We Made It....

From the pagoda  at Kew to the pagoda in Waichow - for those of you who got our Christmas card - full circle! Walking to Waichow? Well, not quite - though we think we did 60-70 miles on foot over the 7 days,  while also taking advantage of buses, taxis, tuk tuks, motorbike taxis and bicycles when the roads were just too grim or the way Pop walked had disappeared under the building frenzy that is China today.

Let me introduce - and thank - the Walking Party:

Tim, without whose patient deciphering of old war maps of China in tandem with the written accounts - and using detective skills in turning old phonetic Cantonese into modern written Mandarin - none of us would have been able to retrace the route so accurately - and for his whole-hearted support for an idea I got while transcribing my Pop's diary that we should do the same journey;

Francoise, our Cheung Chau friend for many years and a keen walker who had signed up for the trip before we decided to do it - supplier of dried fruit and with a good (French) nose for a hidden path; 

And Serene - our new friend and truly invaluable fixer, translator, unfailingly cheerful Cantonese, Mandarin and - most important - Hakka speaker who opened doors that might otherwise have remained shut (thanks Duncan H, for the Jack Ma contact!!);

To the families of Ron Ashby, Alexander Kennedy, David Legge, David MacDougall, Ted Ross, Buddy Hide and Chan Chak for their generous sharing of their parents' records;

Thanks also to Russ for his feedback on his own trip,  to SJ for his waistcoat and everyone else who helped us see  a long-held ambition finally become reality ... 

Having been seen off on Christmas morning by Dan and got the train to Shenzhen and bus to Namou,   where the escapers landed,  we went in search of Koutit, the tiny village just up in the hills where they spent the first day hiding ... only to be told it was now under a reservoir.   (note from Tim, at risk of being a pedant: it's  Nanao and Gaotie in mandarin  but we'll stick for now to the slightly eccentric  Cantonese spellings used on the escapers' original map  that we put up on the blog earlier).    We did find a  semi abandoned village nearby which an older Hakka woman we were introduced to (who was from Koutit) said was similar - she remembered Japanese atrocities but unfortunately not any British escapees. We walked up a little path to see the reservoir, then back to Namou as the sun set pinkly over Pingchau - always very clearly visible from this coast.  An elderly man showed us how Namou used to be configured,  with the original fishing village at one end and farming village at the other, both now set back from the new, reclaimed waterfront behind a line of modern blocks of flats and hotels - 

Below  is the harbour itself,  where they scuttled their motor torpedo boats and came ashore, piling up their stores on what was then a lovely beach... 

It's still a busy fishing port and a popular holiday resort in the summer with lots of dried seafood stalls. We attempted to make our way  along the coast, as the escapers did after venturing out by night from their hiding place in the hills. This proved quite a challenge and very slow going in places with a lot of rock scrambling as there's been massive development along the beachfront with private beaches barring the way...we persevered with the help of an offshore fisherman who pointed 'up' 'down' and 'forward' helpfully when we stood completely baffled as to whether to retrace our steps or attempt to hack our way forward. 

One of our trickier moments - in the end we decided against the ladder...there was quite a fall below!

We finally struck inland to Wang Mu and found the Kuan Yin temple being energetically restored and enlarged 

 we also found a fortune teller 

 who had heard tell of the Hong Kong party spending the night on the temple floor. We spent our night rather less peacefully  in the old town, just across the flyover, in a hotel which (like the previous night's one in Namoa)  featured a nightclub with very loud karaoke....the fortune teller omitted to mention that Francoise would be run down by a motorbike on our way out to dinner; although the bicycle has given way to the motorbike and car in China,  traffic manners haven't altered to accept there might be more danger in disobeying road signs.  I'm glad to say she was only bruised and the offender was extremely apologetic.... 

On the 27th we visited Da Peng Suo Sheng - the old fortress and former HQ of the guerillas/bandits/pirates and a lovely example of an old walled city which has become a living museum. Not a single tourist there though (we didn't see another foreigner the whole week) -  and well worth including on next year's agenda.

Then a rather frustrating time trying to find the start of the mountain path - we eventually tracked down the beginning of the second ridge (near Kingsam) only to run into the reservoir police who are not at all keen that we attempt it and try to put us off with stories of snakes, impassable growth and the fact that no one has done it 'for a very long time'.

Serene works her magic and we get an introduction to a local bee keeper from the same police.  He looks pretty much like a bandit guerilla himself AND strikes a hard bargain,  but he eventually agrees to lead us over the mountains  tomorrow. We'll need 9 hours, plenty of food and water and he'll need a second man to help him hack through the jungle......

We turned up bright and early the next day to find Mr Chan from HK - the son of one of the East River guerillas - who had decided that as our fathers had walked these routes together we should too.   

