Delving into history

Our next two days on the peninsula dealt us a mixed bag of cloud, snow, wind and rain, but always accompanied by an irresistible combination of unique landscape, flora and fauna. After a couple of days gorging on jaw dropping ice fields and penguin colonies teeming with Gentoos, Adelies and Chinstraps, the following days took on a more historical complexion. On the route over we had heard a series of lectures on the heroic and often tragic history of Antarctica. From the early days of exploration and discovery, through the ‘gold rush’ of commercial whaling, there are numerous stories of hardship, sacrifice, heroism and bravery. As we stopped off at Wordie Hut and Deception Island some of these stories began to come to life as the remnants of that era lay abandoned or in suspended animation.

Wordie Hut at what is now known as the Ukranian Vernadsky research station is a time capsule that transports one back to the age of tinned ox toungue, metal capped jars of marmite and hand written coal manifests. As I wandered around the now abandoned hut I got a real feel for what it must have been like to over-winter in Antarctica during the immediate post-war period. The instruments: helioscopes, radio transmitters, barometers and slide rules stand on the desk that would have played host to the resident meteorologist. The living room lies untouched with a bookshelf full of Evelyn Waugh, Neville Shute and Graham Greene, all propped up with a bust of Nat King Cole.

The entrance to Deception Island, the caldera of one of three active volcanoes on Antarctica, is guarded by the sheer cliffs known locally as Neptune’s Bellows. As we passed carefully though the narrow entrance, it became immediately obvious why this was used by whalers as a safe haven to weather out storms and butcher their catch. On the beach the remnants of this ear and the later British research station were scattered all around. Water boats, used by the whalers to store their fresh water, lay partially buried and partially open to the elements; but ultimately intact. A graveyard of broken oil barrels is testament to the haste with which the whalers abandoned their outpost when land based whaling was shunned in favour of factory ships. At the other end of the beach large oil tanks and crumbling huts, used by the British as a supply depot during Operation Tamarin, stand rusting and disused. Just wandering around this open air museum is a humbling experience as one tries to understand what it must have been like to earn a living in this most extreme of workplaces.

The sight of Deception Island was abandoned after eruptions in 1967 and 1969 caused many of the buildings to be buried under volcanic ash and landslides. Poignantly, two graves still remain of whalers who passed away whilst on the island. The sacrifices made are difficult to imagine now, in an era when few careers pose real hardship and the accoutrements of travel make life in the Antarctic more comfortable. The ‘heroic era’ is neatly summarised for me in a poem (introduced to us by our on board historian) that was recited by Douglas Mawson as he battled his way back to the coast after a disastrous and tragic journey of which he was the sole survivor. This poem was also a favourite of Shakelton who had an open, written dialogue with the author, Robert Service, throughout his career in the Antarctic. For me it sums up the psychology of the period; one that is anathema to most of us today.

The Quitter

Robert W. Service (1912)

When you're lost in the Wild, and you're scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you're sore as a boil, it’s according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and . . . die.
But the Code of a Man says: "Fight all you can,"
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy to blow . . .
It’s the hell-served-for-breakfast that’s hard.

"You're sick of the game!" Well, now that’s a shame.
You're young and you're brave and you're bright.
"You've had a raw deal!" I know — but don't squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don't be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit, it’s so easy to quit.
It’s the keeping-your chin-up that’s hard.

It’s easy to cry that you're beaten — and die;
It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight —
Why that’s the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each grueling bout,
All broken and battered and scarred,
Just have one more try — it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.

A cornucopia of snow and ice

The dark morning cloud cover lay as heavy as a blanket over Paradise Bay as we made passage towards the Argentinean research base on the mainland. Inky black clouds obscured the mountains behind Almirante Brown and stretched right across the bay to the glaciated range on Anvers Island. However, as we began to make our way up the short slope behind the research station, small chinks began to appear as the wind dispersed the cloud. Within twenty minutes we had glimpses of the Anvers Massif as the sun reflected off its icy slopes. The natural drama of the Antarctic Peninsula is heightened by the unpredictability of the weather and the snow and ice fields that stretch from the high mountain peaks right down to the sea.

After a short visit to Almirante Brown, we began our journey down the Gerlache Straits towards the Lemaire Channel, a narrow passage often strewn with brash ice from the constantly carving glaciers that tumble down the sea cliffs. The Gerlache Straits, named after the Belgian explorer Adrian de Gerlache, separate Anvers and Brabant Islands from the Antarctic Peninsula. Both sides of the channel rise precipitously from the sea to high snow fields above. Giant glaciers bulldoze their way down the slopes depositing large glacial bergs into the waters of the straits, glinting blue as the sun refracts through the air purged ice.

