Where's Willy?

Plagued as I have been by this phenomenon throughout my adult life it shouldn't have come as a shock, but recently an old personal demon came back around and I thought you'd might like to know about it. It happened, as it usually does, around a packed table and was the direct consequence of a girl passing round some jewellery - a braclet, to be exact. 'Haven't you got tiny hands?!', she declared with delight. Then silence. A succession of beats go by as we stare at each other and the table becomes sucked into our conversational oblivion. As her eyes flick from mine to my hands I know what she's thinking, I know what the table's thinking, everyone knows what I'm thinking and I'm pretty sure I know what you're surmising and I have to say, this puts me in an impossible situation. What can I possibly do? Nothing is said about it, but then it doesn't need to be - the damage is done. I attempt humour to diffuse the situation, but short of bringing out photographic proof with a postage stamp next to it for scale I still haven't come up with a solution for the social pariahs that hang from my wrists. People will always assume the worst, or smallest, when they see my girl hands, but only a select few know the real truth. I, of course, am going to leave this enigma right there, but I feel it necessary to add that I have size 10 feet, which has to count for something, doesn't it?

Anyway, this is a travel-based blog, is it not? I shall, therefore, endeavour to leave further proportion-based blether aside from now on and just give you the facts, which are as follows: Whereas once life on this trip ambled on for me with a nonchalent swagger, things are starting to take on a much more feverish momentum these days and I find myself in the grip of a compulsive desire to go and see as much as is humanly possible within these dying days of the trip. To this end things have become a lot more hurried and the fact that since my last posting I have been to two more countries bears testament to this. The date of re-entry looms ever closer, but despite the multitude of bus travelling this will incur, I have decided to pull my finger out and resigned myself to a juddering and sleep-deprived last three weeks in South America. Dammit, when will I be here again?!

Utterly revolting. Upon this personal revelaton of travelling enlightenment some porky kid went and ruined it all by spewing up all over the floor right next to me on the latest bus. Mum tried to clean it up with some newspaper, but the smell was grotesque and made me feel like hurling myself. Maybe I've been a bit hasty... Actually, maybe if Mum didn't cram the fat shit's face with every E number under the sun during a particularly windy journey through the Argentine mountains this might not have happened. Just a thought. The boy had more Es than Saturday night at the Ministry Of Sound and he was totally wired - I think he shat himself as well. Good God, only another 3,000km to cover. Like the colour on the boy's face, my new-found spirit of adventure is quickly draining.

But where were we? I don't think I said anything about Chile, which I really should. I was only there for what amounted to around 60 hours, easily the most whistley of stops so far, but lying right on the weekend it definitely had its moments. There was a huge warehouse rave on the Saturday night in Santiago which, although wasn't really what I'd had in mind when I made the 24hr journey down from northern San Pedro on the Bolivian/Chilean border, still was a good old shin-dig and interesting to see how they do things down here. Good, but no Great Yarmouth in the 90s. Then Sunday brought with it touristico-a-plenty and along with the city's zoo, I ended up on a cable car with a flame-haired beauty called Jordan overlooking the entire city. Unfortunately, far from being the buxom slutty type, Jordan was a 25-year-old Leicester fella with a penchant for baboon vaginas. Still, it was a special time for me and I had to fight the temptation for the old yawning wandering arm trick as Santiago spread out beneath us. Just joking mate, and if you're reading this, how about them pics? From here we rounded a troop and after a splendid steak dinner we ended up seeing the evening out in spectacular salsa style at a local club in the Latin Quarter. Lots of hip-shaking and slightly awkward-looking fun. After this the hand of God has pointed me in the direction of Argentina, which is where I am now.

The jump from Bolivia to Chile and now Argentina has been both sudden and alarming in its differences. It seems odd that the richest and poorest countries lie so close to one another, but I suppose it's this duality which makes up the majority of cities around the world - the rich living so close and so oblivious to the poor - that it shouldn't come as such a surprise. Bolivia was made up of makeshift homes and shops, with dusty streets, dirty faces and signs thrown together by twine and poster paints that really hoped they'd be enough to entice money from pockets. The main difference I've noticed in Chile and Argentina is that they don't suffer from that desperation and come across with a much more arrogantly European self-sufficiency where you can buy if you want to. They don't care. This is not to say that they're not nice and in some places architectually stunning, just like Europe, but it's sad now I've seen the back of their poorer neighbours and I almost miss being accosted on every corner by someone selling something. Almost. I guess it signals the beginning of the end and that's the really sad thing. Are you feeling sad? Course not - some of you buggers will be seeing me again soon - lucky swines! I digress... I see Peru and Bolivia as the Oliver Twists of South America - always craving more, but being irresistably constrained and repressed by forces beyond their control. It all ends well for Twist and I wish the same fate for South America's grubby-faced urchins. All this literary and political metaphor seems a long way from last week's 'P-Day' declaration, but it's been a total culture shock going from one extreme to the other in the last week and I felt compelled to share it with you - whether you like it or not. You got knob gags and bodily fluids as well, what more do you want? Shesh.

Just the one comment to thank and that's to another Anonymous. Thank you, whoever you are. I was starting to get worried there weren't gonna be any! Come on, why not join the party - you'll be glad you came. Until next time.