4.2.09. Coyhaique, Chile.

Before attempting to ride the Carretera Austral, do make sure you don't want to go to the lavatory even a little bit. The frantic shuddering produced by the washboard road surface will loosen anything you might have been saving for later, and if you have any kind of travel-related upset in the back body, the consequences could be biblical in their ghastliness.
I was thinking just this morning -
"Yipes! I don't think these motorcycle trousers, unwashed in 8000 kilometers, could smell any more loathsome; leastways, not unless I actually did a shit in them".

Calm yourself - I didn't. But I nearly might have.

Spot the horse. At least, I think that was his name.

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What sort of pub, do you imagine, would play an entire Roxette CD, hitting repeat on one or two of the more listless, dead-eyed hit singles?
Do you suppose it might be the Dolt And Fishwife in Coyhaique?
Or The Old Bag, just up the road, where an entire Sheena Easton CD is a regular offering.

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Never mind that. An hour afterwards, H.* saunters up, and an hour after that, some playful arm-touching suggests that a snog - or worse - might be in the offing.
And by 2am we're up a dark alley fiddling about with things that really shouldn't concern us. As is frequently the way with the modern woman, however, she wrinkles her nose at the idea of being rogered in a hedge.
"Leave orf!" she squeals. "What sort of a gel d'you tike me for?"
I rather thought we had established what sort of a girl she was, but never mind. Huzzah for Coyhaique, and the ladies of Chile in general!

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For several examples of taxidermy at its most divertingly ham-fisted, visit Coyhaique's Municipal Museum. There's a condor tied to a stick, which is OK, but it's next to a duck, detracting a little bit from the majesty. Don't miss the owl, which was clearly stuffed by an angry, hungry, randy chimpanzee.
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My other favourite thing about Britain - and, for smokers, it's international, so stick with me as long as you can bear - is the distinction, in terms of cigarette packaging, between the knickers - the lower, bigger section of cellophane on the outside of a new cig packet, and the bra - the top bit, separated from the knickers by a thin pull-off strip. With a soft-pack, one would remove the bra but generally leave the knickers on, for safety, whereas with a hard-pack or box, knickers-off is (for my money) the way to go.

These days, however, smokers are faced with a new issue - how to ignore the disgusting Health Ministry photo on the front of the packet.

So just today, I have come up with a solution.
1) Remove the bra, keeping the knickers firmly in place.
2) Fold the silver foil piece (inside the pack, covering up the cigs) in half.
3) Tuck into the knickers as shown.
4) Smoke away!

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*No, not H from Steps