By the time we had reached the entrance to the Lemaire Channel, the clouds had scattered to the far side of the mountains bathing the entire area in liquid sunshine. Entering the channel stirred up images from Jules Verne with Captain Nemo guiding his vessel through the fantasy lands to an unknown world beyond. Barely a few hundred metres across at its narrowest point, with the enormous glaciers of the mainland to one side and the hanging glaciers of Booth Island to the other, the Lemaire Channel is often referred to as ‘Kodak Gap’ for its breathtaking beauty. As we slowly made our way through the ice, we approached a small sailing yacht with a bowman high in the rigging spotting for the helmsman to avoid the unseen ‘growlers’ lurking below the surface that could be lethal to a vessel of its size.

After the thrill of passing through the Gerlache Straits almost any afternoon activity would have been anticlimactic, however the afternoon zodiac cruise proved to be a real highlight of the trip. Within the space of ninety minutes we saw the most spectacular icebergs imaginable, caught sight of a pod of Minke Whales and tracked a Leopard Seal on the hunt. Iceberg Alley is aptly named as it serves as a checkpoint for many of the glacial icebergs drifting north along the coast of the peninsula. In the late afternoon calm the clouds began to close over us as the sun dropped back towards the horizon. As it began to approach the mountain tops of Anvers Island, the sky took on a creamy yellow cast and the clouds darkened to a dusky magenta.

The fickle weather conditions of Antarctica would inevitably conspire to dish us up with another helping of wind and rain, but as the sun set over the magical cornucopia of ice and snow we knew that we would have this day to treasure come what may.

First sight of land

After the rough and tumble of Drake’s passage the relative calm of the sheltered coastal waters of Enterprise Island were a welcome relief. Our first two nights a sea only allowed sporadic sleep as the waves tossed us to and fro and the walls of the cabin creaked and groaned around us. With no swell to speak of and a weakening low pressure system dampening the winds we were afforded our first full night’s sleep. We were up early to the dulcet tones of Stephen, our expedition leader, calling his usual refrain:

“Gooood Morning! Good morning it’s 7am and we are currently cruising towards Enterprise Island at a steady 12 knots. The weather outside is overcast and two degrees centigrade. The wind is blowing at between 15 and 20 knots from the west with the occasional snow shower. Breakfast will be served in half an hour. Good Morning!”

Our first full day in Antarctica saw us take two excursions: the first, a zodiac cruise around Foyn Harbour and the second a shore landing on Cuverville Island to see a Gentoo penguin colony. After a morning of briefings and safety demonstrations we finally arrived at the site of the first excursion, Enterprise Island. Named after the enterprising whalers that made this a base for operations in the Gerlache straights it contained a number of artifacts from the whaling era including the wreck of a factory ship, scuttled in the 1920s in order to save its cargo of whale oil. It is testament to the value of their cargo that, when a fire broke out on the ship, they preferred to intentionally run the ship aground to save the cargo than save the ship. As the snow blew horizontally across the face of the Polaris we made our way down the gangway to board the zodiacs for the first time. Before visiting the wreck we circled round the shoreline, weaving in and out of small bergy bits (that is a technical word for an iceberg bigger than 5m but less than 15m and 1m above the surface...no really!). As we turned the corner a pair of crabeater seals broke the surface, nostrils flared, before dipping back below the surface. It was a real thrill to see our first seals at such close quarters, their pelt slick and shiny in the icy water, bulging eyes blinking slowly. After slowly cruising around the bay for an hour the rusty hulk of the ‘Governer’ emerged from the snow speckled sky, it’s pock marked and ferric red hull standing ten metres proud of the surface. The carcass of the ship, long since stripped of it fittings, is now home to a small colony of antarctic terns. The terns taking it in turns to swoop low over the ‘Spirit of Sydney’ a small charter yacht moored on the lee-side for protection.

