After a meagre 9 hour bus ride, we arrived in Lima late into the night. We had heard lots of other traveller´s stories of Lima so we were on our guard. We took it easy our first night there. It is still a mystery to me how sitting on a bus is actually tiring but it is somehow. The next day, full of energy, we headed out into Lima. First on the agenda was the Plaza de Armas in the centre of the town. It was a lovely colonial square surrounded on one side by the Peruvian presidential palace and the [View Full Entry]

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Our exhausting 10hr journey from Ecuador to Peru took us from the Andean mountains to the Peruvian desert. Once we reached Piura we promptly booked ourselves onto a night bus to Trujillo and from there we took a taxi to our ultimate destination Huanchaco; a little surf town off the coast of Peru. After 24 hours of travelling we were due a nap so we checked ourselves into Hostal Naylamps which is right on the seafront. After a while myself and Rory went for a wander and made friends with a pelican on the beach while, Luke went off to harass [View Full Entry]

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After arriving in Banos in the late afternoon safe and sound, we booked into our hostel and quickly left to check out Banos. It is a cute little town surrounded by steep, green valley walls on all sides and varying degrees of night life which we of course sampled. Banos is famous for it's thermal baths and the next morning we soon found out why. There was three different pools of varying degrees of temperature, one roasting hot, one quite warm and last one is freezing. The locals laughed at our girlish screams (mainly Rory and Aoife and especially not I). [View Full Entry]

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Despite a cancelled flight and scare stories of armed muggings, we reached our destination Quito in one piece! We took acclimatisation to the altitude in Ecuador very seriously. First step- go even higher!! On the first morning we took the cable cars (teleferiQo) to the dizzying heights of 4100m up the Volcano Pichincha with the Irish girls we´d met in the hostel. While the views were fantastic, the cable car journey was a little terrifying and the whole complex was very touristy. There was even a theme park; as if being on the side of a volcano wasn´t scary enough! Part [View Full Entry]

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Want to visit exotic wonders such as McDonalds and Walmart? Then Cancun is the place for you! Our arrival at the bus terminal was enough to tell us that Cancun was not where we wanted to be, but you can't ask much from a city built in 30 years for tourists! We made our way swiftly to the ferry terminal and caught the boat to Isla Mujeres, an island off the coast of Cancun. We thought we had felt the heat in Mexico previous to this, but it was absolutely scorching! Once we settled into the hotel, we headed immediately to [View Full Entry]

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After a quick stop in San Christobal de las Casas, we booked a jungle trip to cover the Palenque, Yaxchilan and Bonampek ruins. We managed to book speedy Gonzalez as our driver for the first day- speed bumps to him were a challenge to go faster and the right side of the road more an option than a rule! He did however bring us through some beautiful scenery where the clouds were lower than the treetops and he impressed us with his muscial tastes... I never knew the venga boys were popular outside Europe and that somebody actually owned their album! [View Full Entry]

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hello folks! Since the last blog, we've been up to a lot. On our last day we went and visited Teotihuacan. The place is amazing and the scale is mind boggling. We turned up at midday, needless to say it has very, very hot and Rory quickly started to sport his interesting choice of head gear. There was hawkers aplenty, trying to sell you their wares and the "no gracias" were flying. We climbed the Quetzalcoatl Temple and it there that we spied the Pyramid of the Sun. The giant pyramid which dominated the surrounding landscape. So in the mid-day [View Full Entry]

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After our 11 hour flight and our trawl through customs, we eventually reached out hostel at about 8pm. Our first impressions of Mexico city were not the greatest given it was dark and their were virtually no street lights on the hostel´s road and the roads were all dug up and stank of sewage (luke was pleased to view some drainage). However the next day in the daylight and the heat things starting looking up. After Maeve arrived the next morning, we headed to the zocalo and were greeted by an enormous Mexican flag and a huge square surrounded by the [View Full Entry]

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