In Summary

I thought for a while about how to end this blog with something profound or revelatory, accompanied with panpipes. I then realised that it would almost certainly come out sounding cringy and fatuous. So in the best traditions of GCSE essay writing I have decided to summarise the entire year in five paragraphs and let you draw your own conclusions.

We have been away for 335 days in total. We spent 521 hours on buses of varying sizes and quality, and every journey was an hour longer than it was meant to be. We have travelled a total of 15, 500 miles by bus through eight countries. We spent the night in 51 different cities, of which seven were capitals. We have 25 new stamps in our passports. I have 103 new friends on Facebook. I have drunk 32 new kinds of beer and approximately the same number of red wines. I recommend the 2007 Malbec. I have experienced several Top Ten hangovers but only vomited once (Panamanian Rum in Ecuador).

I have eaten llama and alpaca, raw fish ceviche, chicken foot soup and barbecued cows intestines. I have had to stop the bus in the middle of a Bolivian town at 3am and leave a cowpat in the middle of the road. We have been nearly mugged on three occasions, twice on the same day, never successfully. I have lost 15lbs, four pairs of sunglasses, a cardigan, two hairbands and a pair of flipflops. I have successfully disintegrated countless numbers of socks. I have darned my pants back together an average of once a week for the last three months. I can remember 5 words in Quechua and none of them is 'beer'. My bra is held together with patches cannibalised from an old sock. My backpack smells like an animal's nest. I have acquired one fiancé, two engagement rings and an excellent set of religious fridge magnets. Chris and I have had two arguments. We agreed last night that the score was 1-1.

I have watched the most boring game of football ever played at the Bombanera in Buenos Aires. I have watched Arsenal on ESPN more than any Fulham fan should have to. I have played 780 hands of gin rummy and won about 50% although I am currently on a four day losing streak. I have been bitten by a toucan, a monkey, a llama and approximately forty thousand mosquitoes. This, incidentally, is the same number of times I have watched the film Stepbrothers.

I have been to eight places which claim to be one of the (new) Seven Wonders of the World. I have swum in three rivers, washed my hair in a waterfall, and paddled in two oceans. To my knowledge I have not picked up a parasite or been eaten by a shark. I have been craving chicken kievs since March. I know who to make pebre (but not how to spell it) and a poultice for snakebite using jungle plants. I have reached an altitude of 5003m and a latitude of 54 degrees south. I have not balanced an egg on the Equator but I can spot the upside down llama in the Milky Way. The Animatronic Resurrection at Tierra Santa is two thirds of the size of the Cristo Redentor in Rio de Janeiro. I have found money in the street in all eight countries- the best return being five bolivianos which I spent on a Toblerone.

I have also written 46 blog posts from South America and you have now reached the end of them. I have had a rather great year. I hope you have too. Thanks for reading xx

Her Name is Rio...

Take a deep breath folks, we are almost at the end of this meandering tale. Our next stop was the Marvellous City itself, Rio de Janeiro. The slight problem being the 24 hour bus ride in between. Since we are now seasoned professionals in the art of long distance bus travel we made some pizza to eat (cold) and downloaded a weeks worth of podcasts to while away the time between the onboard refreshment service and the excellent range of inflight movies.

Tiny hitch: no films. This is an unbelievable oversight in a journey of this magnitude. In Argentina we would have been quickly sedated with an continuous drip of poorly scripted action movies and thus stupefied for travel, like when you have to fly a panda to Edinburgh. I am pretty sure they show films to cows on trucks going to the abbatoir. But not for us. Fortunately the view was monotonous, the air conditioning was temperamental, the seats were too small and no one gave us any biscuits so when the bus turned up four hours late (28 hour journey!) in Rio and we eventually reached the hostel we had booked to be told that we hadnt booked it, I was as you may gather a trifle upset. Fortunately Chris managed to defuse the situation by promising me a beer if I didnt explode. So I didnt explode, although it was a close call.

