In Medway he built rafts and drew pictures in words when called on to write stories he hadn't got around to doing for months. Now ex-pat reporter Luke Hollands is taking on the world with partner in shoestring living and former Maidstone multi-media queen Anna Stephens. Over the coming weeks he will be posting regular updates on his travels starting with South America and on to Mexico.

• Part Six

Why is it that the moment you start to relax when travelling, and think that things can’t go wrong they always do.

And recently things have gone wrong in a pretty big way, surpassing all past travel upsets including the time a particularly favourite straw hat went missing and even the time a flight was nearly missed because a friend’s passport got jammed in a photocopier.

This blog entry was meant to be about our amazing journey from Peru’s mysterious Nazca lines to its bustling capital Lima. We’d already planned to tell you about taking the flight over the ancient markings in the desert, and when Anna, petrified of flying, asked the pilot how long he had been doing his job and he replied 30 minutes.

It was only later we found out he was confused with the journey time and had actually been flying for 15 years. We were also going to mention German fruit loop Eric Von Dannekin who thought the mystery markings were created by aliens - definitely a few cabbages short of a decent sauerkraut.

However it wasn’t long after the Nazca Lines that our adventure became less Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark, and more Indiana Jones and the Missing Body Part.

To tell you about our trials and tribulations, which by the way involve blood and gore, an operation, and plenty of bodily fluids, we’re going to tell you in two halves, giving you both perspectives. So here we go…

LUKE

Things started to go wrong shortly after a very drunken visit to an illegal gay party. We had said goodbye to the group of friends we had been travelling with by drinking until 6am and dancing to what seemed like the world’s biggest record collection of cheesy Latino music.

It was the next day when Anna still had excruciating stomach pains, that I thought something might be wrong. When she didn’t enjoy the stack of hangover-busting junk food I bought her for lunch I knew something was very wrong.

The trouble was it was Sunday and despite my best efforts to call a doctor, every one I tried had turned their phone off.

As the pains got worse I realised this was something that couldn’t wait for the start of the working week.

After an interesting display of miming, belly rubbing and face pulling at the hotel receptionist, who I thought only spoke Spanish, she made a call which sounded promising, before saying in perfect English: “A doctor will be here shortly Mr Hollands.”

The relief was short lived. I was about to tell the receptionist to call an ambulance when the wheezing, doddery old bloke who I thought was about to die in the hotel lobby stopped me and introduced himself as the much anticipated doctor we had been waiting for.

I say he introduced himself, he kind of did, the fact he couldn‘t speak English didn‘t really help. Also he literally looked like he’d just stumbled off the set of Dad’s Army.

As I led him upstairs to poor bed ridden Anna I half expected him to tell me we were doomed - in Spanish of course. His examination lasted all of 10 seconds, in fact it took him longer to write the prescription and a $60 bill for his services.

Things worsened when he left. Anna confessed his examination, which had involved a quick prod and poke of her stomach, had been excruciating. After some quick advice from my Mum, a nurse, we decided casualty was the best place for Anna, who had all the symptoms of acute appendicitis.

The next problem of course was where to go. After a brief look at the guide book I picked a random hospitable and lied to Anna that it said it was the best in the country, to try and make her less nervous.

When we jumped in a cab it turned out I had picked the only hospital the cabbie hadn’t heard of. This certainly made for an interesting journey which involved me shouting a lot, the driver stopping for directions and Anna being sick in a carrier bag.

If someone had had a camera to capture the moment we eventually burst through the hospital doors the shot would have been priceless.

Under one arm I was carrying a screaming Anna and under the other hung bags of sick, I kicked the hospital door open and ran in shouting, “very infimra, very infirma!” The receptionist, staring at me open mouthed, called for a doctor and within seconds Anna was drugged up and in bed being taken care of.

It looked like the hospital was going to be a good one after all. In fact I later found out it probably was the best hospital in Peru, and was run by an American company and employed American trained staff. We also had one of the best doctors in Peru looking after us, a cheery guy called Dr Castro who spoke brilliant English and had a wicked sense of humour.