 By chance he and I both had our 'Good Morning' towels in true HK style.. Mr Lee the bandit/bee keeper meanwhile offers us his winter honey-water (delicious) and turns out to be the grandson of one of the KMT soldiers who dynamited the hills in this area to stop the Japanese advance. So almost all the various groups are represented and we're all quite excited as we set out on what was by general consent the toughest day of the whole escape.

In fact we did it in about 4 hours. A bit of machete work was called for but not much - and no great heights were reached as we passed over the saddle between the two larger mountains.

 It is a lovely walk, though, and again would be well worth doing on next year's bigger re-enactment.   You get a real feel of the sort of trekking they were doing in 1941 and for much of the time  you are actually on the same old stone paths - the route is  true to the original as far as we know and Bee keeper Lee confirmed that,  telling us whenever we did small detours. 

I have to say at this point that a lot of the walking we did later on wasn't as nice as that - sometimes it

 involved going along major highways, feeling quite nervous about the thundering traffic or else plodding along the packed mud of building sites or new roads being constructed in dust and drizzle.  I'm not optimistic we'll find much more of the original route that's walkable. When faced with the horrors of yet another highway or construction site we occasionally tried to strike slightly off-route to find back-streets and  byways - often delightful - coming across old villages with duck ponds and old temples and ancestral halls; but sometimes getting slightly lost and probably covering more ground than strictly necessary.

The old smugglers' path across the mountains comes down to what is now yet another reservoir.  We lunched on top of the dam, just behind the village of Tong Pow where my pop says they had their lunch (Lettuce Village it looked like - I've never seen such neat lettuce beds or so many of them!).

On from there to another village mentioned in the diaries, Ho Shue Ha, where we stopped to make enquiries at  the village cafe (the old blacksmith) - though the only pensioner we found had no memory left. You begin to appreciate just how hard the life of the peasant is in China - even in the comparative wealth of the south. We saw people burdened with loads of vegetables that would earn them very little for so much work - yet, like my Pop and the fellow escapees, we were met almost unfailingly with friendliness, courtesy and an old fashioned hospitality. (And a lot of curiosity!) 

Alison heads off  for a well-earned snooze, leaving Tim to confess that we cheated on the next bit - crossing the river - because we reckoned that if we'd actually waded through it as they did, holding their rifles over their heads, we'd have caught some fairly serious disease. The water is shallower, perhaps, than it was then but is a blackish, bluish grey in colour and sludge-like in consistency. Besides, there's now a bridge.

 Cheun Shue Pow on the other side is an endless mass of huge factories ... in what was described in the escapers' diaries as open moorland. 

  We then came to the part where tensions ran highest of all in 1941 because they had to cross a road that was thick with Japanese soldiers who were garrisoned at the nearby town of Tamshui.   That small country road is now  a six-lane expressway.  In the event,   just as they avoided the Japanese motorcycle patrols, we managed to avoid getting run over by the cement lorries - by the simple means of going under the flyover.  

On then to the orchard near Kopow where the escapers finally bedded down at 2am under the apple trees on a bitterly cold night, after being told by an apologetic Chinese farmer that he couldn't ask them in as he had already been visited three times that day by the Japanese ... who were likely to burn his house down or worse if they found he'd been sheltering members of the British armed forces.

That orchard now appears to be part of the Palm Island Resort, a country club for the sort of people who want to escape from Hong Kong  today (to get away from the office rather than a POW camp). It helps if they can afford  fees running into tens of thousands of dollars. The grounds  include three nine-hole golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus Junior,  using the finest imported Bermuda grass. There's even an assault course to improve leadership skills.  Perfect for Commander Gandy ...   

At Sanhue they rested at the local school - a predecessor of the one where we were very warmly welcomed by a headmaster called Kevin. Through the pass and down a lovely country path to Chanlung, where we spent the night at a hotel that was free of karaoke but had lots of policemen and girls in high heels popping in and out of bedrooms equipped with mahjong tables .... By now our boys in 1941 were seeing Nationalist Chinese troops rather than just guerrillas, and even got to spent the night in the military HQ in the local yamen (magistracy).

We think we may have found that -- we certainly found a fine old Dream of the Red Chamber - type walled compound...and got quite excited by the "Death to the Japanese" slogans on the wall till we realised they dated only from the shooting of a war movie a few years ago.   By now we'd rented bicycles, as that was how many of the escape party completed the final stretch into Waichow. 

  Progress was slowed though -- both then and now-- by large holes in the road.Theirs had been made by the Chinese to stop Japanese tanks and other vehicles; ours were part of the endless building of ever bigger roads,  to encourage more vehicles of every description.

  And so, a final stretch on foot, stopping at a wayside stall, as Colin did, for a bun (or beng) or two.  

Again like them, we mainly lived well off rice and vegetables and green tea. But  they did also have some Navy-style  tins of bully beef. Having failed to bring our own, we persuaded Francoise to overcome her scruples and took her to a McDonald's.