Rio did not improve upon waking up the next morning. I dont know who runs the marketing campaigns for the city, but I would simultaneously like to shake him by the hand and the scruff of the neck. Any brand managers, sleazy politicians or genocidal dictators reading this: find this guy (it will be a guy) and sign him up at once. This guy is really good. How do I know? Because I have now been to the Marvellous City and I tell you this for free- it blows.

Now I know what you are thinking: she´s tired and a bit homesick, she´s angsty because she cant speak Portugese, she just got off a movie-less 28 hour bus ride, she clearly didnt stop at one beer and has a thumping great hangover thats playing havoc with her judgement- and some of that might be true. I am even prepared to admit that other people may find some charm in Rio that has hitherto passed me by; people with no interest in aesthetically pleasing cities, who dont mind that everything is covered in shit, who are happy to wander around with a permanent unease of being mugged under a lowering grey sky in oppressively humid temperatures. I grant you that some people- lunatics, perhaps, or recently escaped convicts, may be happy to discover that the hostels are charmless and devoid of soul, the people are unfriendly, and everything is heartbreakingly expensive. Some people may not want to hunt down the person who wrote ´Girl from Ipanema´, shakes him until his teeth rattles and shout ´Look at this beach! No one is tall OR tan OR anything even approximating lovely!´ And these people, whoever they may be, can keep Rio. But they will not be getting any Christmas cards from me.

Perhaps I have been a trifle unfair. The beaches are quite nice in themselves. I saw a couple of nice arses and my inner lesbian is prepared to concede a couple of decent pairs but hardly enough to justify all the fuss, I thought. I cross referenced these findings with Chris who confirmed that I was definitely right although obviously he hadnt seen any breasts anywhere at all. The one plus for Rio was that we discovered a new street snack made of chicken and something unknown, in a ball shape. So we named it ´ball´ and enjoyed an afternoon of childish humour about chewing balls. It is the sort of place that puts you in that mood.

So we gave up and went down the coast to Paraty- cobbled streets, lovely beaches, peace and quiet, excellent caipirinhas and all you can eat barbecue. The sun came out, we swam in the sea. Everything was perfect except that all the sand in the ocean ended up somehow in the lining of my swimsuit, and coagulated into a giant mass. It was like growing a pair of street snacks, or turning into one of those baboons with the pink bottoms. However, changing gender and species is a small price to pay for not spending the whole week in Rio.

Wet and Wild

And so to the Itaipu Binational Dam. I had heard a lot of facts about this, and learnt even more which I am happy to regurgitate for you here to save you having to look it up. The dam, shared by Brazil and Paraguay, contains enough steel to build 380 Eiffel Towers, a reservoir that is 120km long, and twenty turbines- ten owned by each country. The Paraguayans generate 90% of their country´s entire energy requirements using two turbines and sell the rest to Brazil- the resulting output of 18 turbines generates around 20% of Brazil´s energy requirements. Quite a disparity in the number of lightbulbs each country uses there. The dam cost US$20 billion and about 150 people died building it. And they keep fish out of the turbines using nets (I asked). The dam also destroyed a number of indigenous settlements and drowned a set of waterfalls called Siete Quedas which were apparently as impressive as Iguazu. I was quite impressed with the dam itself, so this latter fact didnt really hit home, and I was pretty well convinced by the statistics and the lovely renewable hydroelectrics after a short propaganda film. They built a zoo, you see, and give money to charity to make up for uprooting parrots and families, and they did have a lovely airconditioned complex and showed you round for free. My loyalty to environmental issues is easily bought off, it seems.