It took three days of tests and immense worrying before we found out the reason for the pain. After three days of sitting by Anna’s bedside not sleeping and wearing the same clothes I had taken a cab back to our hotel for a wash and brush up. I returned to find Dr Castro telling Anna he was going to rush her into surgery with suspected appendicitis.

That afternoon was probably one of the most worried I have spent in my life, if they had served booze at the hospital canteen I probably would have ordered a stiff drink. Was she going to be ok? Was surgery safe in Peru? And what about Castro? He had talked to me about his penchant for the throat-burning Peruvian tipple Pisco and I had noticed earlier that day his hands were more than a bit shaky. I half hoped he’d had a stiff drink to steady them up.

I think the amount of cups of coffee I drank while Anna was in surgery probably reached double figures, and the operation only took an hour. But it was something to take my mind off things.

When the smiling Dr Castro finally emerged from the operating theatre in his surgical scrubs he told me the operation had been a big success and Anna was just recovering. After a round of phone calls to family back home I breathed a big sigh of relief.

The next few days were spent in hospital recovering. Dr Castro came round each morning to see how things were going. The day after the operation he said he had had dinner with his good English friend the Anglican Bishop of Peru who told him he would pray for Anna’s speedy recovery. It must have done the trick, either that or the copious amounts of antibiotics they were pumping into her, because soon after that she was discharged.

It was then I nearly said a little prayer myself, which would have been something along the lines of thank God for travel insurance. If we had wondered why the hospital was so clean, the equipment so new and the staff so efficient we found the answer on the bill for the medical fees - there were 10,000 reasons why the hospital was so good, and each one had the queens head on it, yep 10k in pounds sterling. Thank God for the NHS too. Our hospitals might not be as clean and efficient as that Peruvian wonder hospital but at that price virtually no one in Peru could afford to pay, apart from tourists, foreign workers and the richest of the rich. Dr Castro told us there was some state health provision but that it was terrible and hardly accessible. If a poor Peruvian came to a private hospital for treatment they would be booted out. In very rare circumstance, ie if they were seconds from death, they would be allowed in for brief treatment, and then would be kicked out as soon as possible.

We had plenty of time to ponder that sobering thought as we spent two weeks eating room service and watching bad TV in a hotel while Anna recovered. We also had time to ponder our next destination. I’m not sure whether it was our desire to have some strong booze, fried food or dancing, but Mexico seemed to tick all the boxes. And so we decided to set off for the land of Speedy Gonzales and big hats.

ANNA

By the time we reached Lima the stabbing pains in my stomach which had been building up for the last month were getting hard to ignore, as were the frequent loo trips for which even the strongest immodium was no match.

It was time to stop blaming Peruvian vodka (of which there was plenty) the dodgy soup fed to us by our native families when we had visited Lake Titicaca (again, sadly there was plenty) or the nerves from flying over the Nazca lines in something akin to a paper aeroplane. It was time to call the doctor.

So out he came to give me a thorough check over and diagnose the Peruvian parasite which I had already nicknamed Frank in anticipation of his discovery.

Actually no such testing occurred, all I got was an extremely painful prod in the stomach and a prescription of antibiotics, which I accepted suspiciously.

As soon as the doctor was out the door I did what every good journalist would do and wikipediad the pills he had prescribed, only to read “to be used as a last resort in life threatening illnesses.”

No gracias.

It was time to take matters into my own hands. Some of the pains felt suspiciously hunger like and I decided that the discomfort could well be a result of my stomach eating itself (just call me Doctor Stephens). Luke was dispatched to get me a Bembos (A Peruvian McDonalds) which I swallowed in three bites. Suffice to say I think that will be my last ever Bembos, it stayed in my stomach about as long as it took me to eat it.

By that evening I had taken a serious turn for the worse, and not wanting to disturb my mum from a Tina Turner gig at the O2 we got Luke’s mum, a nurse, on the phone for a free consultation direct from Medway NHS. What a service.

