashing upon the dirt floor, and breaking as something huge and slow, spreading white dust all around. And the llamas had snow on their heads and backs, in the way that roofs collect snow.

...

Gerard, who, notwithstanding the French pronunciation of his name, is Spanish, asks the question.

"How is it cooked?"

"It is cooked with an egg and a fried banana."

"Yes, but how? Is it fried? Or grilled maybe? Marinated?"

"It is cooked with an egg and a fried banana."

The chef comes out.

"You want to know how it is cooked?"

"Yes."

"It is cooked with an egg and a fried banana."

"Thank you."

...

"Flying?" I asked. The wind had taken the words.

"Life. Life at this altitude must be hard."

"Oh, life. Yes. Really."

"Those children. And the burn marks on their cheeks."

Those children. And the burn marks on their cheeks from the raw, cold sun. And those babies wrapped up against the cold, bare faces to the wind. And those children with their small flocks of sheep, and sticks and whips and cows. And cold mud huts. And those children with their children. Those children with old hands, old cheeks, unreading eyes. And those children with their children. Life at this altitude must be hard.

Another vulture cut black circles in the sky.

...

Gerard, who, despite lack of lisp and home by the coast near the border of France, is Spanish , asks the question.

"Is there a restaurant on this road or do we have to go into the village?"

"There´s no restaurant. You have to go into the village."

"Okay, thank you. There´s really nothing?"

"There´s a restaurant."

"On this road?"

"Yes."

"What about the village."

"There´s nothing in the village."

...

"Inglaterra, ven aqui."

Realising that it was myself being referred to as England, I went to the old man Gerard was talking to, and said hello.

"Como estás?" he asks.

"Bien, gracias. Usted?"

"Muy bien," he answered, smiling wide. "Habla Español?" he asked Gerard.

"Habla perfectamente," Gerard lied.

"Es joven o señorita?" the man asked Gerard, still smiling wide and staring at me. "Is it a girl or a boy?"

"I´m a boy," I say, in the manner that a 4 year old might correct someone making the mistake, and I rode away thinking about how ugly his wife must be. Half laughing, half planning a hair cut, half planning never to shave again.

...

Gerard, who, even given all dislike, unstated dilemmas, and ongoing contestation with the identity, is Spanish, answers the questions.

"Where are you from?"

"Spain."

"You´re from Spain?"

"Yes."

"Where did you learn Spanish?"

"In Spain we speak Spanish."

"Yes, but where did you learn Spanish?"

Gerard, who really, really, is from Spain, turns to me, shakes his head, stops answering the questions.

2011-07-20T16:54:00.002+01:00

leaving Cusco

following the railway tracks

(top) Aguas calientes with Gerard. (middle) A snowy morning. (bottom) Sabina and Alexander

(1) Gerard at the Abra la Raya pass. (2) Onto the altiplano. (3) Escaping the storm (4) More morning snow, church. (5) Towards Juliaca (6) Snowball fights, Keiko (7) Gerard (8)Melting snow on the altiplano (9) Myself, lake Titicaca, trout farms (10) trout! (11) On the cerro, above Copacabana (12)Copacabana (13) Sunset (14) Gerard, on the boat to Isla del Sol (15) Flowers, Isla del Sol (16) Beaches on Isla del Sol (17) Across to the Cordillera Real (18) Woman with her baby (19) Ispi, fried fish on the shore of Titicaca (20)Approaching La Paz (21,22,23) Overlooking La Paz (24) street parades (25) central La Paz

2011-06-30T22:38:00.002+01:00

Elsa, Joel and Joe... looking down from Huaynapicchu

Peru

2011-06-28T02:20:00.000+01:00

Though there there were shiny places. And we drove between them. Looking out the window of another taxi going to another mall, and down onto a six or seven year old girl, sat on a traffic island, four lanes of cars on each side.