That is until we reached Iguazu itself a few days later. I had seen plenty of photos before but it really was astoundingly beautiful. Fortunately we arrived early and there were comparitively few people around, so we got some gorgeous views of the rivers thundering over the falls and the mist rising above the trees. Iguazu National Park (Argentine side) is very well done, with a dinky little train to convey you around the different waterfalls and some lovely walkways to get you right up close. They are awfully good at these walkways in Argentina- they had them at Perito Moreno as well- and have managed to blend them into the landscape so that they dont intrude on your pictures, even when they are coverd with fat-bottomed Americans determined to stretch Lycra to the very limits of its capacity and beyond. We wandered around in a sort of awestruck silence for quite a long time, examining the falls from all different angles including right up close into the spray. The park is full of butterflies that land on you (to eat your sweat, romantically. We learnt that in the jungle where the butterflies went crazy for my socks.) There are also all sorts of lizards that pose for photographs and startle you when you walk round a corner.

We shared lunch unwillingly with a coati. This is a sort of poodle-sized raccoon type thingy that hangs around the bins and eating areas. There are big signs telling you not to feed them, and also that they will bite you and steal your food, but Chris didnt believe this negative press and was therefore the only person who was surprised when a coati jumped on the table and made off with our baguette. He (the coati, not Chris) proceeded to retire under a bush within plain view of the two of us, mockingly unwrapped the clingfilm and polished it off. Another big sign nearby said that salami sandwiches would probably kill coatis, but as with most public health and dietary advice in the world these days, the coati chose to ignore it. I hope that sandwich goes straight to its hips.

As if all this Edenic splendour were not enough- a speed boat ride right under the Falls! We had been warned by previous visitors that you got a bit wet, although this turned out to be a slight understatement. It turns out that there is an awful lot of water coming over those waterfalls so when we got within twenty feet the soaking was total. Being such a hot day it was actually quite refreshing although having soaked our pants too it did dry into some very fetching ´look at my crotch´ type patterns.

And now some tragic news. The dousing in the Rio Iguazu did result in one casualty. It is my sad duty to report that my walking boots, yea verily the same walking boots that climbed Cotopaxi (twice, once with my friend Kya in them), traversed the salt flats of Uyuni, scaled the heights of Machu Picchu and pounded the streets of Buenos Aires, even those same walking boots that reached the end of the world in Ushuaia, finally gave up the ghost. By this I mean that the nauseating aroma of rotting feet that had gassed out dormitories in six countries and driven Chris to the very brink of nasal amputation, was so overwhelmingly enhanced by their dip into the churning waters of Iguazu that even I could not ignore their scent for any longer. Birds were falling out of the sky as I passed beneath them. Flowers withered where my feet passed. Reckoning that the Brazilian border police would assume that they were being subjected to some sort of biological attack if I tried to wear them over the frontier, I decided the time had come. My original idea had been to tie them together and throw them into the Falls, until someone pointed out that this might spark a Missing Persons search. So, in a rather ignominious end, I hid them behind the bins in the hostel. This seemed on reflection to have been a poor parting gift to Argentina, a country that has amused and delighted us for nearly three months, until it occured to me that if they took the boots on a pole and pointed them in the direction of the Falkland Islands, the British could be defeated without a shot being fired. I wonder if this is how Oppenheimer felt.

Among the Mennonites

North of the capital and things get really isolated. On a six hour bus ride through the Chaco- a sort of palm savannah with vultures circling overhead (waiting to pick off tourists when the buses break down) we went through perhaps five settlements. These consisted of two or three houses made of logs, a hammock stretched between some trees, a tarpaulin, a few chickens, a ribby cow and a camp fire. Quite what these people do out in this wilderness I am not sure but everyone seemed happy enough staring at the buses from the shade of their trees. Our final destination was the town of Concepción. Stepping off the bus we were surrounded by locals wielding nunchuks- which turned out to be horsewhips. They were taxi drivers- the preferred method of public transport in town being the horse and cart, if you don't own your own scooter. Dumping our bags at the nearest hospedaje we headed off down the street to see what there was to see. Answer: not much- red dust roads, board buildings with tin roofs, and several stalls selling spitroasted chickens. The heat was incredible- like stepping into an oven- and after a short explore it became apparent that there was nothing for it except to order a cold beer and sit in the shade. Once seated, we noted that this is exactly what everyone else in town was doing.