Our final triumphant march through the streets of Waichow didn't quite get the reception of cheers and firecrackers that was accorded the Admiral in his sedan chair and the British sailors in their by now very ragged clothes and marching formations. But we did manage a white ensign of sorts - and a mouth-organ.
We all (It's me again, Alison) loved Waichow and Tim had earmarked a great old Chinese hotel actually on the West Lake, in the centre of what was the old town - we found pockets of old streets with their colonnaded shops gearing up for Chinese New Year and more of the sweetest little tangerines we had been eating  all along the way. My Pop commented on them too! We had our own celebratory banquet with roast suckling pork, salted eggs (to replace the pigeons' eggs) and vegetables in a little restaurant where the owner went off specially to find the roast pork when he'd heard our story....

We spent New Year's Eve morning sorting out all the religious missions with Serene's help before she had to leave us - the tangled web unravelled with the help of Rev. So who we visited (still very much alive)

- Rev.Wong  proudly showed us the photos you'd given them, Russ (signed also by Donald and Duncan Chan) - and we then had a most fortunate encounter with retired Mr Cheung of the People's Hospital as we stood in the former Wai On compound staring at old photos and trying to orientate ourselves...

We ended up with a pretty good mental picture of the Wai On 7th Day Adventist Mission during the war years - with hospital, church and other buildings where the HK escape party were housed (and finally bathed) and which my Pop later frequented in his BAAG days.  The last vestiges - a crumbling building housing the BAAG mess that was visited by Elizabeth Ride just a year or two ago -  had  been removed just a month ago, we were told.  Thank you, Elizabeth, for all the BAAG information you gave us, which helped enormously in Waichow.

There was also the Catholic Mission, based quite nearby, where the new church still flanks the old church (now used for storage and meetings). They also had a hospital in those days, and we were shown where the old Rectory was by a resident nun - it was another BAAG base but is now housing the toilets! Their site - unlike Wai On - appears to have been much reduced in size. It had been a Franciscan order but we couldn't confirm if it still was.

Finally the Baptist Church of the Rev.So -  although a new church building - stands on the site of the earlier Baptist Mission (they had no hospital that we are aware of) and it now represents  3 Protestant churches that used to exist in Waichow.

Of course all these churches had a hard time during the post war years and there's a long gap where any church activity had to be clandestine so it's difficult to find people who hold the links - so what luck to find Mr Cheung!

And so to New Year's Evening in Waichow - Francoise had carefully carried some Cuban rum the whole way so, like my Pop, we were able to bring in the New Year with a tot of rum and some amazing cocktails our hotel had created - even Auld Lang Syne on the banks of the West Lake...

The sharper eyed among you may note that's a bottle of 1999 Great Wall red wine rather than rum and cocktails - this was how our evening started. The local Dragon'8' beer played a part too....but at least we didn't shock the locals by breaking the odd glass as my Pop admitted doing. 
Along the way I thought often of how he and the others must have felt. For him and some of the others based in HK the terrain might have seemed quite familiar - I certainly kept getting flashes of my childhood when we spent days in the New Territories...  For some of the men, there must have been a huge culture clash to go with all the other clashes  (adds Tim finally).  China may have copied us and caught up with us in many ways, but it's still very different and very special and always will be. Meanwhile we have a few more days  here in HK , looking for  anyone else with any information on the escape, since many of those we met on the mainland said this was where their families had tended to move to after the war.

The way to Waichow

So OFF WE GO early on Christmas morning to Nam O ... and on across what we hope are still mountains to Waichow.

Here, so you can get at least some idea of where we are for the next week or so, is a copy of the 1930s British War Office map the escape party used at the time.

Hong Kong and Kowloon, for those who don't know, are just out of sight, down to the bottom left. Hong Kong's most easterly point, Ping Chau island (where I was last week), can be seen just across the bay from Nam O (or Namou or Nan Ao, depending on your dialect and spelling method).

But you may need to zoom in a bit to see the smaller villages where they tended to hole up by day ... and zoom in even more to see us (or possibly switch to google earth).

Before unwrapping presents and packing backpacks simultaneously, we spent Christmas Eve taking a crazy bus ride out past Telegraph Bay (now Cyber City) to Aberdeen and Apleichau - failing to find Japanese machine gun posts on the Ocean Park hillside or motor torpedo boats lurking among the highrises, but succeeding in getting a full tour of the old Industrial School where they got their supplies from the Naval Stores.


For those unfamiliar with the story of the Christmas Day escape so far ... here (below) is a potted version of events leading up to the landing on the mainland (which is where we start our re-enactment, complete with military berets but not sedan chairs like the admiral's).

Or for the full version with all the trimmings turn to Richard's website - see column on right....

The Christmas Escape

Furtively rather than festively adorned with branches - their only protection from the all-powerful Japanese bombers - two of the five Motor Torpedo Boats which were all that remained of Hong Kong's naval defences spent Christmas Day 1941 lying at the Dairy Farm pier in Telegraph Bay.