Though the grey mist of a Lima sky let the sun cast not a shadow on the tarmac concrete dusty ground, a single extracted sheet of a tabloid newspaper rested on her head. I had only to recall my experiences of cycling in Peru to realise that the girl was sheltering, not from the penetrating rays of a tropical sun nor the light thin drizzle that fell from the sky, but from the spit and cigarette butts, plastic cups and endless other kind missiles that fly from the windows of buses and cars.

...

Her mother, we assume, is one of the women or girls walking between the vehicles selling newspapers or cigarettes. Part-time workers, given the restrictions of red and green lights, but twelve hours spent still, in the fumes and the noise, and maybe never days off.

...

It is an unremarkable scene. A boring scene. Children crying and selling sweets, dirty little feet and no new ploys; could make you fall asleep, this tear stained theatre. Nothing happens in the humming, boring, roundabout day. What first you took to be a simmering, buzzing, energetic boiling was really just a drone. It was you that gave it song. Because still, somehow, for all of it, you think you love the city. And will. With every sight of every coming next.

...

The girl is doing maths homework. It will be a thing if she gets out of here with that, I think. Quite a thing. Quite an impossible, wonderful thing.

We look sad out the window.

"Pobrecita." we say. Poor thing. Said in sincere tones, heartfelt tones; all those tones that make us human.

The light turns green. The car drives on.

...

Perhaps it is no accident that the mountains in Peru are so high. A breathless escape in a staggering sky. For days and weeks and years you could escape.

From grapes, to oranges, to sugar cane, coca to coffee, to nothing, to snow. It is the most beautiful country I have ever seen. I must say it. It is a vast, breathtaking beauty, a wonderful symphony of contrasts. Above the clambering hum, the steady human drone, it is remarkable. Fragile and majestic both, this none anthropocentric space.

In my entries on Peru it has undeservedly commanded few words. But what words? What words for it?

2011-06-26T22:58:00.001+01:00

2011-06-26T22:58:00.000+01:00

and me... in the postcard picture

2011-06-26T22:57:00.001+01:00

Marjet and Ana

2011-06-26T22:57:00.000+01:00

2011-06-26T22:56:00.002+01:00

Leandro and Juan

2011-06-26T22:56:00.001+01:00

2011-06-26T22:56:00.000+01:00

early morning

2011-06-26T22:55:00.001+01:00

Macchu Picchu

2011-06-26T22:55:00.000+01:00

Hydro electric tunnels near Santa Teresa

2011-06-26T22:54:00.000+01:00

skining cows outside our campsite

2011-06-26T22:53:00.002+01:00

Frank and Jorge

2011-06-26T22:53:00.001+01:00

and Frederique

2011-06-26T22:53:00.000+01:00

with Joel and Frank

2011-06-24T19:50:00.000+01:00

At the Salkantay Pass with everyone else...

2011-06-24T19:46:00.001+01:00

2011-06-24T19:44:00.001+01:00

2011-06-24T19:43:00.000+01:00

On the Salkantay trek to Macchu Picchu

Thirteen degrees south

2011-06-24T19:31:00.002+01:00

Still, in the sand, the sun´s heat. And from the rocks, all around, that prevented the pitching of a tent, a warmth is felt that makes them feel living; as creatures that every night die in their sleep, unwaking and cold in the frozen dawn.

Sandflies bite, have bitten all day. I count the swollen white bumps on the inside of my right knee. Eleven. And my left. Six. And on my ankles and arms many more.

I lie on my back and count the stars, in an attempt to get to sleep, but can´t. There are too many of them, and they are not in good shapes for counting, and every time I look away or blink I lose my place.

A dog starts to bark and doesn´t stop.

Two hours later, footsteps, voices, a torch shines upon my face.

"Turista. Solo un turista. We thought you were a theif."

"I´m not a theif," I say. "I just want to sleep. Perdon, no queria molestar ustedes."

And they tell me not to worry, I´m not bothering them. The men wave over the children who had evidently stayed a little way behind, in case I really was a theif or other dangerous person.

The chubby, smiling face of a boy. A chubby half-laughing face, with bright and giggling torch shining over scene. "Esta dormiendo en el suelo no más!" he tells his father. He´s just sleeping on the floor! Light moves from face to bike and bags and back, "¿Adónde vas?"