That's pretty much how it worked for our three days there. It's too hot in the middle of the Paraguayan day to leave your little bit of shade, be that under a tree on your bit of pavement, or in our case, the only airconditioned room on the block. In the evening, we strolled down to get some roast chicken and then sat with the locals at a roadside shack and drank all their beer and played cards. On the second night we made friends with a carpenter called Nicholas who taught us some basic Guarani (the local language) and answered all our enquiries on Paraguayan life while encouraging Chris to ogle the breasts of passing local ladies. Five litres in we both agreed that we liked it here- alot. Fortunately we'd already booked our bus out of there or I think we'd still be there. Oh, and there was a crocodile in the river. They showed us mobile phone footage of the locals shotting at it with rifles. Extraordinary.

Having not been put off by the Patagonian 'Welsh' experience we headed even norther to the German Mennonite Colony of Fernheim at Filadelfia. This is even more remote and tricky to get to. Should you visit, may I personally recommend that you don't accidentally nearly leave your fiance in a service station toilet and have to shriek at the driver to stop the bus- it amuses the locals, but makes you feela trifle foolish. The insufferably wrong guidebook dubbed this one ' a suburb of Munich in the middle of a desert' which is stretching it a bit, and on arrival we were a bit nonplussed as to where exactly the Mennonites were. The Mennonites, for those of you who haven't been to Wikipedia yet, are a subgroup of Anabaptists, originally from Germany (or Russia, or Holland, depending who you believe). They eschew violence, speak a german dialect called PlattDeutsch, and are a bit Amish-ish. Expecting something akin to Amishfolk off the telly I was a trifle disappointed that they have all mod cons up here, until I realised this meant a swimming pool at the hotel. Bliss. We spent a happy hour poking around the Mennonite museum, looking at the things they had brought with them from home when the first colonists sailed up the Rio Paraguay and laid the first beachtowels down on the area in the 1929, fleeing from the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany and Bolshevik persecution in Russia. Rather brilliantly the museum included an old man's prosthetic leg (the original shot off by the aforementioned Bolsheviks), a lamp that ran on peanut oil, and Russian winter clothing- all of which was I am sure was deemed essential in the 40 degree heat of a Chaco summer. Upon arrival about 90 of the 500 or so colonists died in a typhus epidemic and were buried in hollow tree trunks. The rest farmed, milked, and sweated their way to what we see today. Some of the group- including the grandparents of the museum curator, went out and established a German Mennonite colony in China. Does anyone know if they are still there? I shall make it my task to find out.

So there you have it- Northern Paraguay is full of blonde, German speaking Germans, eating kuchen and not drinking gluhwein (because most of them don't drink- although you can buy a beer called Kaiser). I'll say it again- extraordinary.

Technicolor Paraguay

I should never have mentioned the heat. I have tempted the thermometer in the worst of all ways. Having left Argentina by way of the world's easiest border control (they do not give a rat's what you bring into Paraguay) we have now spent the week melting. It is not just the heat of the heat, which is mid 30s, but the fantastic humidity of the heat which makes your pants stick to your arse and your legs stick to your chair and your hair turn into a ginger Einstein afro. There is a scene in an episode of Star Trek where Counsellor Troi devolves into some sort of frog-human hybrid and goes to live in a bathtub. That's me this week. It's hot enough to melt both my shoes and my resolve to do anything. It's hot enough for Chris to agree to sit in the shade and drink 4 litres of beer with me. When the wind blows, it's like someone putting the hairdryer on in your face. In short, it's really hot. But there's Christmas decorations everywhere, which is all wrong.

Happily we have managed some short bursts of activity. In Encarnacion, we visited some ruined Jesuit missions. Lots of nice brickwork. No other visitors. I remember once my stepfather got a machine where we could print our own labels and for a few days the whole family went crazy making little stickers that said 'video' and 'biscuit tin' and 'sister' and stuck them everywhere. I mention this because I get the feeling this is what the over-enthusiastic folks who draw up the World Heritage List got up to in South America. EVERYTHING is on the damn list. In this case, although they have managed to provide no information and no context for the ruins, I can see what they were up to. There really isn't much in Paraguay for people to come and look at. Some nice brickwork is pretty much the sum of historical sites.