Possible appendicitis was the diagnosis and so I was bundled in a cab and taken to hospital. The only slight hitch was that no one knew where the hospital was. Imagine the scene in a film where someone’s about to have a baby in the back of the car and you’ll have the right idea. I was screaming at the man to go faster and Luke was handing out cash in exchange for “more rapido hombre” and the poor flustered cabbie had to stop every two minutes for directions from people who kept pointing us back the way we’d come.

Fortunately there was no seven hour wait in A & E when Luke finally stumbled up the hospital steps with me under one arm and a bag containing my recently ejected lunch in the other. I was rushed into a room and hooked up to an intravenous drip within seconds of our arrival.

I had three nurses to hold back my hair while I was throwing up, another to take my temperature, blood pressure and pulse and to start pumping me full of antibiotics. Within an hour I’d been given a full tomography (akin to a CT scan) had my blood tested and been given an ultrasound. The diagnosis: acute gastroenteritis. The severe pain: gas! I was mortified, could I really have ended up in hospital with wind?

My embarrassment intensified when the doctor arrived. The shock of being pumped full of drugs and anti nausea medication had stopped me from throwing up and going to the toilet, my blood test had come back normal. I was showing no outward symptoms even though I felt like there were sledge hammer wielding monsters in my stomach. The doctor looked at me kindly and said “do you normally feel pain quite easily?” Well I hadn’t thought so until now thank you very much! A quick ‘help me’ glance at Luke ensured a similarly negative response. Clearly disbelieving me but being too nice to say so the doctor said I should stay for the night because I was very dehydrated.

Ensuite bathroom, my own TV, a little cot for Luke to sleep in, it was all pretty luxury for a hospital in a third world country. No mud huts and dirty knives here.

The next day I’d taken a turn for the worse, the blood test was worse, the scans were worse. I was injected with more solution and given another tomography, my second in 12 hours. According to a reliable source you could wait days for one on the NHS.

Unfortunately there was still no diagnosis. The doctor did finally believe there was something wrong though. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased about that or not but I decided on the latter, I was in agony and demanding pain medication as often as they’d give it to me.

The third day dawned and the doctor and Luke both looked worried. It was time to call the specialist. I was wheeled down to theatre at three o’clock in the afternoon, only one hour after the specialist and the doctor decided they needed to operate on my appendix.

I asked the doctor before we went into theatre how many appendixes he’d taken out and he said “well this is my first one so I really hope you survive!” Couldn’t you sue for something like that in England?! Fortunately just before I headed off to sleep he whispered that he’d done more than 3,000 operations, it gave me more peaceful dreams.

The next couple of hours were undoubtably more stressful for Luke, and for my family at home wondering why I wasn’t out of theatre yet, than they were for me. My only memory of the rest of the day is waking up in the lift on the way back to my room. I asked Luke whether I still had all my organs and he shook his head.

Although it was his 3,000th operation I felt rather proud to be the first case Dr Castro had seen of its kind, my appendix had managed to grow into my bowel, and had been infected for so long that it was all the way up to my ribcage. Must be something in the Peruvian water!

I took an immediate turn for the better once the offending item was removed, and Luke, bless him, finally got some sleep. I was let out a week later as good as new.

I cannot praise highly enough the fantastic nurses who showered me, changed my sheets and scubbed my room to within an inch of its life, sometimes more than once a day. The technology in the hospital was state-of-the-art and offered out freely, and the doctors were highly trained professionals. The bill – a neat £10,000. Fortunately I had travel insurance which covered the lot.

Would I have rather been treated there than on the NHS? Yes, probably. But when we drove home past the Peruvian general hospital which had broken windows, grimy hallways, and hundreds of people waiting to be seen I thought how lucky we are to have good free healthcare for those not lucky enough to get an insurance windfall.

So I’m fully recovered now and ready for the next leg of our trip in Mexico....think my stomach’s strong enough for some tequila by now....

*******

BLOG-BREAK

We're awaiting the latest missive from our global travelling Medway ex-pats. The last we heard they were heading in the general direction of Mexico. It's been a dramatic time for them with poor Anna literally leaving part of herself in South America after suffering a rather painful bout of appendicitis. More on that and other reasons on why it's much safer in Strood soon [we hope].

