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 of its own. Trolley-buses ply the lower city streets, whilst rickety wooden boxes called ascensors take people to the crazed mixture of mansions and slums on the hills above. These funicular railways have hardly been modified in over a hundred years, and consequently feel like the death traps that they probably are.

After exploring the city and sampling some cheap local ale, we left on a mission to see the surrounding area by any means except tour buses. The first stop was Horcón, a small sea-side village with artisan's stalls and a little cove with groups of pelicans flying in and out. The sea was surprisingly cold for swimming - no wonder there is a colony of Humboldt penguins nearby. But most of the rest of the coastline is littered with built-up resorts catering for wealthier clientele, which didn't appeal, so on we moved to the Casablanca wine valley. Here, after visiting two vineyards (of which the organic Emiliana estate was by far the best and most interesting) and tasting eight or nine wines of varying quality, we somehow ended up with an offer of free camping in a beautiful garden attached to a bungalow in the middle of a vineyard. When the hosts returned from a weekend in Pucón they introduced all their kids and offered us free use of their bathroom and kitchen. Amazing hospitality!

Continuing on our hippy trail (yes, we were even carrying a guitar), our next campsite was up in the forested hills where Rebecca's mode of accommodation - a hammock - worked well, slung between the trees. Up there she didn't have to worry about nasty spiders crawling on the ground, as I did in my tiny tent. There were a lot of odd sounds at night in that forest, particularly from the birds.

And so to the summit of Cerro La Campana, which offers a unique panorama with the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the highest mountain outside the Himalayas to the east. Although I would dearly love to climb Acongagua, the hire costs of equipment (that I already own back home) are prohibitive. So I will have to make do with this distant view of the Andean giants. The tough early morning climb from the campsite to this 1920m viewpoint also had another dimension. The multi-coloured autographs covering almost every boulder as far as the eye can see are a bit of an eye-sore until you realize that the dates on them span rather a long period. The ones before 1950 are carved in the stone rather than painted, and when we found some from the late 1800s we started to search harder just in case Charles Darwin had been the first to leave his mark when he climbed this peak during his travels.

Finally, to round off the week I arrived back in Valpo alone to discover that there is a big cultural festival this weekend. Last night I watched an excellent outdoor piano concert at one of the plazas with a backdrop of colonial buildings awash with coloured lights and projections. Pity I didn't take my camera out at night.

And now for something completely different...