Moments

Sao Paulo in the morning light, a pale crust of houses and spiky skyscrapers washing up against green forested hills

A night sky so black and cold the stars blazed down brightly, each constellation strange and unknown

Distant volcanoes reflected on a mirror plain of turquoise water

Crystalline magic twinkling in the palm of my hand

Dunes towering over a dusty city full of crumbling, fallen bricks

Water falling so far and fast you can feel it with your whole body

A single toucan winging it’s way over tall jungle trees

Mists restlessly wreathing a ruined mountaintop Inca city

Hillsides of green terraces like giant’s steps

Streets filled with mad unpredictable anarchic traffic, pavements jammed with fruit hawkers, air choked with diesel fumes, houses rising like stacked blocks clinging to the steep sided valley

Pyramids made from millions of mud bricks

The smiling, welcoming, wrinkled old face of Peru

White shining peaks sharp against a bright blue sky

The sun breaking over far mountains in a river of lemon light across a vast lake

Wind whipping up dust and rubbish at the edge of town, train tracks converging in a hazy distance

Condors gliding past only yards above me, silently

Fresh guacamole and tortillas appearing from a tent in the Andean highlands – and a birthday cake

A chicken with no feathers

A glacier’s cold breath filling a high pass

A rock like a giant toad

People somehow still living at the edge of a stony wasteland, their possessions stacked under bamboo shades

The lined and worn face of old age and poverty

Grins of triumph at the end of a hard day’s trek

Butterflies painting the air with pulsing colour

An entire country seemingly covered in dust

Villages shining like jewels in the dark jungle

Boulders the size of a house

Unconcerned penguins

Silver glittering in the hot depths of a mine

An island carpeted with seabirds

The edge of the world, or so it seemed

Many, many guns – their metalwork pitted and polished with daily use

Friends met in unexpected places

Jungle valleys filled with flowers, streams and banana palms

Pacific rollers endlessly marching to attack the shore

Park guards whistling warnings to laughing children

The happy look that appears when chatting with someone far away on the phone

Lizards on a hot path

A herd of shaggy llamas and alpacas grazing their way across a high, cold grassy mountainside

Apachetas everywhere

A happy toddler in a basket on a mule on a mountain path in the early morning

A deep red sun setting over the crest of the dunes, the sand crunching under my boots