Hello,

Well we've now pretty much seen all there is to see of Lima. Caught a taxi into downtown Lima which was an experience in itself! It's ok if you pick the taxi but don't let them pick you! We found a tourist information office and visited the Government Buildings, a beautiful cathedral and spent time in the Plaza's (or parks). Just before we moved onto the next area we wanted to see, we had the Tourism Police stop us and practically score off all of our map as being too dangerous to visit. Oh well... at least we felt a little safer by the presence of many men with AK-47's!

Yesterday we had a lovely stroll along the beach. Although the beach is regarded as "10 minutes" from the hostel, this is to get to the top of the "cliff"... the beach is at the bottom. It was a 2-hour round trip, passing what Lee-Ann was convinved were a couple of dead bodies on the street! They didn't look very alive anyway. On arrival to the beach it would have been worthwhile had there been any sand. All the guidebooks say that it is too dangerous to swim at any of the beaches. There is also no sun because of the har, however you will still find people trying to get a tan which is amusing (you will see from the photos when we get a decent computer to upload them).

The weather has been hot every day so far. Just foggy the closer you get to the water. Today is blue sky and very sunny.

Today we are going to the book store to see if we can find a guide book as there must be more to see here. We are reluctant to venture out too far in case we end up in some dodgy area. You can cross a road and end up in the shanty towns which may be ok but we aren't going to take any chances. Also going to sit in the park with a book for a little while.

We move out of our hostel tomorrow to check into a hotel for the start of our Machu Pechu trip.

Tried to upload photos so far, but this computer doesn't recognised the camera USB stick. We will try uploading them from an internet cafe after our treck up Machu Pechu.

Love to all,

Lee-Ann and AJ