Travelogue
Arequipa - El Misti and The White City - 3 April 2011
The road from Chile to Arequipa, Peru’s second city, takes you along a famous highway and through the dusty provincial centre of Tacna. San Pedro de Tacna, the southern most city in the Republic of Peru, is connected to Chile by road and by rail. The rail line was built in 1855 and is one of the oldest in South America. The road is part of the famous Pan-American Highway, which stretches from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to near the Straits of Magellan and Cape Horn in Argentina. Save for the Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia, it runs continuously for almost 48,000 kilometres. Rumour has it the Darien was never crossed because the United States was fearful of opening up land transport to its borders for too many Latinos. The people of Tacna, Tacenos, take their patriotism seriously, naming street after street and monuments galore after the country’s fallen heroes, almost as some form of collective restoration of pride since their defeat in the War of the Pacific. The war was brutal costing thousands of lives. Peru was routed as were neighbours Bolivia. The price of defeat was heavy. The penalty was loss of land to Chile. The land gained by Chile was rich in minerals nitrates, useful ironically enough, for munitions but especially copper. Bitter resentment persists. Love thy neighbour. At the central bus station I sat with my feet on my bag, eyeing the clock. The locals were watching me watching them. I wanted to go to the toilet
Arica - The City of Eternal Spring - 27 March 2011
Arica is the northern most city in Chile and the jumping off point for Tacna, in Peru. By measured rainfall, Arica is one of the driest inhabited places on Earth. Oxford academic Nick Middleton came here when filming for the television series, Going To Extremes, on the trail of the coldest, wettest and hottest places on Earth, this
Atacama - The Most Perfect Desert in the World - 24 March 2011
The Atacama Desert is often described as the world’s most perfect desert. Parts of the desert haven't seen a drop of rain since recordkeeping began. It is the second driest place on Earth after Antarctica. The desert stretches 1000 kilometres from Peru's southern border rising from a thin coastal shelf to the pampas—virtually lifeless plains
Chuquicamata - Red Gold Fever - 11 March 2011
Copper accounts for almost one-third of all Chile’s foreign trade. At one time the figure was a massive 75 percent. These days Chile produces about 450,000 tons of copper per year.Not for nothing then is copper known as “Chile’s salary”.Mines come complete with their own cities to house the workers, their own water and electrical plants
Valparaiso - It's By The Sea - 5 March 2011
Two hours drive by bus from Santiago is the port of Valparaiso, until the early 1900s Chile’s first city. Testament to its former glories, Valparaiso was home to Latin America’s first stock exchange and the oldest continuous Spanish language newspaper in the world. Valparaiso once served as an important stopover for ships sailing between the
Santiago de Chile - The Avenue of the Basques and the Irish - 24 February 2011
Flying west into Chile’s capital Santiago from Argentina is an interesting experience to say the least. The route taken brings you inevitably down through the Andes, the pilot having to negotiate mountain passes and vicious cross winds.You cannot make this journey without thinking of the film Alive about the Uruguayan rugby team, which
Argentina - It was the Land of Opportunity - 20 February 2011
La Boca is the working class district near the docks, famous for its narrow cobbled streets and brightly coloured houses. If paying a visit it pays to be cautious. It’s a fairly rough area and tourists are sometimes targeted by petty criminals. I found the area remarkably small, largely consisting of a single street, so I had trouble working out
Diego Maradona - What A Player I'd Been If I Hadn't Done Coke - Part II - 17 February 2011
Maradona arrived in Belgrade on a private jet with film director, Kustinica . It’s unclear who the jet belonged to, whether a charter or Maradona. Given his run-ins with the authorities over the years and prodigious outgoings supporting a decadent and opulent lifestyle, not to mention those of his numerous hangers-on, how much money Maradona
Buenos Aires - Paris of the South - 30 January 2011
My plane to Buenos Aires was late, very late. So late in fact, that it had yet to arrive in Auckland to go to Sydney to return to Auckland, for the journey back to Buenos Aires. According to the staff at the Aerolineas Argentinas check-in desk, the schedule had been disrupted by “unexpected volcanic activity over Patagonia”. This utter
