I caught the bus to Piura in Peru from Loja in Ecuador. I think it was about 9 hours. No problems at the border crossing, apart from trying not to get trampled by the pigs and goats wandering around. Once across the border I began to see lots of shanty town settlements which you didn't really get in Ecuador. And all along the roads by the shanty towns were piles of stinking rubbish, including at one point, what I think was probably a dead dog, although I had to shut my eyes at that point to concentrate on not being sick. Not a great welcome into Peru.

Piura, however, turned out to be lovely, and in stark contrast to what I'd seen from the window on the way there, quite well developed. The contrast between the rich and the poor seems a lot greater here. They even had a department store, I hadn't seen anything like that in Ecuador the whole time I'd been there.
I arrived fairly late in the day so I had a wander round and found a fantastic cafe with about a billion flavours of ice cream and licked a marshmallow ice cream in the main square under blossom trees in front of the cathedral.

The next day I took a bus to Mancora, a small town on the northern coast where I lazed around sunbathing and eating fantastic seafood for a few days. It's very popular with surfers and as the wind is quite strong there, there were a lot of kite surfers as well. I've never seen kite surfing before so the first time I saw them being lifted up into the air by the wind I realised I was literally watching them open mouthed (I realised this when I swallowed half a ton of sand).

After Mancora, I took an overnight bus to Trujillo (10 hours and the guy next to me tok up half my seat as well as his own and leg room was non existent, not enjoyable). I visited the cathedral (the Jesuses on the crucifixes all seem to have black curly wigs here) and a zoological museum with loads of stuffed animals, birds and fish. The fish looked like they'd been over-inflated slightly and all the animals had very strange expressions on their faces. There were three enormous crabs each of which spanned about 70cms. I think they're extinct now though.
I had lunch in a cafe where, as I'd had a late breakfast that day I decided just to have a desert. I chose what I thought looked like a lovely individual lemon meringue pie - a 'suspiro limena'. It turned out to be the most tooth-shatteringly sweet thing I've ever eaten in my whole life. It 's made with condensed milk and topped with what I can only imagine was unbaked meringue. And it's never been anywhere near a lemon either, 'suspiro limena' means ´Lima sigh'. It was nice but I couldn't finish it and it must be like a billion calories.
So I burned some of those calories off by walking around a load of nearby temples and remains from the Moche era, pre-Inca, around 400AD. The Huaca del Sol (Temple of the Sun) is the biggest mud-brick structure in the Americas apparently. When they needed to rebuild every hundred years or so, they just filled in the previous temple and built the new one on top of it, hence the pyramid. I also visited the Huaca de la Luna and the temple of Chan Chan. I saw lots of brightly coloured frescoes and symbols. Some of them almost look pixellated, like pacman characters. Have a look at the photos and youll see what I mean.

I then moved on to the nearby seaside town of Huanchaco where I did some more archaeological sight seeing and met up with Nancy and Oiver who I'd met at the Santa Martha animal rescue centre. They're working in a surf shop and doing some volunteer work with street kids.

From Huanchaco I caught a bus to Lima (11 hrs) where I've spent 3 nights. It was a good bus though, 3 films plus breakfast and lunch served as if you were on a plane. I managed to arrive in Lima in the middle of 'Lima week' to celebrate the founding of Lima in the 1500's by the Spanish. So when I wandered round the main square and stopped to watch the changing of the guard, it turned out to be a special changing of the guard where they marched all round the square and walked up the steps of the cathedral to do an elaborate routine with lots of twirling and throwing of rifles (I hope they weren't loaded) and complicated choreography. There's no way you'd get into that regiment if you had two left feet. (Susan, I know Matthew loves soldiers and military stuff so I'll try and upload a video for him). There were police and security guards everywhere (even for Latin America where there are generally tons of them) although I did spot some police texting behind their riot shields so I'm not sure how effective they are.

In the last two days in Lima I have:-
Visited the Cathedral where Francisco Pizarro, the founder of Lima is buried and seen loads more religious art.
Seen the Iglesia San Francisco Monastery and catacombs where at least 25,000 people were buried.
Seen the Churringueresque (no, I don't know what that means either) facade of the Iglesia San Augustin.
Visited the Iglesia de la Mercad on the site where the first Latin mass in Lima was celebrated and seen the huge silver Cross which people queue up to touch and pray over.
Wandered around Larco Mar in Miraflores, a new shopping and leisure area overlooking the sea with loads of cafes and restaurants.
Visited the Museo de la Inquisicion, the headquarters of the Inquisition for the whole of the Spanish Americas where I saw torture implements, the torture chambers and dungeons (as well as some waxwork models being tortured).
Eaten in Chinatown.
Walked round a gastronomic festival and regretted having already eaten in Chinatown.
Visited Barranco, a suburb of Lima by the sea, where I got out of a taxi to find myself in the middle of a huge parade with people and children from all the local schools dressed in indigenous clothes or playing in marching bands. (They do seem to love a good marching band here). This for some reason made me so happy I nearly cried. I can't believe how lucky I've been to keep turning up in places where there's some kind of special celebration going on. I suspect perhaps that Latin Americans just use any excuse for a party.

So, no time to recover from that lot, in an hours time I'll be on a bus to Nazca, where I've pre-booked a flight to take me over the Nazca Lines and a tour round some ruins.