Dee and Magellanic penguin, Punta Tombo, Argentina
“...my plan involved...joining friend and fellow penguin researcher, Professor Dee Boersma, on a research expedition to Argentina.”
Magellanic penguins, Punta Tombo, Argentina
“We arrived at Punta Tombo, a wildlife reserve that is primarily known as the breeding ground for penguins.”
Touring Club, Trelew, Argentina
“...a hotel of decayed grandeur with the musty air of a place that had shut its doors 70 years ago with all the clients and workers locked inside, and who had gone on aging together...”
Museo PaleontoloĢgico Egidio Feruglio, Trelew
“Here evolution really was set before your eyes...I had come to the right place.”
Pianitzkysaurus, Trelew, Argentina
“...a reconstruction of a much older meat-eater with a name designed to foil even the most rabid of dinosaur-loving children...”
Fororraco, Trelew, Argentina
“...a remarkable flightless bird, a Fororraco: about two metres high, thick set and with a skull that resembled nothing so much as the pincers of a crane used to crush cars.”
Avis rental car, Peninsula Valdes, Argentina
“Was there anything in those myriad papers that Avis had made me sign that said I would be responsible for cleaning?”
Elephant seal, Punta Delgado, Argentina
“...the flipper looked like nothing less than the forelimb of a bear or that of a cow; more elephant than seal, certainly more elephant than fish.”
Ground-dwelling owl, Punta Delgado, Argentina
“If you could have a bear that lives like a fish, why not an owl that lives like a rabbit?”
Southern right whale, Puerto Pirámides, Argentina
“There are, of course, rules about how close boats can approach the whales...But these are large-brained curious creatures, used to going where they please...”
Whale fluke, Puerto Pirámides, Argentina
“I see the whale as providing evidence for evolution precisely because of the analogous changes wrought upon its hippo-like ancestors to turn it back into something that resembled a fish...”
Beagle Channel view, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
“...the channel in Tierra del Fuego discovered by FitzRoy on his previous expedition and named after the little ship.”
Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
“My wife and I took a day-trip up the Beagle Channel in a boat. The wind threw long trails of spume every time the boat hit the crest of a wave.”
Gentoo Penguins, Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego
“At first sleeting, and then snowing heavily. Even the odd Gentoo Penguin brave enough to walk along the beach looked miserable.”
Perito Moreno Glacier, near El Calafate, Argentina
“This was Nature at its most mind-boggling. This was a force that didn’t just shape rocks; it broke them.”
Monasterio de San Francisco, Lima, Peru
“Out on the streets of Lima, tanks and armed policemen abounded, but the square with the yellow and white church of the Monasterio de San Francisco was left to the pigeons and the people...”
Last Supper, Monasterio de San Francisco, Lima
“But this was the thing, the mind-boggling, fascinating thing from my perspective: for his last meal, Christ and his disciples are depicted as eating guinea pig, the local Peruvian delicacy.”
Catacombs, Monasterio de San Francisco, Lima
“Most bizarrely, though, when laying out the skulls and femurs, the conservationists (and one has to use this term loosely) decided to get creative and make patterns out of the bones...”
Madonna, Monasterio de San Francisco, Lima
“Religious beliefs have to be relevant to the people. A Christ eating chateaubriand and a Mary dressed in Yves St Laurent may not work in Peru, but it might in Paris, say.”
La Catedral de Lima, Peru
“...just to the right of the main door is a chapel festooned in mosaics and housing a coffin. The elaborate coffin, topped by a bronze lion, contains the remains of Francisco Pizarro...”
Mother and Child, Peru
“Many of the locals wear traditional garb, with brilliantly coloured shawls...and, most incongruously, hats that resemble the bowler hats of some London banker.”
Daewoo taxi, outside Cuzco, Peru
“...as it would transpire, whatever they were paying the driver was not enough. The damage the little car would endure had to have been much higher.”
Ollantaytambo, Sacred Valley, Peru
“We drove by a colourful couple with a couple of llamas, one white the other brown, pulling an even more colourful and elaborately attired carriage.”
Checkpoint, start of Inca Trail, Peru
“It was all we could do to stop leaping up and shouting when we stepped off the bridge and onto the trail proper...the exuberance of youth.”
Mt Veronica, Inca Trail, Peru
“Behind us, the pointed Mount Veronica watched over us as we climbed gentle valleys while the other mountains seemed to close in around us: we were being sucked into a vertical world...”
'Anita' and Porter, Inca Trail
“Later she would say that it was the best $15 we ever spent.”
Dead Woman's Pass, Inca Trail
“She was shivering, dizzy, and nauseous: she was suffering symptoms of altitude sickness.”
Machu Picchu, Inca Trail, Peru
“...the magic of that view at dawn from Intipunku (the Sun Gate), where the sun first rises through a notch in the hillside and lights up the stone buildings that make up Machu Picchu.”
Temple of the Condor, Machu Picchu
“That grey slab, that head of the condor, it turns out was nothing less than a sacrificial altar...And I had to think that had I been a virgin, I would have found Christianity somewhat more attractive.”