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So I moved to Amsterdam a week ago. I’m already mobile and there’s a chill in the air.

Like the peculiar Dutch language with its confusing syntax and overly-ambitious chaining of guttural sounds, Amsterdam beguiles me. I marvel at the city’s horseshoe streets and the baffling harmony between people, trams, cars and bikes. My head shakes at the consistency of human height.

The city hides its secrets well. Not like in Sydney, which gets her clothes off quicker than a stripper after a boob job. Even close to the centre, where I am, there’s a strange and pregnant silence. Like when a cat gives birth. I wonder if something is happening right under my nose. Something that I’m supposed to find. A salmonella-laced croquet from Febos for example.

How shall I discover Amsterdam? Shall I scour its backstreets? Follow dimly lit canals, losing my way as is typical of me, even when carrying a hand-drawn map? Yes. I think getting lost is the best way to learn local geography.

In the streets, confident, well-dressed Dutch people flow past me in a tightly packed hoard of bicycles as I struggle with a chain that is heavier and more expensive than the bike I’m riding. They look upon me with those judging, fair eyes that kill in me the will to spit in their perfectly groomed hair. They ride away. I wonder where they are going. Clearly to a modern city apartment, filled with other handsome and smiling people eating fresh bread, smoking and drinking delicious wine. Very gezellig. I make a mental note to penetrate their secret society and dismantle it from within.

Meanwhile the sun chases the horizon down as if it has been bit on the arse by a black hole. The days are dark my friends and the clouds look grim. I wake in the mornings wondering if my watch stopped at 8pm the previous evening or if there’s been a total eclipse of all light in the universe. That a plague of giant black locusts descends over the city each morning is a possibility that hasn’t escaped me. People use the word midday but I’m sure they’d have no idea of what or when it is if they didn’t wear watches.

The lowlands deserve a chance however and I’m looking forward to unearthing every morsel and devouring it. As a dog would a dead rabbit. Preferably with tablespoons of mayonnaise.

I’m not one to keep a diary when travelling. I hardly take photos. What will I have to look back on, you ask? A few doodles, observations and memories that I can embellish at wish rather than live with the cold reality.

Mountains, lakes, deserts, jungles, beaches, monkeys and salmonella. I’ve witnessed the beauty and viciousness of all these things and more in just over four weeks of travelling around Peru and parts of Bolivia; and the feeling I’m left with, at four days to go, is one of awe at the diversity of the land and its peoples, and appreciation of over-the-counter antibiotics.

There’s not much to dislike about Peru. Sure, its economic compass is pointed hard at the tourism dollar and toilet paper is a rare commodity, however the eternal sheet of pure blue sky laid over an almost alien landscape rips you so far out of normality that cannot help but be impressed.

In a mere three days trekking the Colca Canyon near Arequipa we passed deserts, roaring fresh water rivers, valleys inhabited by condors, and fields of coca and cacti sprayed across the faces of jagged mountains.

Even the most insolent of backpacker didn’t fail to utter at least one obscenity in praise of the views.

At regular intervals our guide, Pepe, stopped us on the trail to inspect a traditional medicinal plant or edible fruit. Other times he called a halt simply to provide the sweating gringos with some relief from the sun and altitude. As we sat panting and wheezing, peculiarly in the shadow of a tall eucalypt, donkeys and mules pranced up the mountain leaving trails of shit in their wake, as if to impress upon us the ease with which they navigated the narrow precipices. What they didn’t realise was that, all the time, we gringos were plotting ways to turn them into kebabs having heard stories of the gloriousness of their barbequed hides.

We suffered more at the proboscises of the local midgies on the trail to Macchu Picchu. Whether we were swimming in hot springs, screaming down the mountain on a bike or trying to harvest a few minutes sleep in a mud hut on the mountain, their relentless attacks kept us all on edge. The daily debate was one over whether one should apply insect repellent before or after sunblock - controlled experiments failed to provide a conclusive answer.

So far, Peru has pushed the limits of my body: cold, heat, altitude, water contamination, vertigo, hunger and fatigue, all have left me wondering why anyone would pay to suffer this way when package deals to the Greek islands taunt you from every travel agent’s window. But I think that at the end of it all is the reward of experience and peace. And I know, although it’s not immediately evident, that I’m having the best time in a long time.