The colony was on its knees after 18 days of attack. At 3.15 pm white flags of surrender appeared on the hillside above them. The two tiny boats lay low till dark, then made their way silently to a lagoon off Apleichau Island to join the other three boats in the MTB flotilla. These had just picked up the survivors of an escape party of senior British and Chinese officers, who'd been forced to abandon their launch minutes after setting out from Aberdeen when it was hit by a barrage of Japanese fire. Twelve of the party of 18 survived, though two were injured ...including China's top man in Hong Kong, the one-legged Admiral Chan Chak. He had removed his wooden leg and dived into the sea with the others, but was wounded in the wrist as the shooting continued. His ADC, Henry Hsu, who happened to be a champion swimmer, had helped him make it through the water to Apleichau, where he and the others were eventually picked up by the MTBs.

With the new arrivals now distributed among the five boats, the flotilla sailed past the still-burning southern coast of HK Island to Mirs Bay. The boats were scuttled and the escape party set out to walk through the Japanese-occupied coastal zone to the nearest town in Free China, Waichow -- some 80 miles away. They landed, late on Christmas night, at a village called Nanao. And that's where we'll be spending Christmas night too, as we prepare to re-enact their journey to Waichow.
What with fifty-odd Royal Navy sailors from the MTBs, the twelve survivors from the launch, seven others who set out from Aberdeen in another boat and happened to land on the same beach, not to mention a certain Colin McEwan and his two fellow Secret Service members who had been asked to organise the escape, the original party had by now grown to a sizeable force numbering 68 in total. And they were heavily armed - with bren guns, tommy guns and revolvers.
In 2008, there are just four of us. Alison McEwan, Serene Qiu, Francoise La Toison and Tim Luard. Totally unarmed ... save for a few Christmas presents that may yet come in handy - a Swiss Army knife, a walking-stick and a long, hard and dangerous-looking saucisson.
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Hanging Out in Hong Kong.....

 

Here we are in godson Kieran's excellent Mid-Levels flat with harbour view enjoying being back in Hongkong and eating rather too much and too well with said Kieran ...

... not to mention Carmela, SJ Chan (and his wife May's home made mince pies!), Dr Dan, Frankie on a flying visa visit, Tom hosting a Cheung Chau get together beano in the FCC  and various street side snacks - we were very glad to see Shau Kei Wan was still home to old style dai pai dongs and cake shops...

But we have to be careful as too much food might make us incapable of The Walk which begins on Christmas Day from Nam O. Francoise has been in secret training with the Beijing Hikers and I (Alison) hope to sabotage her superiority with fruit cake and cheese. We're being joined by a new Chinese friend, Serene, who's  based in Shenzhen and can cope with any Hakka speakers we may find - we're still hoping for the odd person who may remember the original escape party passing through their village.

And Tim takes over at  the first Happy Valley bend to tell prospective 2009 Escapers that Ping Chau should be high on our list of things to do. I went there on the Saturday morning ferry - right across Mirs Bay, as far as you can go and still be in Hong Kong - and guess what: after a sunny walk round the island and much fruitless searching among the day-trippers for anyone who actually lived there - let alone anyone old enough to remember 1941 - I tracked down the current village headman, a Mr Mao Shuijing. And as soon as I mentioned the one-legged admiral's name his twinkly little old eyes lit up. "Chan Chak! Chan Chak! He came with the British military - they asked him to help after they lost to the Japanese".

He was only ten or eleven at the time but he'd been there when the landing party (Henry Hsu and Colin McEwan among them) arrived at dead of night and took the village headman of the time back to their boats (Mr Mao thought there were six MTBs rather than five). His cousin had gone along with some other local lads as guards for the admiral. Then he started talking about the guerilla leader Leung Wingyuen, pointing across to Nam O on the mainland where the villagers helped the escapers to land and then scuttle their boats. (Nam O is clearly visible, with its long strip of white sands - but now lined with hotels instead of guerrillas' huts). Sadly, the ferry home was about to leave so that's all I got -- but, if he's still up to it next year, we could find out more over lunch at Mr Mao's restaurant. well...more of an instant-noodle stall really). And fond as I am of those little old ferries, they do only go at weekends and from out by the Chinese University. So it might be easier to hire a boat of our own - and who knows, maybe even carry straight on across the channel to Nam O.

  
We've also been to the Museum of Coastal Defence. We failed to catch any of the right people to talk about next year's escape exhibition, but had an exciting time anyway, as far as museums go. Alison had just left me behind in the Battle of Hong Kong section and gone ahead to the next bit (showing how the fight against Japan carried on across the Chinese border after Hong Kong's surrender) when she stopped in front of a familiar face splashed across most of a wall. 

Yes, it was her father, posing with Chinese guerillas after rescuing an American airman behind Japanese lines in 1943. I believe Russ did in fact tell us he'd seen this photo when he came here, but it hadn't quite registered, and when I arrived on the scene I found Alison in a state of high emotion, surrounded by a crowd of equally excited HK Chinese girls wanting to take her picture.

