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Published: April 28th 2009
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Hi,
I´ve had such a great couple of weeks i hardly know where to start.
I met up with Daisy at Lima airport and we spent a few days in Lima before our tour started. We explored the area for a couple of days and took a daytrip to see the Nazca lines by plane. They´re shapes in the ground that the incas made, noone´s exactly sure why. Some have speculated that it was a signal to outer space, some say it´s based on astronomy and some think it was from wierd drug induced visions. Whatever, they´re there for, they are pretty cool. The tiny plane we saw them in was not. It kept tipping from side to side so that we could get a good look and after seeing the fourth one (out of twelve) we were both feeling quite sick, especially as it was 7 hours away on coach so we´d been up at 2am to make it there and back in a day. We made it through and they were cool to see, although probably better looking back in pictures without the nausea.
Then we started a tour that we´d booked back in the uk. Hotels
were included so we´ve been staying in luxury and as peru´s pretty cheap (about 3 pounds for a meal and beer and 6 pounds for a night in a hostel) we´ve been living pretty well.
We flew to cuzco, which is a really nice small town with a really high altitude so it took a while to get used to. The hotel people kept giving us coca tea and we were soon feeling used to it. Then we took a train to the town at the base of machu picchu, Aguas Calientes and visited the hotsprings before an early morning (4am) rise to go up to machu picchu. It was really foogy and still dark when we got there but when the sun was out it was really spectacular.
The next day we went back to cuzco and then on to Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon rainforest. We stayed at a lodge there and went on lots of cool explorations, seeing the sun set over the rainforest from above the canopy level (37 m) and also early morning pirrhana fishing on a nearby lake. The lodge was surrounded by birds and monkeys and was really peaceful.Daisy hates birds
so she didn´t find it so peaceful and also, being a vegetarian, wasn´t too keen on me and the rest of the group trying the local delicacies in Cuzco, like alpaca and guinea pig. But we both had a great time. We had to take a boat there and they gave us our lunch in leaves so it all had a really rustic feel to it.
The rainforest was so hot and humid, about 90% humidity and full of bugs but we got used to it after a while and were happy to kick back inthe hammock in our room.
In cuzco, much to daisy´s delight, i bought a set of pan pipes and we invented a great new game called ´guess the panpipes´ where i play something that sounds exactly like a well known song and she takes a couple of hours to guess what it is. If you´re lucky i´ll introduce you to the game when i´m back.
The whole experience was great but we had to hang up the panpipes and head to miami for a few days as a stopover (for some reason it was cheaper to fly to mexico via miami so
we took advantage of this and spent a few night in miami.
I really enjoyed Miami. We spent the days on south beach and the nights in some cool clubs.
Then yesterday we flew to Mexico city. The swine flu has made it interesting. Our lfight was half empty as some people have decided not to risk coming here. We looked into it though and decided that as long as we got out of mexico city pretty soon it shouldn´t be a problem. We were given masks as soon as we got to the airport and haven´t taken them off since. It´s odd being in such a big city where a lot of the public places are shut and most people are staying inside, like something out of the film ´28 days later´. We´re getting a bus tomorrow to acapolco where it seems safer and we´re taking all the necassary precautions.
I´ll update soon and keep away from infected people!
Take care!
x x x
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Aunty Dawn
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Loved the photos
Really looking forward to playing the 'pan pipes game'!!! :)