Untitled No.1

Hello there. I join you from Arica, oop north, like. Had a pretty amazing time in San Pedro, mooched around the desert, you know, hither and yon, and so forth, saw sunset on the Andes which was charming, saw the geysers and bathed in the hot thermal pools which was most relaxing. Although the serenity was spoiled somewhat by the large gang of brightly coloured and loud Dutch that happened to be there at the time. That´s the problem with San Pedro. Unless you are loaded, you have to go on organised tours with other punters and, as we all know, other people are baaad. Mind you, my tour people were pretty good & the groups weren´t big. Oh I saw some llamas and vicuñas and that. Then, um...what did I do...ah yes, had another mooch high up on t´altiplano, saw the very boootiful blooo lagooons and saw some not very interesting Indian villages. You know, the usual sort of thing. All fun. Ate like a fatty in the town which, presumably because of all the tourists, has pretty good restaurants. San Pedro good then, although I would probably avoid it at high season, so many Germans and Americans and Brits and French - now I´m as fond of the French as the next man, but there were gangs, mobs of them, everywhere I went, it was like a Napoleonic Army. And I will have my Waterloo. Ha ha, no, not really, they were charming.

Met various other nice people, including some Brits with an even weaker grasp of Spanish than me which made me feel very superior, casting my "holas" and "muchas gracias" about with insouciance. In fact, I seem to be at the top of the class when it comes to other Brits speaking Spanish. Every other nation seems to have managed it. Maybe we are the only people who go on holiday to places where we can´t speak the lingo? Surely not.

Arica, well , I don´t know what it´s like yet as I have barely just got here, but I have a feeling I am going to eat some fish. The stars also tell me that I will try and buy a ticket to La Paz and do some more mooching. I wonder if they´ll prove right again?

BEARD UPDATE: No significant progress although, unsurprisingly, combined with my sunglasses, it makes me look like a pervert. It´s quite itchy too. I´m looking forward to catching some runny egg in it at some point and walking around without realising.

As yet, haven´t had access to a sophisticated enough computer to upload photos so may try and do that in La Paz. Will let you know if/when I manage it.

Hope everyone is well.