• Part Five

Peru is an archaeologists dream. Everywhere you go there are remnants of the mighty Inca empire. And nowhere more so is this true than of the beautiful colonial town of Cusco. Cusco is the longest continuously inhabited town in the whole Americas.

The street layout was set by the Incas more than 500 years ago and is unchanged. Virtually every building is built on top of original Inca foundations. It is truly amazing.

Cusco was our welcome base for a week as we explored Southern Peru. Before we engrossed ourselves too deeply in the local Inca architecture (and the brilliant bars, clubs and restaurants.) we caught a plane into the Amazon rainforest for a jungle adventure.

Arriving in the small Amazonian town of Puerto Maldonado we boarded a small wooden boat and journeyed deep into the rainforest to an eco-friendly lodge surrounded by jungle flora and fauna.

All around us was life. Monkeys climbed through the trees, Parrots screeched at our arrival and somewhere lurking in the watery jungle swamps were crocodile-like Cayman and Anacondas we were told.

Also there were Mosquitoes, tons of the bloody things, buzzing and biting all over the place. Luckily our tropical-strength insect repellent held out and we survived almost bite free. Although we didn’t escape creepy-crawly encounters that easily.

On our second day at the lodge, while resting in hammocks and sipping cocktails, the rain pouring outside, we were slightly more than shocked to look up and find that three giant tarantulas had also decided to shelter from the rain in the straw roof right above our heads.

We were out of the hammocks like a shot and back to the safety of the lodge bar - but only after we had taken some snaps of the incident of course.

The highlight of the jungle trip was by far feeding bananas to wild monkeys. There were monkeys of all sizes, including very cute, fluffy, baby ones, clinging to their mum’s backs and reaching out for our fruit offerings.

With the memory of the monkeys still fresh in our minds we boarded a boat in torrential rain and were soaked through by the time we reached the airport for our journey back to Cusco.

With our jungle adventure complete we were ready to explore one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites - the abandoned city of Macchu Picchu.

After two days journeying from Cusco and after very little sleep we awoke at 4.30am to make the final steps to Macchu Picchu.

Even the lengthy queue for a bus to the World Heritage Site in the cold and the rain was more than made up for by the view that greeted us as we stepped through the ticket booth and into the ruined city.

Macchu Picchu is breathtaking. A vast, sprawling stone city built on the top of a rocky pinnacle in the clouds. Adding to the wow factor is the mystery that surrounds the complex.

No one knows why it was built, no one knows what it was used for and no one really knows why it was abandoned in 1537. Everything from disease, war and aliens has been used to answer each of these questions.

When American archaeologist Hiram Bingham stumbled across the site in 1911 he was blown away by its size, how intact it was and by the treasure it contained.

He and his team found hundreds of mummies adorned with gold trinkets. Macchu Picchu has remained a cash cow ever since. Millions of tourists visit the city every year, bringing in plenty of dosh for the Peruvian government.

Thankfully our early arrival that day paid off and we were rewarded with a coveted ticket to climb to some more ruins, high up on a nearby peak.

Only the first 400 visitors out of the tens of thousands who arrive each day are given this privilege. Although privilege might not be the correct word.

The unbelievably steep climb involves almost sheer rock faces at times and even more sheer drops of hundreds of metres, but the view from the top was well worth it. Macchu Picchu was spread out below us in all its glory as were the surrounding forests and waterfalls. The view left us speechless and silent as we made our way back down, stunned by the beauty of our surroundings.

Could anything else in Peru beat this experience? We were to find out on our journey to the capital Lima, which took in a desert adventure, Condors and of course the mysterious Nazca Lines.

• Part Four

The first thing you realise when you arrive in La Paz is that they obviously don’t own a CCTV Smart Car. Vehicles park anywhere and drive anywhere, traffic lights are not obeyed, pedestrians are ignored and horns are used liberally. It is certainly an assault on the senses. As is the smog and pollution. Being in the world’s highest capital makes it pretty hard to breath anyway, without the foul smelling exhaust fumes of thousands of clapped out motors making it worse.

We were torn between two dare devil trips in La Paz, either bike the world’s most dangerous road, which is responsible for hundreds of deaths a year, or to go to visit one of the world’s most dangerous prisons, which is also responsible for tons of deaths a year.

