Introduction: A Chronology of Visitors to the New World.

c.23,000 – 10,000 B.C. The ocean ebbs low, revealing a land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska. Tribes chase their game herds across the bridge and then are stranded when the waters rise again. Eventually the people begin to move south, populating the Americas from top to bottom.

c.10,000 B.C. Travellers from the empire of Mu, located on the lost continent of Mu in the Pacific Ocean, begin to colonise the world, founding Egyptian and Greek civilisation, as well as Central American civilisation and the Rapa Nui on Easter Island. Shortly thereafter the empire of Mu is obliterated in a single cataclysmic night.

c. 700 B.C. – 200 A.D. U.F.O.s descend from space into southern Peru. They choose as their landing place the deserts of Nazca, their craft leaving great trenches and marks in the desert rock. The local Nazca people seek to emulate these marvellous beings, and begin creating their own lines in the stone, by digging away at the rusty surface stone to reveal the pale stone underneath. They create hundred of runways and other geometric shapes to please the visitors, as well as a giant frog, and some more animals.

34 A.D. Darkness covers the city of Bountiful, located somewhere in the New World. Jesus Christ descends from the heavens to show his crucifixion wounds to the faithful people gathered at the temple in Bountiful. Records of his visit are etched on gold plates by a succession of prophets, the last of whom is Moroni the son of Mormon. Moroni buries the plates, and they are later found by Joseph Smith, first prophet of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

1001 A.D. Leif Ericson, a Viking explorer, pieces together the accounts of various other Norse sailors, and uses these to sail to the New World via Greenland. He establishes a short-lived settlement that he calls Vinland. Later it is renamed Newfoundland.

1492 A.D. Christopher Columbus officially discovers the New World when he sets eyes on The Bahamas. He establishes a colony in modern day Haiti, and begins naming the Caribbean islands. Some of these names, like St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, are eventually shortened for the sake of practicality. Columbus doesn’t find much gold and most of his captured slaves die on the way back to Spain. It is a very disappointing trip for him.

1530 A.D. Francisco Pizarro sets out on his fourth voyage down the West Coast of South America. In the space of five years the illiterate adventurer and his gang of fortune-seekers explore the coast of Peru, encounter the Inca emperor Atahualpa, capture him and demand a ransom, receive the gold and kill him anyway, route his enormous army, sack the capital Cusco and establish a new city, Lima, the city of kings. Further north Pizarro’s second cousin Hernando Cortes does the same thing in Mexico.

1659 A.D. Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked and marooned on an island off the coast of Venezuela. His adventures inspire Alexander Selkirk to do similar; he is shipwrecked on an island now called Robinson Crusoe Island, off the coast of Chile. Prior to these adventures Crusoe was a plantation and slave owner in Brazil.

1806 A.D. A British force tries to invade Argentina. The Spanish colonial government retreats but local forces defeat the British, and in so doing realise that they probably don’t need the Spanish any more. Jose de San Martin liberates much of southern South America. Simon Bolivar does the same for northern South America. They meet briefly in Ecuador. Mexico also declares independence, as does most of Central America and the Caribbean. By 1825 only Cuba and Puerto Rico still belong to Spain.

c.1849 A.D. The influx of Chinese labourers to Peru begins. 150 years later there are over a million people of Chinese descent in Peru. The Chinese influence invigorates Peruvian cuisine, putting it on the international map and putting a Chifa – Chinese Peruvian restaurant – on every street.

1911 A.D. Hiram Bingham discovers Machu Picchu. Local Quechua people who had been living at the site are eventually replaced by hundreds of thousands of tourists. Bingham lifts thousands of cultural artifacts, taking them with him back to Yale University. His adventures inspire Indiana Jones to do similar.

1934 A.D. Evelyn Waugh publishes A Handful of Dust, a novel developed from his travels through Guyana and Brazil. The sixth chapter of the book may be single-handedly responsible for the lack of tourism in the Guyanas and northern Brazil today.

1951 A.D. Klaus Barbie, a former Gestapo member known as the Butcher of Lyon is smuggled into Juan Peron’s Argentina. He later moves to Bolivia where he buys and sells arms for Israel and participates in a right-wing coup. Peron allowed many Nazi war criminals to seek refuge in Argentina. He also sympathised with Jewish rights, and accepted more Jewish refugees than any other Latin American nation. Argentina has one of the largest Jewish populations in the world.

1962 A.D. Lots of ships from the Soviet Union begin to arrive in Cuba. Officially these are merchant vessels, but they contain an awful lot of soldiers and missiles. Later in the year the arsenal returns to the USSR.

2005 A.D. Andy and I arrive i Santiago de Chile. We speak very little Spanish but are very excited. On our first night we eat cheese empanadas and french fries and drink local beer at an outdoor table of a pub in Barrio Brasil. We think it marvellous and afterwards travel for two and a half months in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Costa Rica and Mexico. Andy meets a girl and we part ways in France. I move to Spain and travel around bits of Europe. Later i return to the U.S. Then I move to Korea.

2008 A.D. I return to Latin America and am immensely happy about it.