Over the course of the afternoon we slowly made our way south to our second destination for the day, Cuverville Island. Named after a vice-admiral in the French navy on accord of it’s shape (that of a french admiral’s hat) it sits in the Errera channel and plays host to a large rookery of Gentoo Penguins. With over four thousand breeding pairs on the rookery the first thing that strikes you is the smell of the guano. Stained pink by the presence of krill in their diet, guano gives a strange hue to the colony and can be a real assault on the senses. The chicks are constantly calling out to the steady stream of penguins making their way from the shore, up the beach to with the promise of food. A small group of us climbed a slope behind the colony to get a broader perspective of the rookery and were rewarded with scintillating views across the island and the Errera channel. It is only from a vantage point like that that you can get a perspective on how small the boat is in the relation to the landscape. Every so often a loud crack would be sent across the bay as crevasses collapsed on the glacier or large chunks of the terminal face carved off into the sea. After two hours on the shore we were ready to return to the ship, but not before a thorough brushing of the boots and onboard disinfectant to make sure that we were not transferring infections between sites.

Our first visits left us eager for more and hoping for better weather. With the Gerlache Straits and the Lemaire channel came the promise of outstanding glaciers, towering sea cliffs and dramatic blue icebergs...fingers crossed for good weather!

Crossing Drakes Passage

As we cruised East along the Beagle channel the sun was setting over the stern of the Polaris and the snow capped peaks of the Isla Navarino and the Mitre Peninsula shepherded us towards the South Atlantic. The waves lapping against the hull and lolloping motion of the ship lulled us into a false sense of security as dusk turned to night.

Swinging out of the top bunk and dropping to the floor, my first morning steps slammed me into the door to the bathroom. A little stunned, I was thrown back across the room onto the bench that runs below the porthole. The shower would have to wait. My memories of Drake’s passage will always be of the motion induced by the pulsating swell of the Southern Ocean. Uninhibited by land, the swell progresses clockwise around the continent of Antarctica only rising and falling in response to the wind and depth. At the start the swell and wind were aligned behind us and the motion was predominantly up an down. Five metre swells were the norm and the air temperature hovered around 8-9 degrees celsius. As we crossed the Antarctic convergence, where the colder water of the Antarctic gyre meets the warmer water of the South Atlantic, the low pressure system deepened and the wind picked up, shifting the swell to our starboard beam. Already queasy from a day of heavy swells, the passenger numbers on deck dwindled as fast as the pot of Dramamine on the reception desk.

As the second day dawned the swell began to rise further until it reached 10-12 metres on the beam. Walking around the ship became a mission in itself. The number of attendees for the lectures on bird life, marine mammals and antarctic history dwindled as people retired to their bunks. Those that did brave the lectures held on to the fixed tables as their chairs lifted and shifted as the boat rolled through 30 degrees each side of vertical. At night whilst laid in our bunks, perpendicular to the centre line of the ship, we shifted from almost standing on the wall to protecting our heads from banging against the wall behind us. The bunks were sprung allowing the vertical motion of the ship to make us appear weightless for a moment before dropping back to the mattress and a chorus of squeaks.

As the sun began to set on the second day of the crossing the first icebergs came into view signaling the approach of the South Shetland islands. These tabular icebergs, rising over one hundred metres from the sea, may have been floating for over a year since they were sheared from the terminal face of the Ross ice shelf. As they are taken north-east by the current they float around the coast being gradually eroded by the constant action of the sea. Over time the icebergs are eroded under water and the centre of gravity shifts tilting the table top and exposing the rounded sections that were previously submerged. With the arrival of the icebergs and shelter of the South Shetland islands the swell began to reduce allowing us our first good night’s sleep.

New Photos posted

I seem to be running a backlog of both photo posts and blog posts. In a bid to get back on track whilst we have a wifi connection I have uploaded a couple of blog posts and a fifty or so pictures from Titicaca to Tierra del Fuego. I am now up-to-date with my gallery, but I have a week or so to catch up on my blog writing (a lot has happened in the last week). We are off to Antarctica this afternoon (Wow...I didn't think I'd get to say that) so there will be plenty of time between bouts of sea sickness to write blog entries. I guess there will also be a big batch of new photos to update when we get back.

In the meantime, feast of the beauty of Chile and Argentina. Suffice it to say that Patagonia has not disappointed. Tierra del Fuego is quite simply the most beautiful place I have visited on my travels so far. I loved the desolate isolation of the Deosai Plains in Pakistan and the verdant beauty of Kashmir but Tierra del Fuego has it all, and more. The mountains, topped with glaciers, reach down to the raging sea of the Beagle Channel in the South whilst the North of the island has Patagonian steppe that is so expansive that you feel lost its folds. The sky seems to be double the size down here as clouds float free in an ocean of blue. The weather can change in an instant giving every day a sense of the unexpected. Serendipity has played it's part in introducing us to the most hospitable and generous hosts we have met so far.