We opted for the prison, thinking it was safer. We were wrong.

San Pedro prison is a mad house. The prisoners run it completely themselves and pay the guards to turn a blind eye. It’s actually illegal to go in but you pay off the prisoners and they show you round – the guards pretend you’re not really there and don’t check bags.

Prisoners carry guns, knives, and copious amounts of drugs which they try to make you buy.

We were shown round by a chain-smoking Portugese drug runner called Luiz Phillip who looked like something out of the Godfather and was twice as hard. We were given two body guards – also prisoners serving time for drugs and murder, very reassuring.

Luiz Phillip tried to reassure us we were safe by telling us that at one time 20 people were killed in the prison a week, including visitors, but now it’s only a few a month. The problem is that life on the outside is almost worse than life on the inside, so many inmates want to stay in for as long as possible. Killing someone earns them just one extra year inside, so they may as well kill a few.

When after a few intense hours of a tour, in which we met rapists and murderers, we thought it was time to leave we were very much mistaken.

We were taken to a cell and locked in with two burly men standing guard by the entrance.

Luiz Phillip then brought out copious amounts of cocaine, which he tried to get us to buy. When we refused he tried to get us to give him money so he could bribe the guards to release him. They let us get away with a ten quid tip and an apology. We made our break for freedom and got out of that prison as fast as our legs could carry us.

Time for something a little more sedate, how about a weekend break on Lake Titicaca?

As a bit of an adventure we decided to arrange for a stay with a local family on one of Lake Titicaca’s many islands. Catching a boat across the world’s highest navigable lake was certainly relaxing. Perched on the roof of the small vessel we watched as reed island after reed island drifted by. These floating bundles of reeds are home to whole communities who live on them with their animals and even manage to grow veg. They probably wouldn’t pass a Medway Council planning meeting but they seemed quite sturdy and safe.

Arriving at a more solid natural island we were met by the local community, all desperate to put us up for a night. A young looking girl who we found out was called Erica said her mother would be more than happy to look after us, and so we set off to make the long climb to the top of the rocky, mountainous island to her house.

We arrived to find a roaring stove and a cup of mint tea waiting for us as well as our “Mum” for the night Elisabetta and her small sons Saul and John-Brett. Little John-Brett, aged only four, took an instant liking to us, wanting to hold hands and have a hug. He was even more excited when he discovered we had brought the family a football as a present and ran out to their small garden to play with his brother as soon as he got his hands on it.

That afternoon saw a football match of a slightly different nature. The local islanders challenged their guests to a game on their concrete five-a-side pitch. A scratch team of Spaniards, English and Australians was picked (including us) and we set about our challenge. All was fine at the start, but then the natives’ secret weapon kicked in - The altitude. Playing a slogging match on concrete at 4000m is probably one of the most tiring things ever. After 45 minutes or so our side had completely given up and we settled for losing 5 - 4 to the local side. But the physical exertion didn’t end there. That night the guests on the island were invited to the town hall for a dance. A group of locals had got together with a drum, guitar and pan pipes as a band and wanted to entertain us. It was made very clear we had to go to the dance properly dressed, so men were handed woolly hats and ponchos while the women donned bum enhancing voluminous skirts and shawls.

A dance we thought, not very hard. Little did we realise the native dances lasted at least 15 minutes and required plenty of energy.

When we eventually made it to bed that night we were well and truly shattered and drifted off to sleep. If only we had known what the boat ride back held for us we might not have slept so soundly.

Boarding the tiny vessel the next morning we noticed the lake was more than a little bit choppier than the day before. As we set off the boat began to pitch and roll wildly, there were screams, scared faces and more than a few queasy passengers. As we journeyed along it only got worse. People began throwing up.

By the time we arrived at the Peruvian side of the lake we were more grateful to get off the boat than we have been to get off anything in our lives. But before we could explore the Inca treasures of Peru we had to wait a few days to get our land-legs back.

