Before long the hillsides of Peru were visible. The plane took a low approach into the city of Lima.  Jonathon stared entranced out of the window at the beautiful villas and palms on its high hills. A more charming sight he had not seen. This brief sight ended when the airplane touched down on a strip of tarmac. Jorge Chavez welcomed him and his fellow travellers into the belly of the new world.

 A confusion of disembarking passengers rose. They collected luggage under the risen volume of the pilot's Portuguese directions. Announcements led them into the terminal. Through this the five newcomers passed and made their way to a hotel in Lima. The language of the taxi driver and concierge sounded soothing and pleasant.

 Johnny became involved in unexpected tricks and troubles every day. Risks arose and he invented resolution. Not only was he wayward to have become involved in them he was lucky to have survived them. The two weeks he was in Peru and its neighbouring nation Chile ring special in his memory to this day.

 The tour first followed an original route. Johnny boarded a coach which took him to the edges of two sections of the city. He had a look at the archaeological complex Mateo Salado. Three pyramids built by the Ichma civilisation centred his thoughts. From man long gone to modern man surviving poverty, they then went to another area. The occupants of the favela there managed hardship by mutual assent. Agreements made on material provision and utilities paid the way. The residents were reclusive and did not meet the curious strangers.

 The good image of tourism was at this stage of the trip the more important presentation. The party’s interest was its activity and education. It was at the edge of the slum when the leader spoke about the financial plight of the Latino. She said a higher power in a more powerful government compromised the people there. Their economic standards and social lives and their liberty were at stake. Jonathon offered his help when the speaker requested any help for this predicament.

 John did not stay long in the capital city. In the morning he took another coach northward along the coast and then inland. It went up to a higher altitude towards a ski field. Huarache nestles into a national forest in lower mountain ranges. It was there that he went astray from the average paths that tourists usually take.

 He enjoyed a simple day’s exercise on the old snow of the last year’s winter falls. A slight fall had occurred in the previous week. So the enthusiasts and playboys were enjoying the first day of the annual operations. Down the higher paths of the top chairlift he cruised in and out between trees and pylons. He played with some casual companions whom he had met on the way up. He hired his gear and rode the lifts with them.

 Being young and foolish, he shared in the light green smokes that they were handing around. As they hung in suspense above the ground on the way to the top, they got higher. It lent an easy feeling to the slide on the way down. He learned that life has no particular mission. One accepts it as it is and makes the best out of what one has to enjoy the present existence.

 He accepted a U.S. twenty dollar note from a man with whom he had shared in the session of grass. Johnny was out for an adventure and the other man was due back at the hotel where he was staying. They agreed that Johnny would deliver the money to an old man named Pedro. The story was that he lived in the foothills behind the ski field while the other man would go home. Running this errand was Johnny’s way paying for his part in the session.

 At the last run of the day he returned his skis and boots and poles to the hire shop. He collected his army surplus tramping boots from his locker. He tied these onto his feet and accepted the gift of a walking pole for the trail ahead. With a knapsack and a parka he rode the chairlift to the top ramp again. He alighted while viewing the landscape. Instead of skiing downhill this time he walked away from the resort in the other direction. He followed a road of rocks and dust into the hills behind it.

 The road took him out of the snowy area and across barren dome shaped hillsides. The hills dropped away at the sides into steep valleys. He came to an intersection where another road from the right joined the one he was on. He followed the directions that the addict with the money had instructed him. He turned left and walked until nightfall.

 He considered whether he should unroll his sleeping bag and rest. This was to risk a cougar attack in the dark. Then headlights of a Unimog truck appeared from the second road at the intersection. The truck turned right and approached him. He stood on the road and formed a fist and thumb sign with his right hand and waved it up and down as the truck came closer. It stopped. The driver opened the slide window and asked him in English whether he spoke Portuguese. 

 “No not at all,” he said. “I’m on a delivery to Senor Pedro’s house in the forest. Can you give me a ride please?”

 “Well you had better learn,” the driver said. “This is a UNICEF truck, we’re delivering supplies to children and their families. You’re young, get in.”