I am so excited to be heading to Antarctica but I am as excited to be coming back to Patagonia.

South to Santiago

After several days in the blistering heat and arid wilderness of the Atacama it was nice to know that we were on our way South to La Serena, Santiago and ultimately Patagonia. We left San Pedro on a full cama (almost flat-bed) bus in the two front seat on the top floor, with panoramic views of the desert as we sped our way South-East to Calama and Antofagasta. This city, the powerhouse of the mineral rich mining economy, is entirely dependent on the copper reserves of the nearby Chuquicamata mine. Wide boulevards, cut out of the desert, are the thoroughfares for countless modern pick-up trucks with giant antennas, transporting mine workers and engineers from their compounds to the mine and logisitics operations. The road from Calama to Antofagasta on the cost seems to have a constant stream of lorries shipping supplies to Calama. By the time we reached the coast night was beginning to fall and the curtains closed so that we could all attempt to sleep the remaining 8 hours to La Serena.

We awoke to a subtly different landscape. Although still parched and wild, the hills were now covered with low growing vegetation and candelabra cacti. The coast, now visible to our right, seemed to be a never ending series of bays with rocky cliffs open to the sounding swell of the Pacific. We caught La Serena, possibly the second oldest city in Chile, at the height of the domestic holiday season. Teeming with Argentinean and Chilean holiday makers, drawn by the long expanses and sandy beach and hot, dry days, the city still managed to keep the relaxed charm of a Mediterranean seaside town. After a couple of days visiting the beach and wandering the plazas and streets of the old town we were relaxed but ready to move on to Santiago for our flight to Patagonia.

We arrived in Santiago with low expectations after hearing stories of smog, pollution and big city anonymity. Our hostel for the night, Residencial Londres, is a converted period house that has retained all it’s original charm. Although it shows the signs of aging, its parquet floors, corniced ceilings and art deco furniture give it a sense of authenticity in a city that is more chic than any we have visited so far. With only an afternoon to spare before our flight the next morning and craving the opportunity to visit a European or US style mall we made our way to the North of the city and the Las Condes mall.

Satisfied with our purchases (some ‘normal’ shoes to supplement our hiking boots and Crocs) and a new duvet jacket to replace the one I lost, we made our way back to central Santiago. As we discussed our first impressions of Santiago over a drink that evening it was clear that we are both looking forward to returning at the end of March. In the meantime, we have the small matter of Patagonia to attend to. This next section of the trip is the part that I have been most looking forward to and in some ways I am a little nervous that it won’t live up to my expectations. I have a collage of mental images from the iconic vistas of the Pertito Moreno glacier and the Torres del Paine to the textual descriptions of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux. However, none of these are in context and most importantly, they lack the texture and sense of place that you only get through traveling and meeting the people that live and work in the area. Fingers crossed that I won’t be disappointed!

Star Gazing in San Pedro de Atacama

Whilst in San Pedro I fulfilled one of my goals for the trip by taking a trip to the observatory of a French astronomer called Alain Maury. The north of Chile and the Atacama desert in particular, is famous for its hosting of an international array of telescopes and observatories. The high altitude, cloudless skies, predictable winds and lack of humidity converge to produce optimal conditions for observing the heavens. Alain has been running trips for several years now and his house outside of San Pedro is well kitted out for star gazing.

On arriving at his house we were given an introduction to the Southern night sky and the methods for observing the stars planets and constellations. With so little atmospheric and ambient light pollution the stars reach down to the horizon on all sides. The bright band of the Milky Way bisects the sky from North to South with tightly packed nebulae and carbon ‘sacks’ where gas obstructs the stars leaving gaping holes. To the West of the Milky Way we could pick out the Megellanic Clouds, neighbouring galaxies that appear as puffy clouds in the night sky, only observable in the Southern Hemisphere.

After our introduction to the constellations of Leo, Orion, the Pleiades and many more we were told how to locate the Southern axis around which the stars seem to rotate. We were told how to find the various planets before the telescopes were set up to observe the Saturn with it’s rings and Mars in all its glory. Nebulae, barely visible o the human eye became dense clusters of multicoloured gas and nascent stars.

It is unlikely that we will ever return to anywhere as well suited to star gazing as this, however, evenings in the garden in North Wraxall will take on a new dimension.