Finally, to tea at the Chinese Recreation Club with the wonderful Duncan Chan -  looking very like both his twin brother Donald and

 their father, the admiral.  

We show him our maps, old and new, but unfortunately he's rather pessimistic about our chances of being able to walk at all in many of these places as they are today. He's trying to find some former guerillas (or their children) to help us on our way.

 

Spain ... and home

Having started our trip in Dubai, where our close friend Pauline lived before her final year with us in London, it seemed somehow right to be ending it in Andalucia, former home of the other important figure in our lives who died last year. The photo shows me standing in the garden of my mother's lovely old farmhouse, Finca la Noria, just outside Mijas. Those of you who visited her any time during her 30 years in Spain will be glad to learn it's been spared the redevelopment that has obliterated almost everything else that was once lovely and old down there. The Spanish architect who bought it when my Mum moved to S. Africa nine years ago wasn't around when Alison and I dropped by, but his maid let us through the gate. Rumours that the roof had fallen in the moment she left appear to have been unfounded. The only visible change is that the garden is more luxuriantly overgrown than ever (a bit like the one we've just come back to in Hackney, but more of that later). You could almost hear my mum's voice floating down from the patio saying "I MUST do something about that vine" as she lit another cigarette and resumed her tale about the Swedish model and the local Guardia Civil chief cavorting in her pool with a bunch of grapes.

We spent a great evening in Mijas with Jeff and Lilli, who sadly are almost the only members of the old gang still left there. Many a glass of rioja was raised to Lavinia ... and then the waiters kept insisting we have more brandies on the house, as they too had so many good memories of her. They weren't the only ones. The face of the barman at the Mijas Hotel unwrinkled into a huge grin when I mentioned her name. I thought he was going to ask me to settle all her unpaid bills. But he just wanted to reminisce about the days when foreigners were people you said hello to rather than tourists in swimming trunks demanding more chips.

For most of our nine days in Spain we stayed with Anne and David at THEIR lovely old farmhouse -- on the other side of Malaga, near the village of Periana. It was feria time, so we partied in the village (eating tapas and failing to dodge each other on the dodgems) , went to the odd lunch party (with BBQ by the pool and much talk of property prices) and took the dogs for walks among the olive groves. But perhaps best was sitting out on the terrace in the evening sun with a gin and tonic (with Spanish measures and lemon fresh from the tree) (but still no cigarettes, we're proudly amazed to say) gently wondering once again if the vine needed cutting back. We toured about a bit, seeing pretty hilltop villages like Camores and wondering if this would be the sort of place for us....no decisions yet!

After almost thirty flights (sorry Brian), we'd become so casual that we were strolling onto the Heathrow plane at Malaga when a BA stewardess came running up the gangway to say we should have been on the Gatwick one. The fact that we ended up flying into a different London airport to the one from which we left in January meant we didn't complete our round-the-world journey till we drew up at a very balmy-looking Middleton Road. Andy had got the sausages on for us, and after expressing surprise that we weren't a bit browner he proudly showed off his sun-drenched garden.
The climbing rose and almost everything else had come out to welcome us -- though we haven't yet seen the foxcubs, one of whom Andy had to chase frantically round the house for an hour last week.

We now have a week or so to get used to things like having a whole wardrobe of shirts to choose from every day ( very time-consuming, like buying a coffee in America), before we head off to Hal and Lorna's wedding in St Andrews. I've been putting off writing the speech I'm supposed to be giving, on the assumption that I'd suddenly be full of great ideas and insights once back from our travels. But maybe it's a case of the more you see the less you know. The only thing we've definitely learned about the world after four and a half months is that everything everywhere is made in China. And almost everything almost everywhere can be described as awesome (and often was). But I never did have time to learn the harmonica.

The places along the way, old and new, have been wonderful -- the people we've met, and re-met after many years, even more so. So, many thanks for putting us up and/or putting up with us, either in person or via this blog. We've enjoyed your comments and e-mails along the way!

We'll leave you with a few lines culled from the mountain of mail that awaited us -- a rewrite by Harry (winner of the New Blogger of the Year award) of that Arlo Guthrie song, which I can have another go at now I've got my guitar back (and yes, Fred, I did remember to take my plectrum along -- it was almost the only thing I didn't lose):

"Coming in from Los Angeleeze
No room in my rucksack for a couple of keys,
Department of home security man don't search my bag pleeze
The stained underwear and smelly socks might well give you a diseaseeze "

North America offers warm welcome

A: And so to the USA and Canada, where we saw many old friends and family, drove many miles and ate many meals. We started off (after taking ages to filter thro´"Homeland Security") in Los Angeles being met by Colin Churchill, now married to Deva. They made us welcome in their home and gave us a flying tour of LA and the coastal road and helped us track down a hire car....sadly not the pink Cadillac of my fantasies but a practical white Japanese saloon with efficient air con for the detour through Death Valley which comes hedged with warnings about not breaking down..
(T: Although I´m leaving the writing of this one mainly to Alison, I´d like to make it clear that whatever the photo may suggest I did remember to drive on the right side of the road , even in the desert, and wrong turnings were mainly the fault of navigators busy dreaming about cadillacs. And to say how nice it was not only to see Colin for the first time for 28 years but also to play a guitar for the first time for 4 months. Back in Hong Kong in the 1970s he and I used to do an Arlo Guthrie song called Coming into Los Angelees... which made much more sense this time around. PS the cage beside him contains a large snake...)

