So what´s Peru REALLY like then?

---

And the real question is why do we do it all?

Well here are a few things I´ll miss, a few I won´t and a few I´ve learned.

But first, thank you so much to Peru for allowing us into your country and to experience the amazing things you have to offer here. Viva el Peru!!!! (Didn´t do that extra day´s ice climbing in the end...still too sore!!!!!) Looking forward to returning to Huaraz ad the Cordillera Blanca sometime in the near future. Maybe India/Nepal next though

Things I´ll Miss

The Peruano´s
Being forced to use the limits of everything you know, and a lot you don´t, to understand, and be understood (i.e Spanish)
Meeting more people from different parts of the world in one place than I ever dreamed of (Americans, Canadians, Czechs, Israelis, Kiwis, Aussies, Tazmanians, Norwegians, Germans, French, Spanish, Irish, South African, Danish, Japanese, Chileans and Argentinians...with the odd few Welsh, Brummie and plenty of Yorkies!!!!)
The food - it goes without saying!
The mountains and the snow, until next time
Being at altitude
Sugar
Coca tea
Lack of efficiency/ urgency - Half the town was destroyed in an earthquake in 1970. They have only now just got round to rebuilding the Plaza de Armas and repaving the streets, which they do by using a guy to wheel a wheelbarrow of half a dozen bricks round the block from the pile to the building site, back and forth, all day all week. One less guy on the dole eh?
Siestas
How cheap everthing is
The smells
Rickshaws - I want one!!!!
Being as slim and as fit as I am now - I´m hoping it´ll last!!!!


Things I Won´t

Latin American Spanish - not the most poetic of languages - especially when the hostal owners are yelling from one end of the street to the other, outside your room, for something at 3 in the morning!!!
Long bus rides (include here bad music videos, films of Arnold Schwarznegger, salesmen)
The long roads
Unreliable 'suicide showers' - will explain later
Dodgy stomachs
The music
Bad cocolate!


Things I´ve Learned

Spanish (pequeño!!!)
That you are very, very small, and everything is so very, very trivial
Live for the minute, embrace the moment and do what it is you want, not what is expected of you.
It´s just as important to be alone as it is to have someone with you
How to walk and sleep on a glacier, climb an ice wall and potentially rescue someone from a crevasse
Take it easy, there´s no rush
Where my limits are
Travelling is not a ´holiday´, it´s your life for that period of time
Just how far it´s possible to push yourself


Not really looking forward to coming home at all if I´m honest with you, so forgive the short temperedness, occasional Spanish phrases, lager drinking, sugar addiction, coca withdrawal etc when I´m back.

We bus back to Lima tomrrow and fly out Sunday evening to arrive in England at about 6ish Monday evening.

See you all for beer and takeout!!!

---