"I studied maps and there appeared to be a continuous track from my house in Medford (Massachusetts) to the Great Plateau of Patagonia in Argentina. There, in the town of Esquel, one ran out of railways." - Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express, 1979 All I wanted to do was to travel over the Andes to Bolivia by train. But note the past tense here. The worryingly named death train from Calama to Uyuni actually met its death about five years ago when it gave u...

It's the driest desert in the world, yet I couldn't get a bus going north from La Serena for four days due to the backlog of people who had been waiting for the heavy rains to stop in Atacama. It's an unusual phenomenon, but there are some occasions when Bolivia's rainy season spills over the mountains to the other side. When I finally did get here, elderly locals were reminiscing about their youth when they once remembered more than one day of rain before.In the...

Sitting in the picturesque plaza at Pisco Elqui listening to pan-pipe music, I began to appreciate just how long the summer lasts here - it seems never ending. I'm currently travelling with Layla, and yesterday we were invited to spend the day at a rustic picnic spot by a river with a Chilean family who had befriended us the previous day. Rudolf and Anita, and their four-year old son Vicente were on a week's vacation from Santiago; they showed us how Chileans typ...

Chinchillas are farmed for their fur all over the world (and sometimes kept as pets of course), which means that they are not exactly an endangered species; but chinchillas living in their natural habitat are becoming a thing of the past. In the wild they are unique to the stretch of the Andes between here, Bolivia and Peru, where it is thought that the long-tailed chinchilla species has already disappeared. I'm usually a bit wary of voluntary work because I want...

Picture a small pick-up truck travelling on a dirt track with a Chilean family occupying the cabin, and a Gringo on the back with wind blowing through his hair. That was me heading from the coast back towards the city, and it was a moment that seemed to sum up much of this last week.It started in Valparaíso where I caught up with Rebecca, one of my friends from the long ferry trip. This very old city is crime-ridden and dirty, but has a charm and character all o...