 He walked to the rear of the vehicle. He waited while its occupants untied the string which held the cover canvas closed. Clambering inside, two men and a woman greeted him. Two ladies and a child slept on the benches along the side of the tray. A thick green canvas covered the inside of the truck’s rear compartment. An electric light shining at the front by the cabin. This was the system.

 The three people who met him explained that they returned from a delivery. They had given medical and food stocks and gardening supplies to a village senate. They had been on the road for two days. The truck was on the return drive to Lima.

 One of the sleeping women and the child were being taken to a hospital to treat their influenza. While another woman and a man were going there to be best man and woman at a wedding. The truck had left from Lima a week previous with a staff of three and a full wagon. Since the cartage space was available, the driver could stop for him. Still at seventeen, he was youth who fit their description. He received their charitable help. 

 The truck drove throughout the night until in the morning it came to a dismantled bridge. A large concrete slab had fallen off its rock foundations and into a small ravine. It was a result of either the recent rains or vandalism. A socialist party named the shining path could be at work. The travellers saw that they had a job ahead to repair it.

 Johnny had got some sleep in the previous night. This was an advantage, since there was some heavy work to do. In a group they shifted boulders and lifted concrete. The job took them half the day. Once the concrete was roughly placed on a base and covering the gap, all passengers got out of the Unimog. All walked behind it as the three-ton truck crossed the rearranged bridge. By the time they had resolved the problem another vehicle had come to a halt on the opposite side of the ravine. It was a sleek four-wheel drive with a low cabin. Like the UNICEF truck it was green. Though this had the addition of camouflage coloured patches.

 The other vehicle reversed to a wider part of the road and let them pass. The drivers exchanged some words about politics. The opposition driver was a fit man. He questioned rights of the people to live in their villages without interference. The human rights driver countered this with a reminder of his authority. United Nations officers owned authority to assert human rights by providing simple needs. The driver and crew of the opposition demanded that they turn around and return to the village. Johnny’s driver refused. The other driver had then said that he would take all the Unimog occupants back home. Then they discussed the issue of infection and the need for hospital treatment. The other driver then knew that he could not protest the transit of the mother and child.

 He then turned to the issue of the man and woman who were going to the wedding. The couple answered that for themselves. The man said that they had not seen their cousins for twenty years. He then said that they would not miss their family’s happy wedding. He told the socialist driver that he would rather shoot him. The blockade ended.

 Johnny rode in the truck until late in the day. The road descended into a forested area. A path which led away from the road came into sight. The driver stopped the truck for him.

 “There’s your man,” the driver said. “Follow that path and you will come to a house. Pay him there.”

 Johnny shook his hand and bid farewell to the passengers. He trod the mud into the forest cover. Thirty feet along was a wooden post with a letter box on it. Carved into the post and painted green was a sign of a five-fingered leaf shape. Johnny continued along and down the path. It changed from drying mud to stone steps until he could see the contours of a house in the trees. 

 “Ola,” he called at a doorway. "Hello."

 A woman came through ranch sliders to the steps. She called away down the path, “Don, alguem esta aqui!” and signalled Johnny to wait.

 Soon a gentleman walked up from lower in the forest and sat on a seat by the doors. He appeared calm. “Quem e voce?” he asked. "Who are you?"    

 There followed a difficult discussion in both Portuguese and English. During this Johnny explained that he had come from the roads behind Huarache. He held some money which a man owed him.

 Senor Pedro shrugged his shoulders and held out a calloused hand. “Bem, se voce quiser me pagar, eles me pagam,” he said. Or rather, “Well if you want to pay me then pay me.” 

 Johnny nodded his head and handed him the American bill. Don Pedro looked at it folded once in his hand. “O que e isso? Ele e americano. Estados Unidos. Isso e inutil aqui," he said. He meant that the United States money was useless to him.

 "Eu sinto muito," Johnny said. He told Pedro that it was all the money that the man on the skifield had for him. Pedro and the woman laughed and said that he had too much money.

 “Para que serve? Voce quer comprar meus legumes?” he said. “What’s it for? Do you want to buy my vegetables?”

 Johnny nodded again and said “Yesal,” and he and the man shook hands. He saw then that dirt smeared the man’s hands. He had been gardening in the forest cover.

