Hello Australia - believe it or not, this is the first time I have been in South America. The closest I've come previously was a trip through the Panama Canal - and the less said about that, the better...

I'm in a place called Puno, in Peru, waiting for the Compass Expeditions tour I'm going to join for the next couple of weeks. We're going to ride some amazing roads up here in the Andes and see places I've long wanted to look at, including Macchu Picchu and the Nazca lines.

I must admit that I was a little worried about he trip over here, flying from Sydney to Auckland, Santiago, Lima and then Juliaca, just up the road from here. It turned out to involve 4 hours sleep in 44 hours' travel, but somehow I was still human when I got off the plane. That's when the altitude sickness got me. It gets higher a bit later on the trip, but it's high enough even here to make you feel like a very tired kitten. I'm on Sorojchi Pills which contain mostly aspirin, but promise to be la solucion contra el mal d'attitude. I've only just taken my first pill after a full day here, because I thought I could tough it out. Seems I can't; it's like flu with a couple more symptoms, like sleeplessness...

I did have a wander through the narrow and exotic streets of Puno, and discovered that they really do serve guinea pig. Should I try it? I've eaten most other things, even though I was fooled in to tasting dog by a Chinese guide who insisted that it was pork.

The Compass tour will arrive here this afternoon from La Paz, and I'm looking forward to meeting my fellow riders. When Mick from Compass invited me along on one of their trips I kept moaning about how I didn't have time, so he's made this as time-effective as possible. I'll be eternally grateful to him for building in a couple of days to acclimatise to the altitude, though!

From what I've seen of the country so far - from the air and then the three-quarter hour drive from Juliaca - it's very dry and very hilly. The road seemed pretty good out in the country, but absolutely appalling in towns. I have no idea how the spindly three-wheeled motorcycle taxis manage it without breaking into several pieces.

The prestige bike here is a 125 Honda; most of the others seem to be Chinese, although I've never seen most of the brands before - even in China! I'm pleased to say that I'll be riding a BMW F650GS, one of my favourite dual purpose bikes. Not sure how I'd go on a Chinese 125, even if it was hand painted in several clashing colours, as many of them here are.

Not sure if there's a helmet law, but if there is it's only the flash riders on their near-new Honda's who bother to obey. Among the others, the Inca trilby is popular.

I think it's time for me have a bit of a lie-down again.

Catch you soon.

Greetings from Lake Titticaca,

The Bear

We’re used to having things fly through the air and thwack into us while we’re out riding. You know, the usual nuisances; stones, very hard beetles, vast swarms of bees that kamakazi into you and leave your jacket and helmet oozing with furry honey. Or clouds of locusts so dense you end up covered in wing fragments and what looks like soft boiled egg. I once followed a coach down a really narrow dirt road and when I arrived white powdery dust had stuck to my Belstaff jacket and I looked as if I’d been dipped in flour ready to be fried. At the rest stop, the coach passengers all wanted to know my round Australia story. “I’ve been stuck behind your coach for 20 kilometres you turkeys.”

Then there critters we hit.

We dodge dogs, roos, and even emus. One of my girlfriends was once chased by an angry emu that seemed to thought she was competing for females and it finally succeeded in tipping her off the bike. Afterwards she painted a symbol of an emu on her tank to accompany the two painted kangaroos that also tipped her off – a record of her engagements, like a fighter pilot in WWII, but in reverse. Rider 0, Emu 1, Kangaroos 2.

While I was riding solo in Arizona’s Sonoran desert way, way out in Indian country around the back of the Cameron Trading Post, where there was nothing but bleached bones, creosote bush and cactus, a very large eagle whacked the back of my red helmet. Yes, it thought I was bleeding and wanted to finish me off. Wallop! It was quite a solid thud that sent me into a horrible wobble and made me “bird crazy” for the rest of the trip. Do you know how many eagles there are in the desert!

But even though they are scary, funny or messy, those things of nature you can understand.

What I cannot get to grips with are the people who deliberate throw things out of their car windows at me. Has that happened to you? I don’t mean the “tossers” of the Don’t Litter Australia ad campaigns who carelessly throw away lolly wrappers and soft drink cans that accidentally hit you on their way to despoiling pristine nature. I mean the people who edge up alongside, take careful aim and then fling a glass bottle or full can at you.

This has happened to me on half a dozen occasions - but never when riding with mates naturally, because, well, with Horehound by my side, God help them.

It’s not just heavy things that hurt, either. While I was waiting at traffic lights in Raymond Terrace once, a hoodlum flicked a lit cigarette butt directly at my face. My visor was open and he scored a direct hit into my helmet causing a certain amount of panic as the stinging object worked its way down into my neck roll.

Another time, at traffic lights again, a yobbo with his hat on backward threw his chewing-gum at me. When he saw how easily it stuck to my new textile jacket, he laughed, and his mates in the back wound down their windows to pelt me with PK too.

I’ve also had half a cup of milkshake hurled at me at traffic lights, and a newspaper while on the move – which of the lot was the most dangerous, because it wrapped itself round my visor and blinded me. It must have looked funny, but it wasn’t really.

Okay, the safest thing you can do when you are on your own is to keep guard up and accelerate the hell away from imbeciles like that, but why do they do it? Perhaps, since all the freeway overpasses have been fenced off they are in “brick flinging withdrawal”. I now understand how those truck drivers felt every time they saw people hanging around on an overpass.

Perhaps it’s time to fine people who throw things from vehicles. What do you think?

In the meantime, besides all the other things I watch for, I now watch for car windows gliding down, and body language within that signals I’m gonna get you with this pie!

Terri