A: So...off we went on the 40 lane freeway (slight exaggeration) thro´LA to Tucson to visit my Mom´s oldest friend Margaret Tilford, spending the night en route in the first of several motels (all run by Indians, Anu!) Very good to see Margaret and even learn a new story about my Mom´s violin playing, and we had my birthday tea with her. Birthday night deep in the Arizona desert in the Observatory Inn - 3 bedrooms - we had the Galaxy Room complete with private terrace with telescopes, Star War figures, galaxy carpets and lit up ceiling with stars - fantastic! We were warned not to go too far away as "everything in the desert has a poisonous bite" - and then a small rabbit hopped past! Wonderful birds there too, as the owners have a small lake nearby. We also managed a flying visit to Tombstone and saw Boot Hill.

In the picture you see Alison rescuing a Wombat from a cactus. (A saguaro, notes Wom, who insisted on featuring at least once in this blog and saying Hi to Gilda, Lewis, Sara, etc).
Tim takes over to avoid any further lowering of standards: Avoiding ambush by Indians, rattlesnakes and the swarms of long-haired middle-aged motorbike riders who kept appearing in my mirror, we sped north to sounds of "By the Time I get to Phoenix"... until we finally got there. Then it was into the red hills and green pines of Sedona, with its laid-back artistic types living in weird and wonderful houses perched on rocks -- and then into the even bigger -- and pinker -- hills of the Grand Canyon. We decided against the 9-hour trip to the bottom and back with a mule, given my experiences in Greece, but were suitably impressed by the grandeur of it all, both at sunrise and sunset. We even saw a 3-D movie about it so we could at least pretend we were doing the hang-gliding tour. All very harsh and dry, though, after the lush greens and gentle curves of the Andes.
We drove on via Route 66 -- we managed to find the longest surviving stretch of it, most of it having been swallowed up by new interstate superhighways -- and at least saw some pink cadillacs even if Alison wasn´t able to ride in them. The Hoover Dam looked like one of those vast villains´HQs they have at the end of Bond movies.
In Las Vegas, we were supposed to stay at a hotel called the Barbary Coast... After an hour or two of driving round gawking like country hicks at the gross and gorgeous displays and fountains and things, we found it in the middle of a giant casino -- under its new name of Bill´s Bar and Gaming Hall. I proceeded to lose all my money in 30 seconds at blackjack, but luckily only had 30 dollars on me.
From Vegas, on across aforementioned Death Valley and over the Sierra Nevada, which is what you see in the Wrong Way photo at the top. The pass we went over had only opened the prevous day after being closed all winter and was still thick with snow. Down on the other side past gushing mountain streams and log cabins into quiet green Californian pastures and wineries... including one belonging to my old friend and guru Parnell.
I´d stayed there seven years ago in a simple little farmhouse ... Parnell´s now almost totally rebuilt it into a magnificent Dallas-style ranch-house...doing everything himself of course. We settled into a restful weekend with him and Jan, daughters Marie (14) and Sara (11) plus numerous horses, dogs, cats, coyotes etc. A new white grape (pinot grigiot) had recently been grafted on to the old Cabernet Sauvignon vines, so between bottles of the old stuff we went looking for signs of growth in the new. Parnell and Jan also manage to do fulltime jobs, by the way, as doctor and vet respectively.