"I´m going to Argentina. But not now. Now I´m sleeping."

And the search party takes the hint, wishes me a good night, and I watch the torches bob away, floating in the night, in the shape of steps.

The dog barks, torches shine out across the river, sandflies bite, and I don´t sleep, but wait until dawn to leave.

The next day I stop at a dirty cafe and eat lomo saltado which tastes like an old dead rat, fried to death and unsuccessfully disguised under half a bottle of soy sauce. This will be case number three of food poisoning in Peru.

Trees stop growing, and now just a harsh and barren grass, and alpacas, and the descending herds of cows, escaping the evening´s chill. A woman asks where I´m going, and calls after me "Vas a morir en frio! You´ll freeze to death."

And all the sun´s heat evaporates as the warm yellow light climbs the thin blades of Andean grass and leaps from the frosty dusk and shadow, to the undersides of clouds, and up again till all is a lightblue grey.

As I push my bike to camp there is a feeling that I have climbed too high too fast. From sea level to 4500m in one and a half days with no sleep and, a biting, stinging wind. Hand in armpits, and sitting and shivering in a thoughlessness. Just put up a tent and sleep, and tomorow will be better.

But I have forgotten how to sleep. The wind beats the walls of my tent, and slowly sting, then feeling return to my hands, but my mind races, trying to remember what you have to do to get to sleep. What I cannot realise is that I´m one person. I fight at an impossible speed to make my legs sleep, and it works, and I feel them dead and heavy. And my arms, and a feeling of accomplishment fills me. This is how you sleep. And still my mind races with impossible useless nothings. Eyes tight, to block thought, and still a turning over, and the long and windy night. Twice I wake up, elated that I have slept. And each time a glimpse at my watch betrays less than twenty minutes have elapsed.

The huge blue light of a full moon rises half way throught the night. And slowly I watch it grow grey and yellow with the rising sun.

A worse, exhausted wakefullness, and an inability to eat, and a slow puncture.

In the yellow light of a morning not quite warm, I spend two hours trying to replace a tire. Only I can´t remember what to do. I curse the tire for being too small, and all the time the press conference scene from Notting Hill repeats itself in my head. From the start to the word "indefinitely" and the flashing of cameras, and back again, for two whole hours till I remember how to mount a tire.

Breathless to the extent I can´t stand up. And dull, and tired, and stupid. I crawl around on the floor taking down my tent. The sky all blue and crisp, and the sunlight forever warmer, I lie on the floor to sleep, and again the excercise is futile. I´ve forgotten what to do.

A whole day of cycling on the altiplano and 12 miles covered. Every half mile I drop my bike to lie on the ground. And will myself to get up. I have a bag full of food I can´t even look at without feeling sick. And well before the sun´s light leaves the yellow blades of grass, I have spent another two hours putting up my tent. Crawling breathless around it and rolling my panniers inside because I don´t have the energy to lift them.

I lie outside and sleep blissful exhausted sleep for the first time in 60 hours, and half an hour later I wake and crawl to my tent and sleep for half an hour again.

A night of sleep, but with the onset of food poisoning waking me every two hours, as I run outside the tent, and shiver in a sideways sleet.

Nothing left in the morning. 12 more miles. I lie outside a lady´s shop in the afernoon heat. Three miles above sea level, still struggling to stand.

After two hours she comes out. "Are you okay? Are you just resting, or do you feel bad?"

"Feel bad. But okay. Just resting."

The hospedaje costs $3, is a dry mud box, with no windows, a corrugated plastic roof, and a candle on a plywood shelf, and appears as some sort of paradise. The next day I eat for the first time in two and a half days, and strength enough returns to ride to Ayacucho.

2011-06-24T19:30:00.005+01:00

Abancay below

2011-06-24T19:30:00.004+01:00

still a rough road...

