Pepys at San Pedro de Atacama

On my recent travels in South America I ran out of reading material at San Pedro de Atacama. I found the Shorter Pepys at a used book store, so Mr Pepys and his entourage followed me across the Atacama and the high Andes, on many buses and all the way to Rio and home. On this journey the inconsequentialities piled up and nearly stifled me. Everywhere I looked there they were. Most of the time I was much too preoccupied with where I was to read, but on overnight 'semicama' buses with head rests designed as an implement of torture, reading was a pleasure, and though Pepys lived through a rather nasty regime change, the plague and fire of London, he too took the time for the relatively inconsequential. Returning a newly bought stove to the ironmongers because it doesn't work as claimed, painting his book shelves, monitoring his bowel movements, dallying with any married woman he could get his hands on, drinking a little too much a little too frequently, managing to avoid censor for assisting in the looting of a Dutch East India treasure ship, beating his wife and then feeling ashamed. If he had appeared beside me I know he would have proclaimed the beer horse piss and had his jaws into a chunk of barbecued goat in no time at all.

The picture is of a Belgian family we met in Cafayete, Argentina. They were taking two years to drive around the world. A man, a woman and four small children. They were driving a Land Rover with roof top tent and trailer. Their website is www.la-vie-est-belle.be They seemed to be having a great time.