A: And then off to Pacifica, just south of San Francisco where we saw a whale at breakfast (he was in the bay) drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and discovered one of T´s snooker venues in a very shady part of town had closed down after a drugs bust - our informant drew his finger across his throat and hinted we should leave.
So we went off to Vancouver to be met by my Canadian cousins Mary & Sarah. They whizzed us off to Mary´s home in Port Coquitlam, where one of her daughters Lisa lives upstairs with her husband Julio and 2 small children. Another daughter Kathrine was visiting and Mary´s husband Bill came back from work to complete our dinner table. Family get-together got even better when Mary & Bill organised us out on ferries to Saltspring Island to stay a couple of nights with the last Canadian cousin, Lissie and her husband Oleh. For all McEwans worried about Oleh I can only say he looked very well, was in good spirits and can carve a mean salmon as he demonstrated when there was another large gathering to meet Lissie´s daughter Katya(Heather) and her partner Steve and daughter Emily. We also saw 2 eagles who live very near Lissie´s lovely house. Then back to the mainland for a final get-together with Young Billy and his little daughter Emma at Mary´s.
The weather (do I need to say?) was cool, damp and grey but it meant Vancouver looked incredibly green with all the wild fruit trees full of blossom - very lovely. Big thanks to Mary for getting us to Victoria University and to Lissie for Auntie Kate´s bracelet - it means a lot to me!
Shopping in New York was next on the agenda - only for me to realise I´d lost the knack over the last 4 months´abstinence. Fully intended at least a hat for the June wedding but despite much pavement pounding and window shopping the rucksacks are as light as ever...but we had a great time buzzing about on the subways - so safe and clean now! - popping up at landmarks all over Manhattan and enjoying The Sunshine! One of the best things was eavesdropping on loud snatches of NY conversation - fantastic. To our delight, Zafar came over and we had a family dinner with him, his Dad and Padma - nice to catch up with them too - and to see Zaf at home in his second city.
We also managed to see *Michael ( now v important with UN) and Robbie (also v important, I hasten to add, especially with students of Tibetan at Columbia) for dinner. So we´ve plumped up nicely on this part of the tour. I find American pancakes with maple syrup and bacon - "short stack? Short stack? Give me the Lonnggg Stack!"- irresistable...
Tim got to see Strawberry Fields in Central Park, we did theatre on Broadway, the Met., ate bagels, rendezvoused with 2 new American friends from the Inca Trail.... so apart from the shopping failure all went swimmingly.

*That rounds up Dateline East Asia, I believe? If not (quite) its successor programme, East Asia Today....and we don´t meet co-founder Simon till June 24 at King´s Cross.
And now here we are, sitting at Anniewan´s Apple relaxing in Spain (and celebrating West Ham´s brilliant survival of course)...last entry will be coming up shortly.

Ups and Downs of Chile, Bolivia and Peru

We came, we saw, we conquistadored.

In fact we outdid the Spanish by taking off our armour and finding our way through the sacred jungle-clad valleys, over Dead Woman´s Pass and all the way to Machu Picchu...the only Inca settlement, it seems, which the colonistas failed to find and plunder and replace with a giant cathedral.
Some other parts of the continent they're frankly more than welcome to -- the Hotel Joya de Titicaca, for instance, and the meat pies in La Paz, and the smell of the toilets at certain border posts. In a moment Alison will give you her memories of those earlier days.
But first, the trek:
This was the one bit of our whole 5-month trip that was all planned and booked beforehand. You can't just turn up and do the Inca Trail on your own, as Parnell and I did on our Annapurna trek in 1973, sleeping in yak-sheds and swapping shoes as we went to beat the blisters. (Hope you're still with us, Dr G, as we're only a week or two away from turning up at your vineyard gate in California). No, this one you have to do with a guide and group -- otherwise the 500 year old path would probably be worn out by now, or piled high with rubbish.

We turned out to be the oldest in our group but not necessarily the weakest. Over the four days, no less than 7 out of the 16 of us became ill in one way or another -- several of them quite badly. So we tended to get quite strung out along the track -- in more ways than one, with some of us chewing coca leaves to fight altitude sickness and others just throwing up over the nearest available precipice ( not us I'm glad to say).

It's not what you might call a very long trek (28 miles), but there aren't many easy flat bits: it includes both climbs and descents of more than 7,000 feet each.

Alison's injured foot did brilliantly on the first day, with the help of new drugs and stick, but it did get worse again on the very long second and third days as those high Inca stone steps just kept on coming. I was mighty proud of her, as I'm sure you would all have been, as she kept cheerily hobbling on for hour after hour (stopping to examine the odd blue hummingbird or purple fuchsia along the way) as one false summit gave way to another. And in fact the whole, mainly young-american group would cheer us in as we got to each day's campsite with high-school-style whoops and hollers (or at least those who were well enough to have already arrived).

There was some talk of food poisoning as the only possible cause for so much illness, but in fact the food was pretty fantastic. Especially given the fact that everything -- from cake ingredients to curried chicken to cutlery to tables and chairs, not to mention tents -- had to be carried the whole way. OK, so we did have 20 porters with us to help.

After four days without hot water we were beginning to remember why we'd never been campers. But the views were a delight -- whether from our tent at night, looking out at brilliant skies and snowy peaks, or from the path as it wound its way through dark wet cloud forests and over windswept grassy plains, past old Inca fortresses and staging-posts and over wobbly rope bridges, high above foaming brown rivers charging down towards the Amazon.

Then came the final morning's dash, getting up at 3.30am to get to the lost city itself before all the crowds who come up during the morning by train and bus from Cusco. Sadly, when we got to the Sun Gate, where you get the first view down to Machu Picchu, instead of a glorious sunrise there was just a big white cloud. But as we came down that final hill the mist cleared and the ruins were revealed on their narrow ridge in all their incredible neatness and detail and precariousness. Quite apart from the surreal setting, the stonework itself is beautiful.

