I have so many happy memories of getting lost in elaborate and exciting games as a child. I was lucky, I lived in a house with a big garden, and I could spend hours traversing the long grass, huge jungled deathtraps for the toy soldiers or model cars I commanded, that forged through the undergrowth to their horrible destruction or less commonly, to the base of an allied model aeroplane fleet somewhere near the horse chestnut tree. I had a treehouse as well, thanks to my father, and spent long summer afternoons up there with a flask of ribena, spying on the neighbours, being sure to report back to my parents on their every move. Further from home, there were the sandunes on Bamburgh beach, backed by the expansive and solid castle. “Lets play cowboys and Indians” I´d blurt out as soon as the car stopped (political correctness wasn´t high on my agenda at the age of seven), before skittering off into the hummocks and dissappearing in the long sharp grass. My sister and parents would humour me for what seemed like hours, as I unsubtly dashed across open ground, and jumped down wave carved cliffs of sand once I´d been discovered and shot.

Yesterday, however I found something that would surely, for any child, have been overwhelming - the hide and seek possibilities endless and the monstorous species living within limitless. Hatun Machay is the wonderland´s name, nestled in a high valley in central Peru. A garden of giant boulders and towers covers the undulating valley floor, and a tiny community of shepherds and particularly elderly indigenous locals live in their tiny thatched Chosas within the rocky labarinth.

Over years, the volcanic rock has been bitten slowly away by the wind and rain, and once through the soaring honey comb or runneled walls that guard the perimeter, one enters a land of layered jagged theatre backdrops, the razor sharp ridgelines mimicking the gargantuan high Andes, like an architect´s model in the lobby of an office block. The head of any animal can be seen, shapes in the oceans of rock. A Rhinoceros here, a llama there, and then, rounding a corner one may discover a cave with crude carvings and paintings on the dark protected walls.

Somewhere in this lunar landscape a dog barks, indicating the presence of a resident nearby. Cow dung picked up and piled to dry under overhanging crusts of rock provides more evidence that one is near a dwelling. The people here burn the dung, the only fuel they have to cook with and keep warm.

Fairy tale castles with hundreds of sharp turrets rise up metres above your head, and in the dust of caves, arrowheads can be found, from a past that no one will ever be sure of.

I was here to climb the newly developed routes that surely mark the beginning of a flood of climbing interest in the region. But very soon after arriving, climbing took a back seat, favouring instead, to explore this land of quartzite and waterworn passages. I am only grateful that my childhood garden didn´t back onto this wilderness. I would have grown thin from ignoring calls for lunch. I would have grown distant, living only within the walls of a limitless imagination, needing no longer to commicate with my family who waited patiently for me to come in before dark. Friends invited around to play would never have returned home, preferring the caves and child size clefts of rock to hide in and explore.

I spent two days there before the rain caused the moss to swell, and the dung smoke to hang low over the conicle dry grass rooves. I am back in a busy town now, but will be sure to dream of palaces of rock, and witches, three hundred years old, living within ancient walls that once formed the depths of a volcano.