hello again,

It´s been quite awhile since our last blog and we´ve been pretty busy.

Since Cusco we have been on the Inca Trail. This was a 4 day trek to Macchu Picchu through the original inca pathways. Treking roughly 14km per day up and down the mountains, reaching altitudes of 4215m above sea level, seeing many inca sites along the way, meeting some great people, eating some great food, wondering in awe as the porters carried 3x as much stuff as us and got to the camps way ahead of us and then eventually reaching macchu picchu on the final day.....was it worth it?!...........was it boll....no i joke seriously. It has to be (and i know i have said this many times before) that this trek could well be the highlight of our entire trip. However, when you get your backside out of bed at 5am to trek the final 6km to the sun gate to see the sun rise over the site and then for us only to be drenched in rain and the site covered in cloud it can get get alittle annoying!

We were lucky enough for the rain to clear and the cloud to sod off for us to see the site and climb another peak the other side called Wayne Picchu ( i think i may have spelt that wrong) to get some fantastic views.

After about 8 hoours at the site we headed back to Cusco via train. Steph decided to sleep, Rob decided to drink the bar dry with a couple of guys from the tour, guess which one felt alot better the next day!

We left Cusco the following evening and got the overnight bus down to Nazca to see the famous lines. I would like to add here that National Express really should research what these so called 3rd world countries do with their buses, becuase they have amazing total reclining seats, movies and free food and drink. Anyway, we got to Nazca and it was rubbish. The lines were great and very weird, but the town was aweful so we got on the first bus to Arequipa that evening.

We decided that we would get a nicer hotel than normal since it was Steph´s birthday. Arequipa is a lovely city with some great buildings, bars and reatuarants. we spent 3 days here just relaxing, and meeting two guys from North Carolina ( more about them later). We had a nice meal for steph´s birthday, however since Rob couldn´t find any Birthday cards for sale and all that was available for presents was tourist trash steph didn´t get a huge amount for her birthday...a huge wobbly was thrown....don´t worry it´s all sorted now, married bliss carries on!.

We did a 2 day tour from Arequipa to the Colca canyon, which is apparently the worlds deepest canyon. It very impressive. We were also meant to see some of the famed Condors close up in the canyon, unfortunately we were not so lucky and only saw a few in the distance, but it was a nice trip out anyway.

After Arequipa we headed north to Puno which is located on Lake Titicaca. We were not hugley impressed with the town and decided to move on the next day. However we did witness some of the festivals that go on here, mainly marching bands, but entertaining enough. From Puno you can go to the floating islands on the lake, however from our experiences in Copacabana in Bolivia we were glad we didn´t waste our money.

From Puno we headed to Copacabana in Bolivia. The journey was pleaseant enough and border crossing fine. We did however have higher hopes for Copa then Puno, we were only slightly rewarded. However, the views of the lake and luckily the weather were better in Bolivia and so we decided to do a day trip to the Isla Del Sol (not some tacky Uk/spanish resort but the home of the Inca religion and Sun god). The day started badly, with lots of rain and the slowest boat trip you could possibly imagine. But it soom cleared and we did a great walk along the isla with some fantastic views of the lake. We also got burnt, quite badly in Steph´s case. Imagine lesley Ashes trout pout and you are not far off. On the boat trip back to port we stopped off at some "Floating islands" or more accurately some bits of straw tied to wood and barrel raft..not quite how they did it 2000 years ago, it was all abit tacky and we were glad we didn´t do a simialr trip back in Puno.

Once again we bumped into our american friends, who insisted in calling Steph Ma´am. We actually travelled to la Paz with them and had a great time.

Soooo La PAz. This city is quite a shock to the senses. You arrive from the Altiplano which is about 4000m asl so the view of the city with the snow capped mountain behind it it quite breathtaking. This lasts for about 30 secs after which the only breath you take could quite literally be your last as the bus weaves in and out of the traffic, nearly missing people, animals, cars, and policeman who quite frankly really don´t need to be there. No one pays a blind bit of notice to them!

We got to our hotel and met up with out US friends who, in a drunken conversation the night before, said that they would be doing the notorious "death road" by bike. They weren´t bluffing either and had in fact booked us on the tour as well (how nice of them). Rob was well up for this but steph was a little more hesitant. Even though, up at 7am we were and headed off to the road with all the gear and a guide. This "death road" isn´t really that bad any more, not since they built a long over due bypass. If we had done it 18 months ago we may have written this from hospital or not all. The road itself offers some fantastic views down the valley but in places is pretty hairy riding and we can see how it got its name. It drops from 4800m asl to 1000m asl in 65km so you can pick up quite a bit of speed and when it had cars on it roughly 100 people died a year ( i think in one of the years over 300 died).

We deserved a drink after this and that night us and the US guys headed out to the La Paz bars and Clubs. We went home at 3.30am, but i beleive our US pals saw the sunrise. great night had by all.

From la Paz we headed to Sucre, a UNesco site, very very picturesque/beautiful city, but other than that there is not much else to do , so we went to see some genuine dinosaur footprints ( that took up 1hr) and then parked ourselves in a bar and played cards (Rob won, again).

The next day we headed to Potosi, the highest town/city in the world at 4060m asl. This is another UNESCO place and is just as, if not more, beautiful than Sucre ( Rob has taken far too many pics of buildings). Potosi is also famous for its Silver mines in the nearby mountain, of which you can do a tour. Which we did today. So for the last 4 hrs we have donned mining gear, played with Dynamite and chatted and drunk with the other miners ( it is some kind of festival and they are all paying respects to the mother earth, so drinking is compulsory). Its been an eye opening day, H & S in the UK would have had a seizure.

It is also some kids holiday so they are all out in the streets playing in bands but more often trying to water bomb each other and any unsuspecting tourists ( that includes us already).

We are heading to Uyuni tomorrow to do a tour of the Salt flats out there and then head straight to Chile. We have to be in Patagonia by atleast the 10 March for a flight, so its all go from here on out.

We hope you are all well and look forward to seeing you sooner that you hoped

Rob and Steph x