Bolivia Part Two...and Peru Part One

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Hello all!

I'm currently in Arequipa, in the south-west of Peru.

Since my last message I have been busy busy busy, as always when I travel...

We did the silver mines in Potosi - well I did. Sarah got about 100m in and had an attack of her claustrophobia but I battled on. It was amazing to see the men at work, chewing huge wads of coca leaves. at some points I had to crawl on my hands and knees and my asthma was a struggle, but I did it. After leaving we laid on our backs in a thermal lake and stared at the blue blue sky...

From there we went to Sucre, a beautiful colonial town with lots of culture, at a much lower altitude and with lovely weather...we spent two days enjoying the city and then headed to La Paz.

La Paz, on the other hand is extremely ugly. It is built within a crater, like a scoop of ice-cream has been scooped out and replaced by a million people. We did the usual city stuff - museums, churches, shopping...everything is extremely cheap there, making it horribly tempting to overspend. Sarah was going to cycle down the "world's most dangerous road" but it was pretty expensive so didn't - I wasn't even tempted!

Our next stop was Lake Titicaca. We stayed one night in Copacabana (on the Bolivian side), veeeeeeery busy with tourists. The next day we crossed over onto Isla del Sol (Sun island) and walked 21km from one end to the other. It was nice to do something physical and get some practice in for Machu Picchu! We stayed a night on the island - after the sun went down it was pitch black with no streetlights or anything - amazing starry night sky, an extremely peaceful experience for us after so much running around. The following day we headed to Puno, on the Peruvian side of the lake. This was just a stopover really, but in the morning we went to some floating islands - islands constructed from reeds with indigenous communities living there. This was great to see, I really enjoyed myself.

Last night we arrived here in Arequipa. The hostel we are staying in is lovely and the staff are very helpful. So far we have visited a convent and gone up to a lookout point over the city. Its a nice city but a little dull...

We are very excited for our next stop - a desert oasis which has dune buggy riding and sandboarding - cannot wait!

More soon!

xxxxx

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