2011-06-24T19:30:00.003+01:00

Snow capped mountain peaks in the distance

2011-06-24T19:30:00.002+01:00

Climbing towards Uripa

2011-06-24T19:30:00.001+01:00

On the rough road to Andahuaylas

2011-06-24T19:30:00.000+01:00

Keiko rally, Ayacucho

2011-06-24T19:29:00.003+01:00

First sight of Ayacucho

2011-06-24T19:29:00.002+01:00

from Abra Apacheta, 4746m

2011-06-24T19:29:00.001+01:00

Along the river Pisco

2011-06-24T19:29:00.000+01:00

leaving Lima

2011-06-12T01:02:00.000+01:00

Lima, outskirts.

2011-06-12T01:01:00.000+01:00

With Steve and Lupe at Larco Mar

2011-06-12T01:00:00.000+01:00

with Lupe, Miraflores, Lima

2011-06-12T00:59:00.000+01:00

also on the outskirts of Lima

2011-06-12T00:58:00.000+01:00

"Christ lives" ...on the outskirts of Lima

Coastal Peru

2011-06-12T00:56:00.001+01:00

From the mountains I looked down; to the slate grey desert and the slate grey sea. Lineless at the shore, like watching the world through a gauze, and the sky grey and hazy too. Neither cliffs, nor birds, nor crashings of waves, nor now glints of rippling sunlight on the surface of the sea. So I watched, unsure whether what I was watching was the dull and motionless ocean or another dead desert plain. Then the darkened shapes of rocks, far along the coast to the south, and in the shallow water the whites of waves, lightly breaking over rocky, jagged edges. Though from this distance the white looked grey.

Miles later the rocks and the crashings of waves would appear more clearly: as an abandoned house; the crumbling or half-built walls of out buildings; lifeless, skeletal shrubs, black and hawthorn-sharp; spindly, hopeless plants, and on their branches the whites of waves; old carrier bags and nappies, blowing in the desert wind.

The ocean stretched away before me, a flat expanse of litter-strewn sand. And beyond that somewhere the real ocean, dull grey and litter strewn too.

The town is worse. The town was born from the litter in the sand, and the strips of plastic, and empty bottles and broken glass that have always been part of this desert. And from the rotting carcasses of dogs that no-one will ever move, and the days-old stink of fish that clings to every corner of every building, and wafts through every broken window into every dirt floored room, and is carried on the wind that whips sand down the streets, because no-one will ever tarmac them, but will piss on them and fill them with the bottles, the plastic and the broken glass, from which this town first rose.

Scrawled across walls, election cries, in huge orange capital letters: "KEIKO: Siempre Con La Gente. VOTA ASÍ..." and the correct box is crossed, so that even if you cannot read you will know which way to vote. "KEIKO: Always With The People." And here, stretched out for pointless dirty miles are... The People. Not to be confused with people, The People fill the spaces between the dirt, corrugated iron, and thin wooden walls that cover the coastal plains of Peru. The People have calloused hands, and down trodden stares, and are unhappy because they work too much for too little money, or never work for nothing at all. The People, too tired, from doing too much or too little, or too stupid, or too drunk, are powerless to remedy their state directly, but instead write the name of the ex-President´s daughter, who studied business in New York, and hope that she will come through with what her posters promise, reading elusively: "Opportunities for everybody."

Though the posters don´t specify exactly what kind of opportunities, they seem to give The People the general impression that if they vote for Keiko they can become people, just like her. Although then the president won´t be "with" them anymore, as she was in the beginning.

There is another option. The People can rise up, and kill or imprison the people who don´t agree them, and rename their country The People´s Republic of Peru. But then, like all the other People´s Republics there will always have to be many more The People than people, which means they will have to stay in their dirty, tiny houses, with their giant families, sewer filled streets, and back-breaking poorly paid work, and not have any of Keiko´s opportunities. And the government and other positions of power will have to be occupied by people, not The People. But it will, at least, be their country. Their filthy, stinking Peru.

2011-05-13T20:35:00.002+01:00

The total raised for Shelterbox is ...£9149.23

Wow! Thank you everybody who has helped.

I´m so so impressed.

Miles so far 31,126 (50,092km)

2011-05-07T22:28:00.003+01:00