"In our hostel he was known as the Kahn"

“ Yes, back in ’84 there was no route between San Pedro and Uyuni - so I walked”, the tanned, toned and weathered Swiss-German told me as I sat riveted on the edge of my dorm bed in San Pedro de Atacama. The 650 kilometres took him three months. He got his food and water from active sulphur mines along the way. Today, this is one of the most popularly travelled routes in South America, traversed by almost 200,000 tourists a year, and known as the “Salt Flat tour”. It now takes three days in a Toyota 4x4. Solemnly he continues, “it is possible that my article in National Geographic about the trip encouraged them to make the route accessible by jeep. But this would have happened eventually anyway. In travel everything is always changing. That you must accept”.

I cannot help but stare in awe at this truly remarkable man. I have met many interesting people on my various trips but few have compared to Mario Giorgetta - known in our hostel simply as the Khan. Having worked in cutting-edge circuit physics in the 70’s and 80’s, and patented a number of specialised energy adaptors, he retired at the tender age of 39. For the last 20 years he has been travelling almost uninterruptedly through South America. His knowledge is staggering, his tales defy belief and his self-absorption is seemingly infinite.

“Women hold you back, they restrict you”, I heard him explain to the hostel receptionist one morning when asked why he hadn’t married. His daily routine hardly left room for a better half. Every morning he rose at 7.30am, treated himself to a breakfast of two pieces of bread, a banana and a glass of coke and, armed with only his Nikon camera; headed out into the surrounding desert. He walked about 25 kilometres a day, following the ancient pre-Colombian caravan route, which he claimed ran all the way to Bolivian Amazonia. When he returned it would be dark. As I lay in bed, my book open on my lap, he would tell me excitedly of the petroglyphs, cave paintings and decorated graves that he had discovered that day.

One night as we drifted on to other subjects, he told me that deep in the sparsely populated Chaco of northern Paraguay, he had met an ex-Nazi who, only a few years before, had been operated on by Hitler’s notorious physician, the much hunted fugitive, Dr. Josef Mengele – the Angel of Death. The Khan got through cameras faster than most people get through shoes. “Every 5 months I must replace my camera”, he told me brushing the dust from the lens of his Nikon D60. “But I cannot expect much more from these bodies; 60, 000 photos that is about the limit”, he explains shrugging his shoulders. 60,000 photos every 5 months; that is about 400 photos a day I quickly work out.   “That must be expensive”, I say. “What do I care”, he replies smiling, “I only have 20 years more to live”.

Check out Mario's awesome travel site with information gathered from over 20 years on the road: http://www.marigio.es.tl/