 Pedro was also nodding agreement and put the note in his shirt pocket. He called away into the trees, “Bring the lighter. He wants something.”

 A barefooted and bare-chested boy ran up the path and handed him a zippo lighter then ran away. Pedro then reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a paper-rolled reefer. He handed it to Johnny. “Ligue-o,” he said. "Turn it on."

 Johnny stood with the reefer sticking out of his mouth. He stared at the old man who stared back at him with his big brown eyes. The Peruvian reached out a hand with the zippo and flicked the flint wheel beneath the cigarette. A round of inhaling and passing it between the three persons commenced. This resulted in halted conversation about the beauty of the place.

 When the burning ended, Senor Pedro said, “Return to Lima.” It was then that Johnny made his first foolish mistake. Instead of turning and striding up the path which he had come down, he asked a question. He did not know the route or distance to get back to the hotel in the city. “How do I get back?” he said.

 The muscular gentleman stared at him. “Voce e burro,” he said. He had called him a fool.

 His blonde friend walked into the house. She went to a telephone and picked up the enamel receiver and dialled three numbers.

 “Nos temos um intruso em jardins divinos” she said.

 Pedro was laughing at the young man. He patted his woollen shirt pocket. “Eu quero dez vezes.” He had demanded ten times the payment which the young man had given. The woman had reported an intruder at the heavenly gardens.

 Johnny swallowed hard on his confusion. “I only want some vegetables,” he said. Pedro became angry and stood from his seat and went to the telephone. The blonde lady came out of the house with a knife from the kitchen and grabbed Johnny and made him walk inside. Now three semi-naked boys in denim shorts ran out of the tree cover. Two shouted and pushed him while another went to a chest hatch and retrieved a long hessian rope.

 They pushed Johnny to the floor and twisted his arms behind his back. The three boys held him down and tied his hands together with the rope. They then made him kneel in a sitting position so his backside was on his heels and then tied him with the rope. It went around his ankles and waist, arms and chest. In this way he could only stay in his constricted position on the wooden floor.

 They then gagged him with a cloth around his mouth chin and neck. This stifled his cries. The biggest of the boys took the knife from the woman and held it by both hands pointing at him. The boy stood with his feet spread wide apart at an arm’s length distance away from the captive. The boy stared at him with panicking black eyes into Johnny’s distressed blue ones. 

 The local hooligans left him tied sitting on his knees for all the day. His complaints stifled by the rag across his mouth. Senor Pedro and his blonde lady sat on benches on the other side of the room and smoked cigarettes and watched him. His knees ached. At the end of the day a man arrived. He was tall and dressed in black jeans and leather boots with a thick knitted black jersey on over his shirt. What was worse, he had long curly black hair and carried a breech-loading rifle.

 There followed a long discussion between the two men and the woman. Johnny had only a rudimentary understanding of the Portuguese language. He did not understand most of what they said.   

 Twice he heard Senor Pedro say, “Nao atire.” He thought about this and realized that what he had said meant “Don’t fire.” This helped him relax in his bonds and breath and he kept listening. Their word ‘perverso’ for ‘curses’ repeated. So it had occurred that the home owner did not want his home to receive a curse. The death of a man by that situation in his house could bring this. By waiting, Senor Pedro tempered his anger.

 The tall black-clad man came into the house; his boots rang loud knocks on the floor as he walked. With the butt handle of his rifle he hit Johnny against his back low between the shoulders. Johnny fell forward and then raised his body to sitting again. Again he hit him and again he fell and struggled to raise his body.   

 “That’s a warning,” he said and walked out of the house to the garden and forest and he did not come back that day.

 They left their captive where he was until night fell and through all the hours of darkness. Three times the boy came into the house. He sat on a bench and held the same knife and whispered threats.  

 During the ordeal John grew tired and fell into a painful sleep before dawn. Then the tall man in black came back into the house. He pulled him to his knees again and untied the cloth from around his mouth.

 "Cafe da manha,"he said. “Breakfast.” And put a bowl of oats and water on the floor in front of Johnny’s knees. Johnny had to bend forward and down to eat the food with his mouth from out of the bowl. The tight rope caused pain from the stretch that this demanded from it. He heard people behind him laughing as he ate. After he ate the food the man started untying the knots and unravelling the rope from around him. “He speaks another language,” he said. “We’re taking him back to Lima.”

