IT HAS been a week now since I crossed the Chilean- Bolivian border.

The proposed tunnel would stretch from the Bolivian border through Chile's Arica to an artificial island built in the Pacific Ocean.

Dropping down, then, he swept into the valley of the Beni river, which joins the Madeira river, some distance beyond the Bolivian border.

(I was only partly put off by the disappearance of my hero Colonel Fawcett, missing, believed eaten, somewhere on the Bolivian border.)