Neither this nor the heat should stop people from visiting though, because what Paraguay lacks in obvious tourist draws it makes up for with the fact that there are no obvious tourist draws and therefore-brilliantly- no tourists. This is South America at its (almost) unspoilt best. All the fun stuff is found in observing everyday life, especially out in the countryside which is just too picturesque to be true. In fact, I spent ages staring out at very green fields and very red earth, very brown rivers and very blue skies, trying to figure out why it seemed familiar. Then I remembered: it's the opening scenes of Gone with the Wind. Big plantations, old mansion houses, nicely positioned cows, all done in glorious technicolor. We caught a local bus out to a small town and went into the gas station to ask when the connecting bus would arrive. In about an hour, we were told. So we sat by the side of the road playing ball with rolled up socks and watching people take things on and off the buses.On the hour, the man from the gas station came out, got into another crumbling rustbucket and drove us to the next village. He came back especially to pick us up from the ruins. I loved that.

Asuncion, the capital, seems to have been put together with leftover bits from all the other capital cities in South America. It has a nice smattering of old buildings, including some huge colonial mansions on the main road into town, which seem to have been made for verandahs and people wearing linen to drink iced teas in the heat of the early evening. There's a wide, slow river perspiring away in the background, breeding those lovely dengue-carrying mosquitoes, and some nice leafy squares. There's also grinding poverty everywhere- half the local population seem to have no shoes, and in the middle of Plaza Uruguay there's a huge shanty town with tents made of plastic and washing lines hanging between the trees, and filthy kids playing in the roads. It's hard to think of another place where the words 'faded grandeur' are so apt: Asuncion was larger than Buenos Aires for a good few years. Nowadays all the bus companies sell you tickets to BA (a mere 18 hours away) and Asuncion seems to be having a permanent siesta, although there are signs that things are beginning to change. They've switched on to air conditioning, which is a boon- we've spent a lot of time looking at things in shop that we can't afford and don't want in order to avail ourselves of the lovely cool air. Every few days there is a citywide power cut because there's not enough power in the grids to keep all the fans running. Lots of people eat their lunch in cafeterias in the department stores where you can get a buffet style meal paid for by the kilogram. They've even opened a British pub. Visit now, before it's too late.

Hot Stuff

After the delights of the Holy Land theme park, all other earthly activities seem a trifle mundane. Feeling spiritually unclean and leprous we decided to go to Mass in Buenos Aires Cathedral. Happily we were not smited upon entry which I took to be a good sign, although God turned a deaf ear to my pleas regarding the result of Fulham v Spurs. Further evidence of divine displeasure manifested itself in the thwarting of our dinner arrangements. Chris had found a 'Real British Curry House' promising us an actual Lamb Rogan Josh (curry being rarer than hens teeth in this part of the world) but to our dismay it was closed on Mondays. Feeling that we had exhausted our capacity for beautifully cooked steak and fine wines we then trawled the city for inferior chinese food.

I wish to state on record at this point that I loved Buenos Aires deeply and passionately. It is one of the few cities which I have ever seriously considered living in. I would encourage everyone to visit and sample its delights. But of course all cities have one fatal flaw and in BA it is an outrageous, nay, criminal inability to provide crispy duck pancakes on request. The only possible candidate involved a sweating, shirtless kitchen hand who seemed genuinely baffled that we weren't there to close his establishment down and deport him. After two hours of fruitless wandering we were forced to admit defeat and this will tarnish my memory of this great metropolis forever.