 Johnny shouted the name of the hotel where he had been two days ago. He also shouted the name of his insurance and home country.

 “Alright,” said the man. “We’ll be sympathetic as long as you go home.”

 “Yes,” Johnny said and wore the handcuffs. He was meek. The man with boots and the rifle led him back up the path. Through the forest and past the post with the leaf carving and to a police squad car at the road above the house. He got into the back seat. The man gave him back his backpack with a large kumara. The two men sat in the front seats and drove the car all day. Instead of going to the city of Lima the armed law enforcement officers drove a return route. They came to a town called Huaraz and stopped.

 They told him to get out of the car, and so he did. The second man to have arrived at the house spoke to him first. “You have offered to help the people of South America,” he said. “And we have caught you. Snorting cocaine and smoking the grass weed and wasting your opportunities. Well, we have a lot of problem with that, but if you help us we can forgive you.”

 “I didn’t do the cocaine,” he said.

 “Don’t contradict me. You told me that you did. We can lock you up for three years, or you can obey us. It’s your choice.”

 “What’s in it for me?” asked Johnny. The impudence didn't occur to him.

 The man paused. He looked at his first in command, who said,” You can earn a spare rifle if you do what we say.”

 Johnny and the second man stared at each other for a few seconds eye to eye. “Doing what you said you would do, that is what is in it for you. So come with me.” He then released the handcuffs and took Johnny by the collar and hit him on the jaw twice. “Remember we are the Law,” he said.

 They went into a building and opened a safe cabinet and from it took out three more breech-loading rifles. “You want to help the people of South America,” the first officer said. Then they left the building and used another car with different markings to drive out of town. They went into a higher hilly area which was colder and dusted with snow and encrusted with ice on the ground.

 Another car followed with two men in it, so that now there were five men waiting at a building by a car park. A man from the second car got out and turned on a radio matched by the first armed officer. Then he walked away and out of sight around a veranda. Forty minutes passed when he radioed in that he had seen the targets.

 All four men including Johnny stepped out from their vehicles. The party walked up a flight of steps which led to a level above the veranda. The heads of two persons raised above a railing, and in four quick shots the hit was all over. Brief cries ended in silence and blood exploded like water from balloons as the two targets fell. The assailants then collected large nylon bags from the trunks of their cars. They bundled the bodies into them, zipped them and hauled them into the trunks.

 “They were selling too much cocaine,” said the second officer to him as they descended. The cars air conditioned comfort took them from the snowy outpost. Past Huaraz and alpine forest then along the long highway to Lima. Streets of cheap suburban houses and dull city buildings revealed the roads. The convoy of two cars separated. Johnny's drivers directed his to the hotel he had left before skiing. The two men told Johnny that he was not allowed to look at the places they were passing. Then in the calm early afternoon the squad car stopped at the foyer drive.

 The squad had a discussion with the hotel bookings clerk and concierge. Johnny picked up his backpack and rifle in a bag. He uttered words of resolution and settlement. Together they walked to his room.

 The concierge opened the door and the two tall men left him and went back to their car. In the room were the rest of the tourists. Ian Macmillan spoke first.

 “Where the hell have you been? And what’s that? We are due to leave this afternoon. You had better get your gears together quick smart.”

 “That’s a new rifle, and my things are already together.” Johnny pretended that there had not been a problem.

 “We’ve been waiting for you and you could have missed us. Do you have any food?” Ian said.

 “I have a kumara.”

 “You can’t cross the Nazca desert with only one kumara.”

 “I have a bottle of water in my bag,” Johnny said.

 “Are you with this trip? If you are you will have to cross the desert with a kumara and a bottle of water. Or are you planning on going back to prison? My thoughts are that it would be better that you did, considering you’re not prepared. This is a peaceful envoy, and you walk in here with two pigs and a weapon” Ian said.

 Johnny burst out that he was going to go with them. They carried their luggage to the foyer. There Johnny went to the latrine tap to refill his canteen with water. They waited for a taxi to the airport. The travel agent promised to take them to Nazca. With different arguments and viewpoints in tow. A later flight scheduled to bring them to Cuzco and Puno.