*******

• Part Three

Wow. The Bolivian salt flats took our breath away. Not only because of their sheer enormity, and because of their dizzyingly high altitude, but also because we were travelling across them with too many people crammed into our four-by-four.

We were also a bit giddy from the night before when we had stayed in a salt hotel. The salt hotel is Bolivia’s answer to Lapland’s ice hotel, everything is made of salt. The floor is ground salt, the walls are salt blocks, the beds are made of salt, the tables and chairs are made of salt, literally everything (but not the toilet, which was a bit disappointing). The giddiness probably came from licking the walls, something that everyone does, to prove the hotel is made from salt. Trust us, it’s pretty salty, and pretty grubby.

When you arrive on the salt flats all you can see for hundreds of miles is flat, white salt, stretching almost to infinity. It is completely disorientating, there are no land marks and there is no perspective. Even under the ground the salt stretches metres and metres deep, the result of a ocean drying up millions of years ago. It is probably the most bizarre landscape on earth, which lends itself nicely to a photo session. The lack of perspective allows you to create crazy snaps that appear to show people climbing out of wine bottles, leaning on guide books or being crushed under someone’s enormous looking foot.

Hundreds of pictures, some sunburn, two flat tyres and a bumpy ride later saw us arrive in a town called Uyuni. Uyuni’s main claim to fame is that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid once stayed there, and they have a collection of rusting Victorian trains, which they say were shot up by the famous bandits. We staged our own mock shoot out by running along the roofs of the rusty machines, some of which were almost as decrepit as those in use from Medway to London. That was about all there was to do in Uyuni, so the next day we left for the mining town of Potosi.

The bus to Potosi was a bit of a disappointment after the luxury we’d been used to in Chile and Argentina – the kind which has to be sprayed twice with air freshener before it’s reasonably safe to get on, and the kind where you can’t put your feet on the floor because it’s awash with foul smelling urine.

Things took a bit of a down turn when one of the roads we came to, if you can call a dirt track a road, was flooded. Our clever driver decided to take an off road short cut. Suffice to say he got the bus stuck in the mud. Now what could have been quite easily resolved with a spade and a few rocks quickly turned into a complete fiasco as the impatient driver kept revving until all the wheels and the exhaust were completely buried. We spent the next two hours sitting around while he tried to dig us out with a pick axe until finally a JCB driver arrived to help....or so we thought.

The clever individual thought it would be a good idea to tie the tow rope on to the plastic front bumper. Of course when he pulled away he took off the entire front of the bus, radiator and all. It was all quite funny for us, particularly when a six year old kid pulled out a screw driver and started trying to fix all the wires that were hanging out. The humour ended when they made us get back on the bus. Ended up being a pretty hairy journey to Potosi.

Potosi used to be the world’s most wealthy town, due to the Conquistadors’ discovery of silver. The majority of silver in the royal households of Europe was mined by slave labour in Potosi. The Spanish invaders forcing the once proud Incas under ground in treacherous conditions to blast and cut rock rich in the precious metal. Hundreds of thousands died in the deep dark tunnels. Which may be one reason they turned to worshipping the Devil. Each mine has an effigy of a horned, goat like beast which they placate with offerings of booze and fags.

The deposits of silver in Potosi are so vast they are being still being mined today, more than 400 years since work began. The worrying thing is, working conditions have barely changed. Most of the work is still done by hand and death and injury is common. Most miners can expect to die before their mid forties.

Wondering what these hellish conditions were really like we booked ourselves on to a tour of the mines. Tour guide Jonny used to be a miner until he learned English and became a guide. It probably saved his life. Jonny explained that before we entered the mines we had to buy presents for the miners, so we were taken to a market and sold a miners goody bag, containing everything they love. Inside were hundreds of Coca leaves, the plant that is refined into Cocaine, chewing the bitter green stuff gives you a buzz and keeps you working. There was also 96 per cent proof alcohol, basically white spirit, which was not to clean their shovels but to get them so drunk they wouldn’t care about risking death every day and there were some very rough hand rolled cigarettes, rolled with paper that was almost as thick as card. Basically a good night out in Chatham.