On the other hand, there is nothing like arriving anywhere else in Argentina to make you nostalgic for Buenos Aires and happily our next stop was Rosario. We got off the bus into the sort of oppressive heat that makes you visibly wilt. Fortunately there is nothing to do in Rosario at all so I lay around in a listless daze for the first day rallying occasionally to demand that Chris fan me with a towel. Eventually I became delirious, calling weakly for beer (too weakly; he didn't buckle).

Overnight a tropical storm, the worst in 27 years according to the news, lashed the town, ripping the shutters off the hostel window and with some impressive lightning (or so I am told: I was hiding under the covers). The storm blew away the international food festival in town so we really were left with nothing to do except fight with the world's most incompetent supermarket staff over their inability to make change or work out the barcode on a packet of blueberries. It seems little wonder that Che Guevara and Lionel Messi, both native sons, decided to hightail it out of there as quick as possible.

Currently we're hanging out in Posadas on the Paraguayan border. Up here our biggest concern is mosquitos. Here, dengue fever is all the rage. This nasty little ailment is carried by a different set of mosquitoes to the malarial kind. Dengue mosquitoes hang out during the daytime, making this part of the world a 24 hour bug nightmare. I'm particularly thrilled to report that dengue can lead to a wonderful complication called dengue haemorrhagic fever. As we all know I am exceptionally brave but haemorrhagic fevers are no picnic- not unless you are a vampire. Consequently I am now suffering from psychosomatic mosquito bites of the highest magnitude. Every tiny itch and twinge has now become a sign of impending doom. There's nothing you can do for dengue except drink fluids. Nothing much for malaria either, except drink gin and tonic (for the quinine) so by process of careful study I have concluded that there is no choice other than to be medicinally drunk until December.

Bring it on, Paraguay.

Your own personal (animatronic) Jesus

Several years ago my friend Sully and I decided there was a gap in the market for a religious themed fast food restaurant. Called 'The Fast Supper', the sample menu offered dishes such as Lamb of God with Peas Be With You and Judas IsCarrots, Satan Kidney Pie and Cheeses of Nazareth. We reluctantly abandoned the plan for fears that it would outrage religious sensibilities everywhere and piss off the Big Guy Upstairs.

I mention it now because here in Buenos Aires they have managed to go one better and have opened an entire theme park based on the life and work of Christ. I had heard about this place a few weeks ago from a genuinely scandalised visitor and knowing that the giftshop would be outstanding if nothing else, I looked it up on the internet. It is called Holy Land (Tierra Santa). I know I've told you to look a lot of things up during this blog but trust me, look it up- you won't be disappointed. I'd spent quite a lot of time developing a programme of rides- hoping against hope for a Jonah boat ride with a whale leaping out of the water like the Jaws shark at Universal Studios. This time, my expectations were completely matched and overwhelmed. (In your face, Bolivian Dinosaur Park!)

It's hard to know where to start- at the main entrance I was accosted by a Roman soldier with a walkie- talkie lurking under a plastic palm tree. He steered us towards the Nativity Scene, before informing us that due to weather conditions the Birth of Christ was taking place on a revised timetable. Would we care to wander up to Golgotha a admire the beautifully rendered Plastic Crucifixion scene, complete with mocking Roman centurions gnawing on a chicken leg and Jewish women wailing and beating their breasts? Well, alright then, but try and stick to the script for the rest of this, OK?

We got a little lost looking for the Rivers of Jordan waterfall, having taken a wrong turn at Joseph's carpentry shop (closed, alas! I was hoping to pick up some carved wooden trinkets for the folks back home). So we instead followed a sign to the Resurrection via a grotto in which St George was slaying a poorly rendered dragon and a suggestions box where you could leave your own requests for your Guardian Angel. Plastic Pope John Paul II appeared to have been quarantined (for purposes unknown) in a large glass case, perhaps fearing another plastic assassination attempt. After a while things got a little peevish- "We should have gone left at the Beatitudes". "That is the sixth time you have redirected us to the Wailing Wall". Rounding a corner, we were startled to find Lazarus, covered in what appeared to be string and egg whites, advancing upon an unperturbed Jesus who was signalling for a waiter or possibly attempting a Turn Undead spell.

