Days 39-43 We caught an early morning flight to Lima. We'd heard really bad things about Lima, but it wasn't as bad as all the hype. Saying that, we didn't venture too far for fear of being robbed/stabbed/beaten/killed. We went for a little wander and chilled out in the hotel, watching a coupel of films. We went out for dinner and had a couple of drinks. The next day was much of the same. We went to a supermarket to get provisions for Christmas Day as everything would be closed. After filling our trolley with Pringles, sweeties, nuts and (very cheap) [View Full Entry]

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Day 39 We said our goodbyes to our chums in the group as we were leaving the majority of them while they did the Inca trail. We got on a train, headed for Machu Picchu. Once we arrived, we had a 2 hour tour around the beautiful Inca city which was really interesting. It was really peaceful there and fortunately the weather stayed dry. The clouds that hung over the mountains added to the atmosphere and made it more magical. We climbed up to a view point where we sat and looked over the whole of the city. It was really [View Full Entry]

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Days 37 and 38 Leaving the jungle at another ungodly hour, we arrived back in Cusco at lunchtime. Had some lunch at NORTON RATs TAVERN and mooched around. In the evening we went out to a really funky bar. The next day was a day of culture! We visited Sascayhwaman, an inca-built temple. We climbed to the top and looked out over Cusco. We then visited Pisaq, another Inca place on the Sacred Valley. The view was spectacular. We had lunch there and walked around the markets. We bought a painting from a really cute deaf man and then headed to [View Full Entry]

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Day 35 and 36 Another early one and a flight later we were in Puerto Maldonado, the start of our jungle adventure. We were taken by (a rather rocky) motorised canoe deep into the Amazon Rainforest to a beautiful lodge. After lunch and a snooze in our own private hammocks, we crossed the river to Monkey Island. As its name suggests, it is an island where monkeys live!! We went for a hike through the jungle and were lucky enough to see several types of monkeys, including a cute mummy one with a baby on her back. Our guide had some [View Full Entry]

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Day 34 We arrived in Cusco at 14:30 after a 6 hour bus ride. We had the afternoon to ourselves so we walked around the beautiful town squares. The architechure is a strange mix over Inca style bases and foundations with colonial Spainish built on top. It's a really clean and friendly place. We were all pretty tired from the previous days and we had a few more early starts coming up so we had dinner and got an early night. [View Full Entry]

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Days 31, 32 and 33 We were picked up early in La Paz and headed for the Peruvian border. The trip took about 10 hours including a boat ride over a lake that was in our path! We stopped on the shore of lake Titicaca at a place called Copacabana for lunch. We arrived in Puno and had a mooch arround and bought some wooly hats as it was getting cold in the evenings. One of the shops had a baby lama in it. At first we thought it was a toy, but as it got up and pee´d in a [View Full Entry]

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Day 28,29 and 30 We arrive in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia, around lunch time. While deciding what to do that afternoon we found out that there was a football match on at the local stadium. Not only that but it was a local derby between Bolivar (the Champions) and The Stongest. So we and a couple of the girls made our way by crazy taxi down to the ground. We got the best seats in the house for around 3 and a half quid. It ended 2 each and although the football wasn´t the greatest we had a really [View Full Entry]

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Days 26 & 27 We headed off in 4x4 s to Solar de Uyuni - 12000 square kms of pure salt! It was amazing. Pure white salt against bright blue skies for as far as you could see. It used to be a lagoon but the water dried up so it's just salt that's left. It looked like ice. We stopped at a salt hotel where everything is made of salt - including the furniture and then stopped at a random island for lunch. We had an explore of the island (which is called Fish Island) which had plenty of [View Full Entry]

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Day 23 We arrived in Potosi midday and had a wander round. We are something like 3600 m above sea level so it's really hard to walk uphill as your heart is beating so fast due to the altitude! We had lunch and then went for a tour around the mint museum. Day 24 We were picked up in the morning for our trip to the mine. Basically Potosi is a mining town where the miners pay the government to work in the mine and whatever they find is theirs. The mine used to be rich in silver, but now it [View Full Entry]

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Days 21, 22 & 23 After a couple of flights we were in Sucre, a beautiful small city with white colonial buildings. Our hotel was gorgeous and had a big court yard in the middle of it. Sucre is the richest city in Bolivia and it shows!! The next day we went on a city tour to the cemetry - sounds odd but it was really interesting as all the tombs are encased over ground or in monuments and then went to see some dinosaur tracks. It was unbelievable, there were these 80 million year old dinosaur tracks that were found [View Full Entry]

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