Jonny also let us buy something a bit more deadly, a stick of dynamite, which he gleefully lit and threw at us to hold before he lobbed it and it exploded, destroying a small heap of freshly mined rock and shaking the mud hut houses to their foundations.

As we ventured underground it was clear this was not a trip for claustrophobics. The walls were narrow and the tunnel roof only a few feet high. It was wet, and hot because of the lack of ventilation and fresh air. We had to turn back a few times because of rock falls and flooding. Needless to say after an hour of crawling in the darkness we were very relieved to be back in the sunshine and took advantage of it for a few days before we headed to Bolivia’s bustling capital - La Paz.

******

• Part Two

Arriving in the Chilean capital Santiago you would be forgiven for wondering where South America has gone. Tall sky scrapers meet with eight-lane highways, burger and chips is the favoured meal and the bar lined streets are more like Rochester High Street on a Friday night. Well, a Rochester High Street populated only by short men with slicked-back hair and moustaches who all want to show you a good time in their club.

We didn’t stay in Santiago long, instead we travelled to the beautiful small coastal town La Serena and met up with a tour going north to make the off-road crossing into Bolivia.

On paper our group seemed pretty glamorous, two writers (us), a designer, Nick, and his actress wife George, photographer Kate and brilliantly camp tour guide and professional party animal Todd. Of course in reality Todd was the only one employed, the rest of us had all made the same decision to give up our jobs and shelter from the credit crunch and doom-and-gloom ridden England on foreign shores.

As always when meeting a new group of people the question “Where are you from?” came up, leading to the usual charade of “…it’s not one town but a collection of towns, it’s famous for the Chav, the Historic Dockyard and Dickens, it has a League Two football side, any guesses?” This, as per usual, drew a blank. Even the council’s Medway 2012 spiel about being 40 minutes from London on the train and having an unbuilt Olympic training facility didn’t work. Instead we settled for coming from Kent.

Our arrival in La Serena happily enough coincided with Kate’s birthday so we decided to start the drinking early. Half a dozen bottles of wine and some extra strong cocktails later found the six of us, and four other random locals crammed into a small beaten up old Peugeot on our way to a dodgy out-of-town Chilean club. If that wasn’t strange enough a few hours (5am) later saw us skinny-dipping in the Pacific. The poor confused Chileans who accompanied us remained on the beach and very kindly folded our clothes, which we had left strewn across the sand in something akin to a Gills goal celebration as we had made a mad nude dash for the water. We were still hungover two days later when we headed north for the mining town of Antofagasta, which if you were wondering, is as dire as it sounds.

Antofagasta used to be part of Bolivia until Chile, aided by Britain, captured the mineral rich desert port and landlocked Bolivia, something the Bolivians are still a bit peeved about. This former industrial town used to be bustling with sailors and traders, it was of naval importance and attracted global attention, now however its docks have fallen quiet and its streets are lined with bookies and the Chilean equivalent of pound shops. Remind you of anywhere closer to home?

Thankfully Antofagasta was no more than a stopover for us as we journeyed north to the frontier pueblo of San Pedro. San Pedro looks like the set for a Spaghetti Western. It’s a two street town where people still ride horses and (probably) carry six-shooters. Deciding to fit in we purchased some suitably cowboy-like hats, strapped on some leather chaps and took to the saddle for a horse ride across the Atacama desert. This was a bit different to previous pony rides across Capstone Country Park, especially when our so called tranquil steeds decided they wanted to be race horses and galloped in the direction of some prickly looking cacti. Thankfully the experience only left us a little saddle sore, allowing us to partake in San Pedro’s other speciality, illegal midnight desert raves.

That night again found 10 of us crammed into a stranger’s car, this time however we were driving to an apparently secret location for a fire-side party. We arrived to find a strange hippy collective of jugglers, Rastafarian-wannabes and bongo players all dancing to a strange mix of Reggae and Europop. Despite the soundtrack the night was amazing, not only for the perfect view of the unpolluted star-strewn night sky, but also for the hair-raising ride to the hotel at 6am in the back of a speeding pick-up truck with 16 other people. A brilliant night to say goodbye to Chile before making the hallucination-inducing crossing of the world‘s largest salt flats to Bolivia.