This was all so far beyond my expectations for tasteless awfulness that I began to feel serious, Catholic levels of guilt for being in the place. Poor Chris, desperately searching for some Methodism in this madness, held up bravely until an inspection of the winter timetable showed that the giant Jesus we had seen on the side of the plastic Gologotha moments before was the long awaited Resurrection, showing hourly at ten to the hour. "He pops up and down" my poor boy fumed, clutching his head in despair "like some sort of ecclesiastical jack-in-the-box".

Fearing a crisis of faith and/or possibly a smiting, we decided to have a sit-down amongst other disciples in the Animatronic Last Supper Spectacular. "Many visitors find this the most moving part of the park" the leaflet trumpeted (the ironic play on words didn't translate into spanish). As the lights dimmed a Spanish Charlton Heston solemnly intoned the narrative from the Gospels as a selection of disco lights played over the tableau. Then, at the breaking of the bread part, the mechanised disciples all turned as Our Animatronic Lord spread his arms wide, turned his head and stared RIGHT at me (bit frightening, that) and then opening and shutting his mouth to resemble talking, he gave thanks and praise (via the voiceover). This was repeated with the wine before the RoboSaviour turned and threw a withering look at Judas and patting St Peter awkwardly on the arm. Finally the music reached a crescendo and the lights came up to enthusiastic applause from the audience of pensioners and schoolchildren. I sat genuinely stunned.

Well, I could go on and on. After a stop at a gift shop (all the staff are obliged to wear Palestinian head towels, including the maintenance men) to stock up on religious tat (buy your Frankincense and Myrrh here! Ooh, how much for that Last Supper keyring?) we snacked on a Holy Hotdog before heading off to see some more treats. Why, here is the Wailing Wall! Apparently if you leave a prayer here we'll post it to the actual wall in Jerusalem. Look, there's Jesus throwing the moneylenders out of the temple! And look, you can buy some hummus over here, because that's what Jesus ate. We enjoyed the delights of the Nativity at last (flying cherubs, crazy party lighting- they stopped just short of a glitterball but it was a close one). At The Creation we were treated to Enya, which is apparently what God listened to while he was making the Garden of Eden out of some green lasers, dry ice and a lot of leftover animatronic animals from another theme park. We poked around the back streets of Jerusalem before stumbling across the Mount of Olives and fetching up in the far corner where, in a sop to other world religions, we found Gandhi, Martin Luther, a small synagogue and a replica plastic mosque. A sign outside the mosque asked visitors to take their shoes off before going inside the plastic mosque. It seemed a bit late in the day to be worried about offending anyone's religious principles, but why the hell not?

By this stage it was becoming really hard to maintain a grip on rising hysteria. But there was one more, the grand finale to end all finales. I refer of course to the Resurrection itself. We sat in a plastic amphitheatre with an expectant throng of guests. Then, acompanied by the soaring strains of the Hallelujah Chorus, the earth split and the 60ft Messiah rose imperiously from the ground. He is risen! Hallelujah! What's he doing now? Ah, he's turning to bless the multitudes. Hallelujah! He is risen! What's this? He is descending! That's not right- wait, come back!! No, show's over. But Fear Not, the Lord will rise again at ten to three and every hour until closing time.

All jokes aside, I honestly can't pass judgement on any of this. Of course it was awful; and unquestioningly, arrestingly bizarre . But it was certainly popular. The schoolchildren were lapping it up, and didn't seem to be doing so in a mocking or disrespectful way. The park genuinely seemed to be serious about bringing Christianity to life for its visitors and, while I am not at all sure about the methodology, I can't really fault the sentiment. And in its own unique way it definitely shed an interestingly light on how people relate to religion here. Which was certainly thought- provoking. I'm still thinking about it.

I leave you with this thought: They may have made some spectacular advances in animatronics these days but I say verily unto you, God still moves in the most mysterious ways.