It is five years ago now since I was in Arequipa and I don’t think I’ve forgotten a moment of it. Of all the places we visited in Peru Arequipa was by far my favourite. Perhaps it was those first few moments that did it, getting off the plane, walking across the tarmac with my bag in hand, into an open space full of blue sky and sunshine and surrounded by volcanoes. I fell in love with it straight away. After a dirty, damp and fog ridden Lima it was paradise, and almost every day of the year in Arequipa is just as perfect. Inside the little terminal there was a Peruvian band waiting to welcome us and even the fact that someone tried to steal one of our bags didn’t make me feel unsafe. I had to learn that from the list of streets that it wasn’t wise to walk down and from the armed guards policing the main square, and more than anything from a fellow guest at our hostel who was strangle mugged and left helpless in the road with her glasses broken and her money and valuables taken.

The main square in Arequipa is glorious. The Spanish influenced colonial buildings are built from a white volcanic rock, sillar, which sparkles in the sun and the surfaces are decorated in baroque style, with confidence and bravura. Once again danger is lurking, the two towers of the cathedral are made from plastic because of damage from regular earthquakes although you would never know it, even when somebody points it out. You can walk through the colonades and archways and across the gardens among Peruvians of all ages who love being outside and socialising. If you are lucky enough to be there on a saints day, as I was, you will see the whole of Arequipa on parade, chefs in their whites and tall hats, children showing off their pets, representatives of every part of the community demonstrating their pride in their work, their beliefs and their city. A Peruvian will always dress in the best that they can afford, with colour and style.

One of the glories of Arequipa is Santa Catalina Monastery. This is a beautiful still haven of coloured courtyards and flowers in which you can wander around and lose yourself, exploring hidden corners, taking photographs or settling down to read a good book.

There is need all around. Tiny children are selling matches and toting around shoeshine kits and if you sit in one of the streetside cafes for a sandwich you may find yourself, as I did, giving the remains of your food to a elderly man who begs from you, holding out his sack politely for anything you may not want. The cafes are well used to this system and will wrap your leftovers so that they can be passed on. We visited a children’s home and school, Casar Hogar San Jose where street children are helped, taught, and given a chance for a fresh start. They were brilliant, full of life, energy and creativity and they loved the English country dancing which I taught them. Some of their stories were heartbreaking. The girls are brought down into the city when their desperate families are promised that they will be given an education and looked after. This promise can turn into a life of slave labour and sometimes abuse which causes them to flee onto the streets.

I was able to visit one of the most famous of the Inca mummies, who is kept in a small museum in the city. When you are given the chance to look into the face of a 12 year old girl who was given as an offering to the Gods and died up on the slopes of Mount Ampato somewhere around 1440 it is quite heartstopping. You can’t help but wonder about her last journey and her final thoughts and feelings. Juanita is beautifully preserved and sits curled up in a glass case. There is a sense of calm around her now, a sense that she is waiting for something or someone and if you look for long enough you begin to feel that she might move.

It is a magical place and I long to go back.

The centre of Blackpool is a strange place. There are almost no natural features at all. No hills or trees, no grass even, nothing but the long empty stretch of sea which runs alongside the town centre, licking at the straight line of the prom and drawing your eyes out towards the straight line of the horizon. There is really nothing much to see here at all. No wonder people immediately start looking around when they arrive, “seeking for further amusement” as the Ramsbottoms did in Marriot Edgar’s old monologue. It’s as if somebody, a very long time ago, thought to themselves this place is a bit dull, let’s spice it up a bit-see what we can come up with to keep everybody happy. And they built Blackpool.

So what did they come up with? When I arrive on a grey weekday October afternoon my first impression is that I have wandered into a nightclub at two o’clock in the morning when they have just switched the lights on to encourage everybody to go home. There are the dregs of something which has already happened all around me, but I am here too late to have seen it. Half closed bars, a few chip shops open, a bored bouncer standing around in a doorway talking to his friends, leftovers from the night before drifting around the pavements, and hopeful thumping music drifting out of a pub doorway. The giant roller coaster is flinging itself around the track with too few people on board for me to hear the screams. A few hardy souls are still partying in their bunny ears and L plates as if they haven’t noticed that they are the last ones still standing, but most people are just picking their way through the wasteland, eager to get somewhere else.

At night, when the lights come on again, the tattered paint is hidden behind lazers, neon, fibre optics and over a million lightbulbs. This is when the tiny human termites appear out of the darkness and crawl into the light to comfort themselves in the pleasure mounds which have been carefully made for them. They are loud and relentlessly cheerful, intent on being noticed.  They jostle their way down the prom in their hundreds, arms linked, spreading noise and movement through the lighted space. Long into the hours of darkness they scurry, watched with contempt by the waiting sea.

When I leave Blackpool a couple of days later my taxi driver tells me that they have clubbing all year round in Blackpool now. People come out of the nightclubs at two o’clock in the morning on a winter night, no longer able to think straight. They stare out across the blackness of the sea and decide that it would be a good idea to head out into the darkness for a swim. “They really shouldn’t do that,” he explains. “The water temperature kills them very quickly.” He shakes his head sadly. “You don’t see them again”.