Hey Everyone,

So after a relaxing 5 days by the pool in Huacucchina we jumped on a 4 hour bus journey to Nazca. Nazca is famous for the Nazca Lines, a number of unusual large animal shapes drawn across arid desert ground which no one knows how and why they were formed. To see them we boarded a very small propellar plane and took off over the lines. Haydn and George were in 1 plane and Tom and Jav were in the other. The plane ride itself was great fun as it dived and cricled the lines, which howerver did nothing for our hangover. We departed the plane slightly dissappointed at the lines themselves but worth it for the plane ride alone. After the plane ride we headed into Nazca, grabbed a pizza and boarded our bus to Cusco.

The bus to Cusco was amazing! The bus was almost first class on an airplane standard with lazy boy chairs, TV´s above us playing English films, breakfast and dinner and a pillow. So our 15 hour journey upto Cusco flew by with all of us getting a good amount of sleep. We arrived in a very sunny Cusco at around 9am and made our way uphill to our Loki hostel. This took much longer than planned and were out of breath after 5 steps up the hill. Cusco is by thew way 3300m above sea level and we realised then that we made the right decision to acclimatise for a few days before heading to Machu Piccu. Once at the hostel we checked in and our room had an incredible view over Cusco, over looking the Cathedral in the centre and mountains in the background. We spent the rest of the day with Dickie, who we met in Huacucchina and Lucy and Lizzy (24) who we also met there. We spent the rest of the day in the cool sunshine and ended up having a great nightout for the opening day of World CUp with Dickie.

We woke up the next day around 11.30 in time for the highly anticipated opening England match against the US. Unfortunately the game turned out to be dissappointing with a disasterous mistake by Green and an overall average performance by England, with the main highlight being Gerrards opening goal. That evening Haydn and Tom persuaded George and Jav to go out and we had another big night out in Cusco. The, at first, fragile George not feeling going out, ended up beeing the Group mess and wasn´t found untill 6am the next morning. After an eventful morning discussing the nights events we went to Paddys bar and had a great meal around 5pm.

The next day we decided to go volunteering and boarded a mini bus for a local town that had been destroyed by the recent floods. We spent the afternoon playing football with the kids, ageing from 3-12, and playing games in the playground and drawing pictures. We all found this very rewarding and will definately do it again if the opportunity occurs. We then spent the next day wandering around Cusco, watching the footy and sorting out our Machu Piccu paper work, which was the next day (wedneday 16th)

So to Machu Picchu.......

Haydn, Jav, Tom and George

xx