 Packing up their differences, they continued their sojourn. To the desert lines, Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca. The forested mountains and highland wildernesses of the great continent.

 The desert lines are a timeless wonder of construction and unknown purpose. He climbed the observation tower and saw the closest of them, the Hands, Tree and Lizard. It was a strange experience to be so close to a thousand-of-years old mystery.

 Climbing Machu Picchu is a life goal for many. Johnny did this at the age of seventeen. The route up the side of the mountain is precipitous and requires great care. The structures at the top are eerie. All those in the climbing team when at the top saw brief images of people who had not come with them. The rocks connected. A thousand years of lichen cover them. The roofs of the arch tunnels in the structure are low and the corridors are narrow. The highest peak is off-limits so that the climbers can tour the main city but not the last turret. 

 The team had to descend soon after achieving the top to suit safety within the time limits in a day. Jonathon knew he was a winner when he had notched this climb to his belt. He felt assured of his talent and competence as a traveller and a citizen of the world.

 There was a basic cabin to sleep in at the base of the mountain. Snakes wound through the jungle and insects seethed. Water dripped off leaves and the view was a thick turgid shade of green.

 The visit to the highest lake in the world featured wet weather. At the shores of the frigid water the tourists braced themselves against biting rain. Small fast waves moved across the surface of the lake. They could see no grass boats or local villagers as they were inside sheltering from the weather. The view was a pale shade of electric grey and the passengers ate a hot meal of rice and beans in a road house at Puno. They soon departed to the borders of happy Peru and Bolivia and Chile.

 On the bus uniformed officers boarded. A simple check and stamp of their passports and then a welcome into Bolivia. They did not stay in its capital for even a day. Soon their excursion continued past La Paz. Into a surveillance operation in the next nation.

 They waited outside a state building until deep night in chill air. Johnny was a ball of nerves and uncertainty at his new occupation. He made a decision to trust the operation. They waited until the pale light of morning. Then a large white van arrived and a Bedford truck.

 The white van was tall and wide. It carried cameras and remote microphones and transmitter radios. Of a group of ten persons in the mission, all the five American citizens got into the white van. The last five who were citizens of various other nations rode in and on the back of the truck. Johnny rode on the flatbed beneath a blanket. He munched on the raw tuba he carried and sipped on water a little at a time. The truck and van drove across a barren salt plain.

 The vehicles stopped at a town which had in the centre of it a church. Tourists got out of the van and truck to talk with the locals and buy things. Johnny stayed beneath his blanket. This was the last town they would come to before the border. Like in any South American settlement, its people were all sold on religion. The church formed the centre of the town.

 His decision to hide under the blanket was a survival move. For the price of a printed t-shirt and a bottle of tequila, outlaw traders took in some of the people from his party. He saved his freedom by laying low.  

 Blinding light and searing dry heat assaulted the travellers. A road of crushed rocks alongside a line of power poles and electric cables led them. The power line diverged in another direction and the road continued alone. Wind sounded like the whispers of ghosts. Saliva turned to hissing mist in an instant. His head ached from the barrage of knocks against the boards of the truck.

 Only one day passed of the desert drive before the border was within close driving distance. The drivers of the van and truck stopped their progress. The leaders called that everyone with rifle experience should get into the large white van. All those without must follow on the Bedford truck. The border closed.

 Johnny joined the advance. 

 He sat next to a side window on the left side of the van. He carried a point three naught three with three bullets in the breach. A woman sat one seat to the right side of him and held a pistol. The driver and another person, also armed, were in the right side of the van cab.

 They checked their weapons and advanced at pace to a green sign. This arched above the road which was at the border gateway.

 Standing at the gateway, on the road and at either side of it, were guards. They wore black shirt uniforms with helmets and had their own pistols. Set across the road were wooden trestles. As the van advanced towards them it bashed them out of the way and drove through. The guards fired and the spies returned fire. Guns rang out in only fifteen separate shots between the opposing parties. Then the white surveillance van was in Chilean territory and rolling down the road at top pace. The black shirts did not pursue them.