Sand and salt

In the last two weeks we have gone from the torrential downpours of the Bolivian rainy season in Puno to the driest place on earth, the Atacama desert. After years spent in Saudi Arabia there is something very familiar about the desert that separates the Pacific from the Andes. As we made our way across the desert to the Peruvian border the unfolding landscape of rock strewn desert, punctuated with glissades of wind blown sand, seemed familiar sight. In between a games of bingo (in Spanish - I seem to still be mixing up my 60s and 70s) my mind wandered to the passing landscape and the strange draw that it seems to have for people. After 15 minutes without passing the slightest sign of habitation we started to pass grids of land, demarcated by lines of succulent plants; each box playing host to a small square shack made of interwoven leaves. What makes people lay claim to this seemingly barren land? My only guess is that it is some means of claiming ownership to land that could have future value for mineral rights.

The Atacama desert is far from a monochrome expanse of sand and rock. The landscape evolves from flat, rocky plains, punctuated with mineral rich hills in all shades of red, yellow and brown. The volcanic activity of the Andes creates large swathes of basalt an laval flows that over millennia have been eroded by the ever-present wind and occasional rainfall, to leave deposits of fine, multi-coloured sand to be blown into large dunes. Behind San Pedro stand the proud volcanoes of northern Chile. Mostly in the region of 5800m, these volcanoes (active and dormant) shape the landscape of the Atacama. as they catch the snowfall of the Altiplanic winter they become coated in snow, that subsequently melts, feeding the subterranean water courses that ultimately feed the salt flats. As the water flows underground the minerals leach into the water creating a hard water, heavily laden with salts of arsenic, boron, sodium, potassium and lithium. These water pool under the surface of the Preandean depression and ultimately form the salt lakes that are home to three species of flamingo (James, Chilean and Andean). With nowhere to run-off, the lakes evaporate, leaving salt flats rich in mineral deposits.

San Pedro de Atacama sits at the northern extreme of the Salar de Atacama shielded from desertification by a barrier of trees planted in the 1960s. The town, home to 1600 residents and 6000 tourists, survives under the most extreme environmental challenges. The sun beats down on the town, cloud-free, for 330 days per year. The temperature can range can be in excess of 50 degrees a day as the night-time temperatures plunge under cloud-free nights. At just over 2500m the sky atmosphere is clear yet the maximum temperatures are kept in check. The town is entirely dependent on tourists and as a captive market the prices are inflated, making it the most expensive town in Chile. During the summer months the tourists seem to be overwhelmingly South American, yet there are the ever-present hoards of backpackers and insulated groups of well heeled European package tourists.

The streets are lined with travel agencies touting trips to the dunes, salt lakes and geysers that make the Atacama famous. Well before dawn you can hear the streets come alive with tourists waiting to be picked up by the buses and the drinking goes on late into the evening. Without a car, we have been forced to take day trips to see the sights. As a commodity service provider to a captive audience the tours have been far from the best that we have taken but the sights themselves do not disappoint. The penetrating sunlight and dramatic backdrops combine to produce a landscape and environment that is unique and should not be missed.

However, after four days in San Pedro it is definitely time to move on. We have decided to head south to chase the weather. We will be heading to the city of La Serena tonight by bus and then on to Santiago. Before the week is out we should be in Ushuaia where we will look into last-minute vacancies on the Antarctica route. If we are successful we will be at sea for 10 days before returning to resume of journey up the spine of the Andes, through the legendary fjordland of Patagonia to the Lake District.

Deja-vu all over again...

The bobbing of the cone of light from my head torch on the footsteps ahead of me was a familiar sight. After a 1.50am wake up call we had been climbing for two and a half hours before the nausea began to abate. This time the ultimate goal was simply a connecting bus to get back to our transport back to Arequipa, however, the motion and experience of climbing at night was unmistakable. The climb out of the Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world, was the reward for a wonderful day descending the day before. Unlike its more famous cousin, the Grand Canyon, the Colca Canyon is a deep ravine, cut by a frothing river, out of lush pasture land between two volcanic mountain ranges. The flat desert plateau of the Grand Canyon is as far away from Colca as you could get. The snow capped peaks are gradually transformed by Inca terracing, planted with potatoes, beans and maize. Women adorned with intricately embroidered, wide rimmed hats work the fields whilst their husbands repair the terracing and clean the irrigation ditches in their impossibly large stetsons.

