It's another one of those entries where I reveal to my poor mother that I've been up to something dangerous, I'm afraid. Although this time, I didn't even fully realise how dangerous until afterwards.

The morning started harmless enough. I had breakfast, went to the shops, found a bikini that fit and bought a new diary as I am on my last page. As I sat waiting for the guide to pick me up, I played with Estrella, the dog, in the garden. I asked to go in the morning, but for some reason that wasn't possible and at about two in the afternoon, a battered red Mercedes stopped.

I had read in the LP that Iquique had the perfect climate to go paragliding. Paragliding, to put it simply, involves getting to the top of a mountain or hill, strapping on a type of already open parachute, run at an abyss, jump off and float gently down. And I figured I'd quite like to try that.

Luis, the guide, was a 50-year old man who'd been paragliding since 1988, so I figured I was in good hands. We parked the car at the beach, and took a taxi to the top of a hill behind the city. It wasn't until Luis pointed at the hill which we would be coming down from, and a blue and white parapente hanging high above us, that I realised what I had agreed to do.

At the top, there was no backing out. Luis got the parapente out and asked a young guy to help. So you have all these cords, and then you run to where the hill stops and off you go. If you don't trip, and if Luis has got the wind right, and loads of stuff I luckily knew nothing about. Our takeoff was a bit in fits and starts, and we were in the air before I realised, which was probably just as well.

I put my feet in the cord as he instructed, and sat myself on the seat. A couple of hundred metres below us, a brown sandy hill, beyond the city and further still the coast. We went very slowly and Luis kept remarking on how much wind there was coming from the wrong side, but as I couldn't see him, I didn't think much of it.

It wasn't until he told me we were not catching enough wind and that he would have to land at the bottom of the brown sandy hill, that I realised things were not going as planned. A normal flight takes about 40 minutes and we had only just been in the air. When we turned from north to south, we started swinging and Luis kept going on about how bad the wind was. To add insult to luckily no injury, the sandy hill we were landing on was covered in broken beer bottles, so not only did he need to navigate us in the wind, he also needed to keep us on a path clear of glass!

So we landed (I tried to run but the mull sand made me fall over) and Luis told me how hard it had been to keep the parapente from going somewhere it shouldn't go. As far as I could understand (this was all in Spanish), normally the wind comes from the south and blows you to the beach, now it came from the north, got trapped behind the hill and started making turbulence.

Turbulence is not a good thing, as you (ie Luis) need to keep the parapente steady, which got very hard. Anyway, I was blissfully unaware of all of this and only realised when Luis, sweating with the effort, told me about it afterwards. He showed me the birds (there weren't any when we jumped) and they were all staying to one side of the hill.

How lucky I had been to get such an experienced guide! He said he normally never jumped in the afternoon, but the office I booked with had called for a favour as their 'pilote' was still gone and I was waiting. He had asked if I could do it another day but they had told him I was leaving tonight and, of course, they didn't want to miss out on their commission...

I gathered it was all a bit of a cock-up, and luckily Luis was as good as he was. He was quite pissed off at them though, another sign of someone who knows what he's doing. He gave the guy at the hotel a good dressing down when we got there.

So my first parapente experience was not altogether a perfect one, although at the time it barely registered and I was just enjoying the ride, marvelling at being carried by the wind, strapped to the belly of a greying paragliding expert...

I was very sweaty, but due to all the delays it was already five in the afternoon. The bus left at eight and I hadn't eaten since breakfast so I went to find a bite to eat. I had a sandwich at La Ciocolateria. They have impressive looking cakes but service was surly and out of spite I didn't tip...

When I got back to the hotel, Luis was still there, chatting. When I left, they all gave me a hearty sendoff, which I thought was a bit much but I think they were just relieved I didn't complain about the botched paragliding experience, but I had a great time, so I felt it wouldn't have been fair to complain.

I got to the bus station and onto the bus, which goes all the way to Santiago. You have to be crazy to want to spend 24 hours on a bus... About two hours into the trip, we all had to get out of an aduana check. Now, I don't know how you pack, but I usually do everything the night before, then add my sleeping top and used pair of knickers to the top of the pack.

So the first thing the aduana inspector saw was my undies. He moved very quickly on to the next person in line... So there's a tip for wannabe smugglers, it works like a charm.