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CHAPTER 1

MEETING MARCUS

If I had never fallen in with Marcus in Puno, I might never have met Kevin or crossed paths with Karl. If I hadn’t met Karl that morning in La Paz, Kevin might well have spent Christmas with his family, and poor old Marcus might still be wandering South America with his girl. But that’s not the way things happened.

When I arrived in the Peruvian town of Puno, my knee was hurting badly; walking was terribly painful. A french mochilero (backpacker) offered me coca leaves to chew.

‘Have a little of this,’ he said. ‘You’ll feel better.’

I put a pinch of leaves in my mouth and chewed on the strange little rock, another gift from the Frenchman. The rock, made of pressed liana ashes, extracts the active alkaloids from the leaves and causes them to ferment in the mouth. Without the rock there’s no fermentation, no effect, no high. All it did was put my tongue and the roof of my mouth to sleep.

I rose early the next morning feeling better nevertheless. The boat to the island of Taquile would be leaving at eight o’clock. The truth is, I could have