*********

• Part One

It’s a terrible cliché but time certainly does fly when you’re having fun. It only seems like yesterday that stories of school fetes and council meetings were the order of the day.

But that was more than a month ago, before our esteemed editor received two brown envelopes on his desk telling him we planned to quit our jobs as reporters and travel the world.

Of course being irreplaceable he begged us to stay, but the lure of the globe was far too strong.

After a hurried round of boozey leaving dos, slurred speeches and some thieving from the KM stationery cupboard we found ourselves in our first port of call, sun-scorched Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Maybe it was the pasty skin from living on the Medway Riviera or the thick winter clothes suitable for the freezing chill of Kent in winter but as soon as we left the air conditioned airport and stepped into the 40 degree heat we were subject to our first scam.

Some eagle-eyed cab driver with a radar for pale skin and travellers’ rucksacks decided to charge three times the regular amount for the short cab ride to our hotel. It even made a minicab-ride home from a night out in Rochester seem cheap, but after a 28 hour flight - spread across two days - anything seemed worth paying to get to a hotel room with a shower.

If we had known the condition of the hotel room before we arrived I doubt we would have been so eager to get there in a hurry. A rickety bed sat on rough floor boards in a single room with a tiny wardrobe covered in graffiti.

You could probably find better furniture in a Gillingham charity shop. Luckily the bustling streets, steak restaurants and Tango bars kept us from spending too long trapped between those four walls.

For five days we wandered the city’s streets, roaming among the coloured houses of the Boca district, admiring the rose coloured government palace where Evita spoke to the people and the rows of castle-like tombs where she is buried.

After eating a few too many cheese and beef stuffed empanadas we decided it was time to set off to a new destination, and where better to go than Argentina’s biggest wine producing town - Mendoza - in the foothills of the Andes.

Arriva take note - the Argentines certainly know how to do busses. Expecting to board a ramshackle old jalopy we couldn’t believe it when we climbed aboard a sleek looking coach to find sumptuous leather seats that folded into beds, a selection of the latest films to watch and a menu that strangely included a huge lasagne with ham, a dish of rice and cheese slices, and a tub of custard, washed down with near enough unlimited lemonade. It was almost a shame to arrive.

Mendoza is home to thousands of acres of prime vine-growing land. Picturesque family bodegas nestle among commercial wineries so large that grape-laden vines stretch from the foreground to the horizon.

Liking a drop or two we booked ourselves on to a wine tour. Thinking our phrasebook Spanish would suffice we booked on to a non-English speaking tour.

It didn’t take us long to realise that we couldn’t understand a word the super fast talking guide was saying, or anything the other people in the group were saying. As the day wore on it was clear we were way out of our depth, until lunchtime at the Familia Zucchardi vineyard that was.

We knew it was going to be a good lunch when we were faced with three huge wine glasses each on the table. People began to sit down, weary after a morning wandering among vines. The Argentines sat at one end of the table, we at the other.

Then the wine began to flow, two glasses of white before the starters of bread, olives and salad, another white with the starter. Then more wine as a second starter of deliciously spicy blood sausage was served. Then on to the red as the vegetarian nightmare of a main was served flame grilled steak, pork, and chicken.

The vino continued to flow as we tucked into our stacks of meat and as it did our fellow guests came to life. There was one middle-aged guy in particular who decided it was time to bring us into the conversation.

He started with a series of toasts to fellow guests. We were encouraged to join in each time, and received a drunken round of applause when we did.

Then he began smashing glasses, his hands flailing about as he gesticulated wildly while telling very loud stories in Spanish. Each one seemed to end with a crash and a tinkle.

When he realised we were English he decided it was time to toast the Queen, England, and us.

This went on until our guide, who by this time was getting a bit miffed by the broken glass on the floor and the racket coming from our corner of the restaurant tried to drag him and the rest of us back on the homeward bound bus.

When we recovered from our hangovers a few days later, we decided it was probably best to leave this gout-inducing pueblo behind and cross the Andes mountains for the thin sliver of land on the pacific that is Chile. (Which consequently is also a rather good wine producing country.)