 The two vehicles drove into a white salt pan until they came to an airstrip where a large airplane waited. A ramp lowered at the rear of the plane and the van drove up it and into the hull of the plane. Camera equipment distributed when aboard the plane. John had helped the spies get into the country. So he received the flight above the Atacama Desert. South of this there were wetter areas of the nation that were more supportive of life. He did not know where he was when he went to places.

 The country was an autocracy, and he ended up in a town built around a mountain ravine. There he swam in a lake above a dam, photographed the dam and met the townspeople. Those others who were also in the nation parted company with each other. They pursued separate destinations. This strategy derives from a theory of scatter. A few individuals in different locations are not apprehended. While a large collection of persons in one place can be.

 Their observation and documentation of the closed nation was individual and otherwise alone. Then evidence distributed to their next stations. Whatever situations the individuals got themselves into was empirical. They were example of the potential of the country. In Chile as it was then, power was the most valued property and it was what ruled the country.

 He found his way to Pueblo Hundido. The river and lake were worth swimming in. So he asked one of the local men who were his age to guide him around the area for a day and night before he left the nation. The man named Andres was only too happy to take him around for that time. The two young men were the same age and they had a good healthy swim in the flowing waters above the gorge at the ravine. There the dam let torrents of water through to a secret electric turbine. 

 The water was dirty and flowing fast. Andres told Johnny to follow and they swam along the current a while. He called to him to get out of the river where he did at a sunken log by the shore.

 “Good you did that,” Andre said to him. He pointed to the end of the gorge where the water flowed faster and out of sight. “Look there, a massive dam. Come with me and I’ll show you the zoo.”

 They walked with bare feet across the leaves of the forest floor. Andres showed him a six-foot tall wall topped with coiled barbed wire. Caught in the wire a monkey’s hand trapped at the wrist and the creature pulled its fist in futility.

 “Here, take them,” Andres said and handed him a set of wire cutter scissors. Jonathon reached upwards and with the tool cut the wires which had grasped the monkey’s hand. With a shriek it leapt over the wall to the side where the two humans were. It ran away crying and bleeding into the forest. Andres chased it.

 “You shouldn’t have,” he called as he ran away. “Now I have to give it first aid because I am the ranger. Go to Sylvia’s house at the ravine.”

 Jonathon collected his clothes and camera from the point where he had got into the river. Then he walked on a road across a mountain pass. He came to a concrete and glass building set into the sides of a rock cliff by the dam. He knocked on the front door and waited with a camera and tripod stand in hand. A lady opened the door and invited him in. She said that her husband was the dam master and that they did not receive many visitors who were not family. He asked for permission to photograph the dam from the main window. This had a great view of the tall concrete wall structure of the slipway. In times of high rainfall, a cascade flowed.

 Sylvia then asked him several questions. She asked him for his surname, profession and intentions. His country of origin, passport number and father’s occupation were in question. Finally, she wanted to know his mother’s age and maiden name. Once he provided his answers she then allowed him to photograph the dam. She also offered him a simple meal of crackers with dried tomatoes and sweet tea. When Johnny named Andres the ranger as his guide she invited him to a dinner that night in the mines.

 The view from the window was expansive and took in a valley. Stone mountainsides had houses built into the crags. Water trickled down from high above. His photograph was later published in a geographic magazine and this gave him pride.

 Although it was a foiled plan which bruised his pride. This was because of the disbelief of his family and friends and colleagues in life and at work. They all scoffed and shouted him down. He learned to bite on his memories rather than relate his journeys in storytelling.

 The dinner party that night was in a disused mine within the side of a mountain. The floor of the mineshaft was horizontal like a ballroom and wide and opened at a crag to the drop into the valley. Trestle tables and benches were set up in the hall. Guests brought bread and wine and roast chicken and pate and crackers and salads. This party happened every Saturday night in the humble town.   

 Johnny listened and laughed to the conversations. A man arrived and received higher than ordinary respect. He was an elderly man who wore suit and tie. It turned out that he was a psychiatrist who had recently retired. When all food and wine consumed and people were ready to leave it was dark and late at night. A few extra young rebels arrived with whiskey and pot and went deeper into the mine shafts. Johnny also departed then and slept on an old mattress by the back door of a forest cabin.