The further down the river valley you get the flatter the flood plain becomes until you reach a point where the river begins to cut deep into the alluvial deposits. Within a few kilometres the walls of the mountains converge, squeezing out the flood plain to the width of the river and so the canyon begins. Over two hours we dropped from the ledge onto the path into the canyon. Entering a think blanket of cloud that marked the temperature inversion,separating the warm air at the base of the canyon from the frigid air dropping off the snow capped mountains, the path was wide and lined with shrubby trees. Within half an hour we had emerged from the cloud to be greeted with a terrifying drop over a thousand metres to the river below. After four days on the Inca trail we were used to the exposure of these paths, cut into the near vertical canyon sides, but how the mules manage to negotiate the steep steps and hairpin bends, whilst fully laden is still a mystery. We stopped a couple of times to let families pass with their retinue of mules and donkeys carrying provisions to their villages below. It’s hard to imagine a two day round trip, every week or so, just to go food shopping. The luxury of a trip in the car to the farm shop is exactly that.

Our accommodation for the evening at the ‘Oasis’ the end of the canyon was a ‘rustic’ bungalow. It is hard to imagine what a ‘rustic’ bungalow is, but I had wishful visions of a slightly dilapidated bungalow with a porch and a basic kitchen. I should have know better. The closest comparator I can think of is an african rondhavel. On top of an adobe foundation of a foot or so was a five foot wall of bamboos, widely spaced for easy access to the local community of spiders and rodents. The round pitched roof of bamboo and grass looked less than waterproof, but that was to be academic. The beds inside the hut were much like the charpoi beds that are found in Pakistan and Afghanistan with dusty covers and rancid sheets. The one saving grace of this ‘oasis’ was the naturally fed swimming pool, a haven after a hot sweaty day of trekking.

After a fitful night’s sleep, mostly spent dreaming about spiders in Sarah’s rucksack, we were awake at 1.50am for a 2am start. It took the best part of two hours to get going as I was starting to come down with a stomach bug. The turning point in the climb was when I found out that I had a pocketful of lemon sours that each lasted a good 20 minutes and provide the much needed energy that I wasn’t able to eat in solids. Exhausted and slightly delirious, we finally reached the town at the top of the canyon at 6am. No more serious trekking until the Patagonian Lake District...at least that’s what Sarah thinks!

The City in White

Nestled at the base of the twin volcanoes of El Misti and El Chachani, Arequipa is Peru’s second largest city. Although it has a population of around one million it has managed to retain the small town charm of a city like Cusco. The city is a little off the standard gringo trail and as a consequence there are less street hawkers. In the off-season the waiters in the restaurants appear aimless as they wander between empty tables and occasionally venture to the pavement to try and drum up interest. Although the city spreads itself liberally over the valley floor the old colonial centre of the town is relatively compact, with the Plaza de Armas at the centre of a grid of streets that play host to the usual collection of monasteries, museums and churches. Arequipa is unusual in a number of respects though: the cathedral extends to a full side of the colonnaded Plaza de Armas; all the main building are built using a white volcanic rock called ‘sillar’, giving the town a slightly cleaner and lighter feel; and, the the most outstanding building is not the cathedral, but the Monastario of Santa Catalina.

Built in the 16th Century, this refuge for the wealthy second born daughters of Latin American and Spanish aristocracy served as the Four Seasons of the ecclesiastic world. On entry as a novice, the girls would be allowed to bring a maid to help perform their daily chores allowing them more time to perform their devotions and craft. As a precondition for entry the family would have to provide a healthy dowry that was, in turn, invested in property within the city and agricultural land to feed the nuns and fund building works. For the wealthiest of nuns it was possible to build a personal living quarters within the convent and, as a consequence, the convent extends over an extended block in each direction; almost a mini Vatican within Arequipa. In fact, when the Vatican finally came to find out about the ‘unusual’ practices of this Dominican institution it sent a rather severe Mother Superior from Spain to rectify their behaviour.

In the end, the charm of Arequipa and the company our traveling companions David and Anne-Marie led us to stay in town for the best part of a week (including our trip to Colca Canyon). Staying in this charming city was a nice way to close out our stay in Peru. As was the case with Ecuador, it feels like we have only scratched the surface of the country. There is still a great deal that we haven’t seen in Peru: the jungle of the North-East, the high altitude mountains of the Cordillera Huayhuash and Blanca and the beaches of the North. It is now time to head south though to chase the summer season in Patagonia. With the decision to head down through Northern Chile to Patagonia we have had to postpone our visit to Bolivia. Hopefully, serendipity will continue to serve up its usual pleasant surprises in Chile.