Cusco Take 2 & Arequipa

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Back on the bus this time on my own. Feels like i´ve lost a limb.

However, Cusco is again fabulous being reunited with my friend Casper from Ecuador, meeting Shymmal (a friend from home) and spending a week chilling with a v. friendly Danish friend who supports Liverpool, hence laughing heartily when they lose the Champions League final and over the week drinking way more wine that is healthy, at least a break from the cuba libres!

Fancy dress entails ppl making a good effort from their backpacks and an abundance of men in dresses! My effort however was a blk vest with blk tights combined with big yellow pants over the top with backcombed hair and a binliner cape to create a kinda Superheroe/dodgy fitness instructor look.

Arequipa follows and we decend into Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world on a 3 day trek. (the canyon next door is actually 500mtrs deeper but noone mentions that). Very cool, indigenous families putting you up, tho a little contrived as ours had a shop, chocolate, crisps etc.

Downhill was awful and almost in tears at the end of the 1st day. Petrified about the up and it turns out to be no problem after chilling out in the tropical oasis at the bottom, yes tropical oasis. The scenery is stunning with condors wooshing overhead- they are huge and the scale of the place cant be taken in as the villages in which we stayed look like small dots from the top.

What made my trek however, was our guide with the self coined nickname, "Small-but-Dangerous," making all our waitresses swoon. A shame that like all the Bolivian and Peruvian men, he was shorter than me! For that reason, im not going to miss Peru!.......

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