 Another touring bus took him to Santiago, the city of a million secret agents. It was there that he met Ian Macmillan again, who welcomed him with the same disrespectful gusto.

 “Where have you been? You disappeared for five days. I’m not sure if I want you on another trip of mine. What are you trying to prove by all this wandering about?” said Ian at the entrance to the grocers’ markets.

 John replied that that was the travel plan within the group. He then went about searching for a shop in the line that sold packets of cigarettes.

 “You know you shouldn’t smoke. Not at that age, and especially not here. A queer civil service agent would see you. They have some vague ideas about psychiatric descriptions. I'd lose you again,” said Ian.

 Johnny replied that he had felt stranded for two weeks. In the middle of wasteland deserts with addicts on the borders of two hostile countries. He had not yet come to any harm. He added that he had been to a party in the disused mines of the silver raids. Young people brought their own alcohol and drugs and had not threatened. "I'm confident to manage my own habits," he said.

 “Habits,” Ian scowled at the word. “I’ve seen healthier people than you end up dead in the streets from them, and older, too. Shape up and toe the line. You’re in someone else’s city here, and you have to play by their rules or else you might get it in the neck.”

 With purpose Johnny walked away from the trip leader and out of sight in the crowd. He came to a civic road where the coliseums formed a square canyon in which traffic jostled. All the cars were black Fords. He asked a man. The man wore light trousers and jogging shoes and an open shirt over a coloured t-shirt. He was five days’ unshaven.

 He said, “Yeah, take that alleyway between the buildings. Go twenty meters and there you’ll find a whole bunch of them.”

 So Johnny did. Like a fool, he took the dirty alleyway and walked twenty meters into a desperate caravan city squat. A man slept sitting in a ripped deck chair next to a smouldering fire. John said to him, “Excuse me please,” and the man snorted. He repeated his statement and the man opened one eye. He closed it again and snorted. Johnny tapped him with a foot and the man opened both eyes. “Oque Quer?""he said. "What do you want?”

 Johnny risked stating his request. “I want to buy some cigarettes.”

 The man took his time looking at him. “Deixe-me pegar o chefe," he said. "Let me get the boss.”

 He raised his head and shouted towards a caravan, “Eh! O chefe!" then said to Johnny “Fica ai,” and he fell asleep again.

 Several minutes passed. A fat dark man dressed in a thick leather jacket, jeans and boots came to the clearing by the fire. He walked right up to Johnny and stared at his face then said, “What the fuck do you want?”

 Johnny swallowed on his fear. “Tabaco cigarrilha,” he said.

 The man laughed a little and asked him, “Do you have life insurance?”

“Sim,” said Johnny. "Yea."

“Then they cost twenty thousand liras,” was the fat man’s reply.

 Johnny shook his head in disagreement. “That’s too much.”

 “If that is too much then you shouldn’t have asked here,” the man said.

 Other large men gathered behind the boss by this time and they repeated what he had said. “Se e demais, entao eles nao pediram por aqui.” They hid their hands inside the pockets of their clothes.

 Johnny turned to leave. He began to walk to the alleyway between the buildings that led to the street. It was then that the men grabbed roughly and pushed him over then hauled him up and shoved into an open caravan. They drew guns from jackets and jeans and people were shouting. Several times they punched him on the face and head. When he struggled they crushed his hand beneath the force of a twisted arm. His back bruised from fists. When he fell onto a smelly mattress on the floor the men left the van. Their boss first demanded money again. “Nao me diga como viver minha vida,” he said. "Do not tell me how to live my life." 

 The door swung closed and a key turned in the latch. Outside, the guns that were pulled out of pockets stayed out of the pockets. The deck chair swung about. The sleeping man could watch the caravan where they had Johnny locked inside. 

 Johnny lay on the mattress panicking until night fell. He saw through the window of the van that the fire stoked up until it was alight. He watched and listened as people gathered around the flames. A bottle of whiskey handed around from the main fat dark man to the others in the group. He saw with a better vantage the leather jacket which the boss wore. On the back of it stitched in a circle the words ‘Bandits – Santiago.’ So this was the organization he had strayed into.

