Hello there my hearties. Splice the main sail, swab the deck and get me some vitamin C and salted meats to combat the effects of scurvy, as Messner has charted a course for banterous activities in the heart of the Inca empire...... After leaving Rio, Rosie and I arrived in good old Santiago (Chile), which for me was the third time here. Oooh it's a proper little home from home these days. The whole point of being here was some lovely snowboarding banter and 2 days later I felt I had sufficient bruises, broken bravado, and deposited enough Messner snow angels / patches of yellow (brown?) snow on the slopes to carry on to Bolivia. Bolivia. Oh my randomness. Oh my thrift. Oh my women gone from Latino stunners to rotund big ladies with gold teeth and bowler hats. It is however activity central, with the activities usually as random as chips, a shoe and 4 sparrows who can whistle the Italian national anthem. So activity number one involved marauding around some salt plains in a 4 wheel drive with 2 Americans, a German girl who I had to rescue from sinking sand (Danke) and a hairy Austrian chap called Robert who cuddled street kids in La Paz for a living. It was all very nice but after 4 days I had dust in every conceivable orifice and even a trip to a train cemetry had trouble placating my dusty eyes. Activity number two - pay 10 dollars for someone to scare the living sh1t out of you by taking you down a working mine, mess about with sticks of dynamite and liberally share out 96% proof alcohol. This 3 hours in Potosi was one of the most interesting / harrowing / did I like it / I'm not sure / random days of my entire life. Activity number three - Get way too big for your mountaineering boots and attempt to climb a glacier ridden, ice wall dotted, criss crevasse crossed 6438 metre (21,200 ft) mountain of banter called Illumani. After booking the tour with a German guy who would have commanded a whole Panzer squadron in the battle of the bulge had he been born a few years earlier, Rob, myself and two Swedes (Johan and Peppe) got kitted out and ready to go. Preperations were excellent as we got absolutely lathered and had one hours sleep the night before. Messner was nearly turned around by the guides on day one as they though I was struggling with the altitude, before realising in fact there was still enough Caparinha's sloshing around my stomach to disable a medium sized llama. We rose 1800 metres in 24 hours to high camp and then were woke up at 2am to attempt the summit. One Swede never left his sleeping bag and 2 hours later the other turned back. It was up to team blighty to fly the flag - unfortunately this never happened as it was minus 20, Rob had a pair of mittens you would wear for your first day at school on and Messner was walking with a gait like Steptoe and was bent double trying to keep all the aspirin he'd had for breakfast down. 6,100 metres was the result with some lovely and normal vertical ice climbimg ahead so we headed back down with broken hearts, chapped lips and brass monkeys....... Activity number four - the death road mountain biking. So called as 30 vehicles fall off it a year with an average death toll of 800. What a good idea then to maraude down it on a mountain bike, dodging trucks, rocks, dogs, people and skeletons. All good fun though apart from the fact that all the bits that weren't chaffed in activities 1 - 3 were ticked off the list here..... Banterous story of note: After checking in for the flight from Santiago to La Paz, I had a flashback of a wet behind the ears Messner checking in for package Whittaker family holidays in Manchester airport circa 1987. I remember how he took the luggage trolley back to it's berth by pushing it and then hanging off the back of it with his feet off the ground. Jump forward 18 years and this seemed like a capital idea. Due to reasons that could include different design methods of luggage trolleys in the modern era, the reverse gravitational effect of being in the opposite hemisphere, and me being approximately 3 times as heavy as I was when I was 8 years old, I ended up flat on my face on the concourse with the trolley on it's side - wheels still spinning. I may also have been a bit tipsy. I am currenly at Lake Titicaca and should be in Peru (country #15) within the week.Tales of condors, the lost city of Eldorado and guinea pig munching to follow. Si x