Yes, wonderful as Asia may be, this just has to be ahead of the Great Wall, Angkor Wat, Taj Mahal etc as one of the newer wonders of the world. Just a shame about the sandflies, which possibly came to us via the llamas and have left us both with the itchiest bites we've ever known. With that I'll hand over to my fellow-scratching wife to fill you in on what happened earlier, after New Zealand.

So - next major continent - we arrive in Santiago, Chile and have 2 nights and a day. Not fair on Santiago really to have left an impression of a cold, dusty city full of building sites and chunky schoolgirls in thick blue wool leg warmers. Grand old buildings decaying, but glimpses down side streets of a more glamorous and Barcelona-ish type city springing up..

Then on to La Paz on the roof of the world (or so it felt). The airport situated on a plateau, there´s an exciting drive down a steep hill to La Paz city which jumbles itself up and down hills with cobbled streets, the ladies with windburnt faces and their too-small bowlers, and sellers of Incan knickknacks and Andean knitted hats and socks all over. A strange smell ever present that can only be described as ´cold dirt´ and lots of breathlessness at this altitude. So lots of coca tea and plenty of rest and water...the whole of Bolivia gearing up for Santa Semana or Holy Week, churches and cathedrals bringing down their statues and preparing the massive litters which people will carry through the streets.

From La Paz by bus 'Él Conquistador' to Lake Titicaca and Copacabana -sounds jolly and tropical, no? No, v cold, v wet and the worst hostal so far -
words can´t do it justice - small, bright orange room complete with one wall a badly executed Tuscan 'view', shiny thin purple nylon curtains, rock hard two-seater brown fake leather sofa, 1 bedside light with bright green glass shade giving no light beyond an underwater glimmer, Lion King faux fur bedspread and hot water only minimally available in a trickle in the shower if you diced with death and loose electric wires. ..Tim turned onthe TV (OK, so it did have pretensions to modernity and sophistication) only for it to fizz, emit sparks and die. Loose wires hung out of sockets where they presumably planned further lighting in the future. Spirits v low, bodies v cold we piled on all clothes to survive Night No 1...

Of course things improved the next day (after most amazing thunder and lightning storm over the Lake, heard amplified by the corrugated plastic sheeting which formed the roof of the hostal) and we sailed off to the Isla Del Sol (home of sungod and cradle of civilisation for incas) where the sun shone and T walked and I pottered along doing nature study...beautiful wild flowers and very tidy well-tended fields of maize and quinoa and lupins! Bus again along the Lakeside through the Andean Plateau and across a very informal border to Puno in Peru.
.....
Back to Tim for a final fling: Hotel in Puno was close second to previous night's as worst ever. Breakfast in a dark icy room six floors up with no lift.... But again, our boat trip the next day, this time across the Peruvian half of the world's highest navigable lake, more than made up for it. First, to a group of floating islands made of reeds, where we were immediately picked out from all the other tourists by a colourfully dressed lady called Christina -- our silvery hair tends to persuade people we might have lots of money -- and invited into her home (built of reeds like everything else) .

Next, Taquile Island, where no-one's supposed to sell or buy anything at all because they only grow what they need and all work for each other. In theory anyway. Oh yes, and the women knit for the men and the men knit for the women (or even for tourists, as in the case of the man in the picture) . And the way they wear their hair tells you if they're available or not (I don't think he was). And they have some revolting herbal drinks.

Then it was onto a splendid train

for a 19-dollar, 11-hour ride past mighty Andean ranges and endless fields of maize and alpacas (we can now tell the difference between them and llamas, which have short pants and long ears) ... and so to the old Inca capital of Cusco, where we checked into a much nicer hotel and geared up for the big trek, while checking out some of the aforementioned Spanish cathedrals and Irish pubs.
But yes, some of those early days in south america were indeed pretty tough for various reasons. Partly no doubt because we´d been so spoiled in many ways by the comforts of NZ and such places before we arrived here, when we were suddenly hit by 3 months journey fatigue just as things became a bit rougher. Plus we were getting fed up living in same clothes out of same rucksack -- Well done, Carmela, on spotting that the photos showed new clothes... but they were really old clothes that had been washed so often they began to look new.
We're now once again safe and clean and back in the lap of luxury -- having hot baths and fine meals here in sunny (and warm!) Lima with Lorna and Hal. All around us are lists of things to do (along with articles to be written for the Financial Times, for which Hal's supposed to be Andean Correspondent) before their wedding in Scotland in June... which we're even now hurrying back for, via just 3 more countries. But there's also been time for strolling along the Mediterranean-style boulevards, sampling the local specialities of pisco sour (best cocktail ever) and ceviche (delicious raw fish with chili sauce, onion, corn etc). We've drawn the line at baked guinea pig, but our hosts were happy to pick out some cakes for us at the DessertMarket.....