 He wished that he had taken the advice of the tour leader and not been so proud and sure of himself. At around midnight a new group of people arrived and the main man talked to them. He sent them into the caravan where Johnny was hostage. 

 They entered the van. They were younger than the original thugs who had put him there. One of them handed Johnny a bottle of cheap vodka and they took swigs from it and discussed what to do. Johnny did not have the money which the Bandits demanded and he was a stranger from another country. When asked why he came to the caravan park, he described the unshaven man who had directed him there. The young man then expressed a realization of his problems and the way out of them. “You have trusted the wrong people,” he said, “But we can get you out of here. The price of your freedom is that camera. Keep the film, I don't care about it. Wait until tomorrow.” He took the camera for himself.

 When morning came Jonathon lay on the cheap mattress in the caravan. He had a broken hand and a headache to add to his list of problems. He had no food, and relieved his bladder in the sink of the kitchenette of the van. He waited until midday. The same scene as the day before occurred at the clearing. The fire smouldered, a man slept on a deck chair, and nobody else was around to see.

 The young man the previous night unlocked the latch on the door of the caravan. He picked up his bag and shuck out the door. He kept the caravan between him and the man in the chair as he hurried toward the alleyway. Making it into the walled space, he hurried back to the false opulence of the street.

 Typical of the nation as it was then, anything within view of the public looked wealthy and powerful. Out of sight of the critics yet right next to all the facade the quality of life was poor and rundown.

 He hailed for a taxi. Five cars passed him before one stopped. The passenger inside was the same unshaven man in track shoes and coloured t-shirt. Who had given him the bad advice the previous day. Johnny got into the car, considering that the risks of telling the driver to go on without him were too unknown.

 The man in the coloured t-shirt said, “You don’t feel so clever now do you?”

 “I only wanted to buy some cigarettes,” Johnny said.

 “Oh, you wanted to buy some cigarettes?” the man said to him. “I thought you said that you wanted to see some state asylum patients. We’re taking you to the airport and you’re leaving so can leave us to our business and peace. Cigars are the privilege of only our own O Presidente. He needs to relax after his difficult week. He is in long negotiation with the squirming socialist worm. We’ll remember you, and watch for you. Remember that.”

 The exit gate at Santiago was as cheap and under embellished as the entry gate at the airport at Lima. Johnny passed through the x-ray machines. He answered the few questions asked him by the officers. The strange unshaven man from the taxi explained to them that this kid was to leave their great nation. Johnny boarded a 747 and waited all day in a seat before he saw any signs that it was going to leave for anywhere.

 He checked in his small travel bag for any property he still possessed inside it. There was still the cassette tape from the cave in the split mountain in the Himalayas. From close to the valley called the Changtse Bazaar where he had his witness of the tall apes. There were also three rolls of film in a canister. Memories from his traded SLR. He had clicked shutters all the way since landing in Peru. There was a scribbled tooth brush and a shavers mirror and little else. Except leaves from the forest trails. He stank like a feral animal.

 The nefarious deals had not yet ended. In mid-flight to Auckland a dark Spanish woman handed him a pistol, saying “Here take this. It is a second hand P Thirty-Nine. I can’t take it into your country but you can because you are a citizen, yes? We stand against every government that stands for the poor working people. That happens within our interests. If we can’t change their government to a right republican one, we will cause in it rebellion and anarchy. Take it to Albert Park and kill a man with authority.” He was then given a new red and black striped skivvy with Levis jeans and running shoes. He changed into these on the airliner chair.

 Upon landing he caught a shuttle bus to the city. He visited the army surplus supply shop where he bought a satchel and sunglasses. To check the coordination of the agent on the plane, he walked through Albert Park. The same rough group of labourers and thieves he had left behind gathered on the grass. He had departed with no regrets three months ago. They were arguing with three local constables whether they could drink beer there. They wanted to be free of demands from the law. Johnny felt the heat rise to his neck as he strode past them all. He then ran to the downtown train station where he booked a cross country ticket to return him to his work and pay.

 Otago was a whole nation away. His seventeenth year was a very big year. One of his longest. His experiences fell back and receded into rumour.