hello! i am writing from La Paz in Bolivia. tody is a strange day, one out of 4 in over 5 months that i am not with hermione! hahaha. She has gone museum-ing with our new lovely friend phoebe and i am stuck at the hostel with the lurgy, big time. the cause... a salad, the main evil of Bolivia.

i think i last wrote just before i climbed Machu Picchu, for all those who knew me when i was really little and i used to say i was going to climb Mount Everest, that is no longer the plan. It turns out i do not get on very well with altitude or, in all honesty, the climbing part. Regardless of that, it was UNBELIEVABLE. i would recomend it to anybody, en serio. i think it is the most rewarding thing i have ever done. the scenery is actually magical, in an utterly pretentiuos, awful, wannabe 'hippy type' traveller way, the beauty completely bowled me over. i wanted to escape the group and become an Inca princess. It was a 4 day trek, the first day was mountain biking through the jungle, the fourth day was the ascent to MP. we had to wake up at 4am and despite various disasters such as the total lack of a cash point, our lack of alarm clock and epic sand-fly bites, we got up. you have to get up so early to get a free ticket to climb the mountain next door from which the views of Machu Picchu are breathtaking. firstly, the day before it had rained, so our clothes were wet, the room was damp so they were even wetter and it was raining when we woke. this begun my bad mood as they say it never rains in the dry season, people who had climbed it the day before said you couldnt see anything until half past one because of the rain mist. anyway, we finally made it and yes, it was raining but thank goodness it cleared by about 10am. if anything, it made me appreciate so much more the view when all was clear. at this point my bad mood disappeared and i was on a total hiigh. we had 11 hours up there.

after climbing the other mountain we decided to do an extra trek which basically entailed re-climbing machu picchu, in this state of utter despair, stench and halfway through forming a plan just to set up camp and ilegally hide on the mountain, we acquired our new travel buddy. A leprachaun type who practically pulled us up the mountain. we also encountered an aussie guy who we had met the day before when we asked why he was trekking barefoot. he was climbing MP in flip flops and was still drunk from the night before, he was sweating tequila. ( i think hermione and i both secretly fancied him, especially when he managed to climbthe secound mountain too.) when we returned to the town at the base of MP (for future reference the WORST place in the world) we discovered our train tickets had not arrived. we still had no cash. to cut a very long story short we ended up paying for our meal and others on our card and they gave us cash. we waited for a very long time for our tickets. we told everyone else to leave because the train was leaving in half an hour. the woman came sprinting down the hill with our tickets shouting that we only had ten minutes, the station is a ten minute walk away. so off we ran, eventually made it and were standing on the platform saying 'phew' that was close, when we realised that our train was not the same as everyone elses and left in 3 minutes. anyway, im bored of this story as im telling. it. we made it back to cusco. final.

we then passed a few days back in cusco relaxing, sunbathing and popping sandfly bites. (dont do that, they scar.) my towel was stolen, and my sunglasses, so i took a towel , i think someone had actually left it. unfortunately it smells foul. we took our bus to Puno, in infinite wisdom, getting the cheeapest again. we spent the whole journey raving about how nice it was, comfy seats, amazing views and windows that opened. when we got off, hermiones rucksack had been stolen. nothing valuable thank goodness but everything she owned, clothes, shoes, coat etc. we got to practice our 'angry spanish' in hindsight it was actually quite fun.

whilst on the bus, various huge peruvian ladies got on, for anyone who hasnt been to peru, they really are big and they carry huge scarves on their backs with variuos miscellaneous item in. one got on the bus and squeezed in next to an american man, while he was squished against the window, she pulled out the contents of her scarf; this time a child. not a baby, a child. she then proceeded to breastfeed this child (who had a full set of teeth) with the boob nearest the poor american man, he looked terrified. meanwhile her friend pulls out a cooked lamb and a machete and starts to chop it up and sell it, grease flying everywhere.

next came Puno, a weird town famous for being on Lake Titicaca and being the launch point to the Floating Islands. very strange islands man made out of reeds where tribes live. it pretty much exists for tourism which is a bit sad but i was glad we had done it. Next on to Bollivia, Copacobana, another town without a cash point. lcukily hermione had a travellers cheque. we stayed a night on the Isla del Sol which is an hours boat ride from copacobana. we met an english couple who had no cash, so we bought them dinner as we had been in a similar situation not so long ago. unfortunately, given the prices of this island, we then didnt have enough money to get our bus to la paz, so we ended up borrowing from the american leprachaun.

the bus journey was quite scary and involved an impromptu boat ride, where, weirdly enough we bumped into a lady we met crossing from argentina to chile, over a month before. she turned out to be really interesting and was a refugee camp manager for the Red Cross, she had lived in Sri Lanka, Iran etc.

So to La Paz, along with Cusco, the main landmark of our trip, which, certainly for me, felt like the trip was beginning to come to an end. that is such a scary prospect, having a culture shock returning home. hot showers! haha.

La Paz so far has meant a hot tub, meeting loads of friends we have met along the way, extreme altitude and visits to markets which happily sell llama foetuses. (no idea how to spell that). we have a rather odd room mate. the first three days he would party all night and return at 9am and then sleep til about 9pm and then go out again. severe cough, weird sleep noises, massive scars on his face and a pale and shaky appearance whenever found outside the room. luckily, his weirdness has meant that hardly anyone in our dorm picked up on the fact that i just spent all last night vomiting in my pillow. vile i know. it was not intentional.

so that was a very brief and rushed summary of what we have been up to recently, still completely loving South America and hopefully learning to be a tad more streetwise than a hamlet existence requires in England.

Love to you all

x