Dear alll, primeramente, please do not get excited i have not climbed macchu picchu but it was in the library of photos. so i have epically failed on doing regular blog entries and this one is going to be very rushed as im in an internet cafe in Cusco and im about to have lkunch cooked for me!

So i started the trip off leaving Mendoza and i headed off to Salta in the north of Argentina with Hermione and Elliot and Mo, an australian we picked up along the way. After a 19 hour bus ride we got there and it was beautiful- it{s not called Salta la Linda for nothing. we rented a car there and drove off into the dessert towards a little town called Cafayate. that was amazing, totally breathtaking views. it was all going so well, until we tried to offroad it up to a mountain for sunset... we popped a tire and then rapdily started to lose petrol, then it got dark and we got lost. we missed the close time of the car rental place and ended up not getting back to salta until midnight, after various adventures. we went down the whole mountain in neutral to save petrol, then nearly got stuck in sand etc. anyway very funny with hindsight. ha!

This is a very very brief summary of events btw. time is limited. then we went on to San Pedro de Atacama in the north of chile, absolute gringo fest. everyone is there for rock climbing or sand boarding or the 4 day salt flats trip into Bolivia, it was fun and very very hot which was lovely. we ditched elliot there and he went off to bolivia while hermione, mo and i remained in san pedro. various exciting things happened. hermione contracted nits, yes. bad at the best of times, let alone when your hair is thick and curly and general personal hygiene is fairly impossible. i stayed far from her head for a very long time. poor thing she tried so hard to get rid of them! hopefully they are gone by now. so we enjoyed our dessert paradise and then moved on to the coastal town in the north of chile called Iquique. we said goodbye to Mo which was very sad, he was a wicked travel companion and he even made us a sandwhich for us to share which may have just made us fall in love!

the bus to Iquique was a bit of an expeerience. we arrived at 5am which was rubbbbbish, it was dark and we were a bit scared. we shared a taxi with some irish people who tolod us they had just been robbed of their camera which had 9 months worth of travel photos on it! that was on their second day in south america so they were not happy. i wanted to try and show them that really its an amazing place, but you know, it was 5am and i was not ina good mood. we got to the hostel and the lovely man said we could sleep on the sofa instead of paying for a half night. very uncomfortable but a real money saver! so we spent some amazing days in Iquiquie. there were a really nice bunch of people there, mostly there to surf which of course gave the inevitable chillllllllllll atmosphere. it was just what we needed. pretty much off the gringo trail as chile is expensive and most people seem to go up to peru through bolivia. anyway we LOVED LOVED LOVED it. Amazing food and people and the hostel was fantastic. we tried to do a bit of surfing but something rather strange happened to hermione, i think it may have been some form of a panic attack or something, but she didnt enjoy and went back. i was unbelievably apalling. i think the man got a bit frustrated with me. he also got a bit offended, he tried to tell me he screamed like a guerrero maori (maori warrior) but i misheard becaus eof the waves and thought he said (or meant) like a puta. hahahahah it was soooo hilarious. he just kept going on in spanish nunca en mi vida, NUNCA! like, never in my life have i been called a puta. i think he quite enjoyed it, i hope anyway.

one day we were strolling along the beach and bumped into a guy who worked and the hostel, we got chatting, one thing led to another and he took us to a fish market to make us lunch! it was heaven. i dont llike fish, so the market was a bit of an experience but i really went for it and him and his friend made us grilled swordfish and muscles and crab etc. with amazing salads- it was spicy andsuch a welcome break from argentine pesado food (meat meat meat, with a dash of pepper being considered vindalooo level of spice)

we tore ourselves away from iquique which was tough and moved on to arica. this can only be described as a strange experiecne. we arrived late at night to be greated by a german GIANT who was very hyper and talked non stop. we were knackered and, if im honest i just wanted to eat my pre-prepared soggy tuna sandwich buyt we eneded up getting a history of Arica and this guys life. the hsotel was insane. every inch of wall (and i know the turners are prone to exaggeration but i swear this is not) every inch was covered in writing that people had left. but not any type of writing and drawing, weird drunken sexual type comments, all very odd. i looked up whilst eating and saw a massive naked women and someone had helpfully stuck hair in her crotch. it was pretty hard not to burst out laughing while this insane german is telling us about how the police thought he was the dutch serial killer who just murdered the peruvian president{s neice.

the next day we bumped into a very sdtrange canadian man we had met in iquique and he sort of hung out with us all day. he was weird. dont have time for too many deets but my mocking may have got a tad out of control, im sure most of you know how i get. just so you dont think im mean, his sandals were rubber toe shoes, yes they had individual toes, toe wedgies- and he wore them to the shop. oh man that was funny.

hmmm i think i may leave our trip to peru for next time as i literally cant fit this all in. love you allll.

(just a sneaky bit anout peru, im in cusco, met up with matt and matt who iwent to school with! i am so in love with peru and cusco. its incredbile. BUT i have a spot of altitude sickeness, rubbbish. i had an amazing pie from an english restaurant last night and i spent all night vomitting it up. yum yum! apart from the 3500 metres roughly, its fab. breathing is a tad difficult as we came up from the sea.)

CHAUUUUU

x