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Some mountains are so high they spit in the eye of anything Europe has to offer, topping out with roadways at over 4,500m.

Up here, if you run around for a bit, the low oxygen levels mean that you'll feel like you're trying to heave a desperately needed lungful of air through a small straw. Hearts beat like kettledrums, racing to keep up with the demand for more oxygen from an atmosphere that isn't capable of providing it.

The cars slow down too - at one point they were incapable of pulling away without stalling - and feel as if their 620bhp had been reined in to more like 350-400bhp. If the car can't breathe, it can't do.

A simple but effective cure for the humans is the coca leaf. Wad 10 of these bitter-tasting, dried leaves up under your lip and suck on them for a bit, and the burgeoning altitude sickness dissipates with surprising speed.

No such luck for the cars - despite some careful planning, the gas we've been feeding them could easily be alcohol. It even smells different at the pumps. Still, as long as the Ferrari is moving under its own power I'm happy, because the walk home would take a while.

Besides, being at this altitude has advantages, too. The scenery never ceases to draw you around the next corner. Some 200km to our right is the Amazon, yet we drive through deserts and mountains so spectacular that you can't imagine jungle anywhere nearby.

We skim the edges of the Pacific and fear that we're in some lost spur of the Costa del Sol, the Spanish influence and seasideyness blotting out the realisation that we're actually somewhere a great deal further than an easyjet from home.

Highly political, hand-painted electioneering messages adorn every wall and post in every village. Vote for 'Allan' seems popular, but the party of 'Angel and Boris' becomes a blue Ferrari favourite all the way up to the Ecuadorian border. It takes us five days, but eventually we get to cleave our stylish little way into our country of destination...

The border itself is a flurry of paperwork, passport stamps and fuggy smells of livestock and low-quality fuel. Peru took us six days to traverse, each day very much the same, but no less impressive for that. Any country in which grandmothers lie by the side of the road reading papers halfway up a mountain is OK by me.

Ecuador brings much the same, and includes a greater number of armed guards. Despite no obvious threat, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that a drug lord could manage to 'lose' our little caravan in the hills. Thus we become familiar with Uzis and M16s hung from uniformed shoulders.

Eventually, we reach Quito and the terminus of our trip. The Ferraris are continuing, and a few days in their company doesn't feel like enough. There's so much more here. More to see, more to experience. Being here in these cars just seems to highlight what there isn't, just as much as what there is.

All we've had in the past 10 days is a glimpse of South America through the unfamiliar lens of a Ferrari windscreen. But if that allows me a different take on the situation, then it's perfect. And it won't be forgotten in a hurry.

Tom Ford

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