Getting Andean

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Our first encounter with motion sickness was flying over the Nazca lines in a tiny aeroplane. Luckily, neither of us was actually sick, although I managed to miss half the lines preventing this! They´re on an epic scale, and the people who decided to draw them did a pretty good job considering they didn´t have an aeroplane to see how they actually looked!

From Nazca, we went straight to Chivay, over a pass of 4800 m, slightly stupid, and consequently we´ve both felt the altitude. Going to stock up on the old coca leaves before we get to Cusco and La Paz so that we´ll be acclimatised! Chivay was this brilliant little town near the Colca Canyon which had very clean air and pimped auto-rickshaws. We spent a few days chilling there and going to the springs as we felt a bit peaky, then moved to Cobanaconde where we walked down the canyon to an oasis at the bottom, where you could go for a swim for 1 sole. Unfortunately, this meant a lovely walk back up all 1200 m, which with dust, heat and altitude took an embarassingly long time. They don´t seem to have chair lifts in Peru 😞

At the moment we´re in Arequipa, which has a different feel about it to everywhere else because its a colonial city. Apparantly they have a problem with pigeons here, so as pest control they´ve introduced vultures. Haven´t seen any yet though! Off in search of a vegetarian restaurant tonight so that Peter can keep stocking up on nutrients before we hit steak-land Argentina in a few weeks!

L x

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