well, we´ve officially said "adios" to cusco, and are on the road. it was sad to leave, but the last week at school was tonnes of fun, [which is probably why i still don´t understand the indefinite past tense.] our friend tjaard´s birthday necessitated the usual dutch drinking games [and ensuing hangovers], and we had a lovely goodbye dinner with everyone from school at what is probably the most expensive restuarant in cusco - fabulous steak, cocktails, and chocolate mousse for about £15!

the first stop on our mini-tour of peru was arequipa, which harry and i quickly fell in love with - it´s called "the white city" because most of the buildings are made from a white volcanic stone called sillar, and the contrast to terracotta cusco was really quite striking. the plaza there is also incredible - it seemed to be gloriously sunny all of the time, and full of happy faces, and had a really european feel to it [we were a little worried that this was the reason we liked it so much!] we had a couple of days in the city itself, during which we visited some of the fabulously golden churches, the incredibly colourful monastery, and the museum set up purely to exhibit the frozen mummified remains of an incan child sacrifice, lovingly named juanita[!] sadly, juanita was having some "work" done in the lab, so we only got to see one of her frozen friends, but she was good enough company for the afternoon.

after seeing a fair bit of the city, we went on to the colca canyon about a three-hour drive away from the city - apparently "the deepest canyon in the world", and full of wonderful wildlife and landscapes. here we did a three-day trek, staying in cute little hostels in the evenings, with little electricity and plenty of excuses for headtorch-reading [a new favourite, and very cool, hobby!] the trek involved two days of fairly calm walking in the sunshine looking at the scenery [and HUGE condors], followed by one day that consisted of a 4.30am start, hiking consistently uphill for two hours. of course, fate would have it that this was the day that would fall on my birthday - and though it was a strange [and tough!] start to the day, the sense of achievement at the top was a birthday present in itself! the rest of my birthday was somewhat less healthy - once we got back to arequipa harry and i treated ourselves to some of the longest showers in history, a gigantic steak-supper, and topped it all off with a few too many drinks in a fabulously un-peruvian bar! the barman even made me my own ´birthday cocktail´, though i feel it might´ve been the beginning of the end...

from arequipa we had an adventurous [read: disastrous] journey to nazca, home of the "nazca lines"...and not much else. we managed to find a surprisingly healthy-looking bus to carry us the twelve-hours overnight, but unfortunately for harry and i, our driver drove like a crazy person, getting us to nazca two hours earlier than expected, and therefore allowing harry and i to sleep through our stop! when we finally realised this, we were about an hour and a half away from nazca, and our bus-driver bundled us into a random car that was waiting at the side of the road, complete with strange peruvian teenagers, who attempted stilted conversation with us for the whole journey ["so...are there discotheques in london?"], whilst being sandwiched by our gigantic backpacks! thankfully we made it to nazca safely [though the same can´t really be said for the teenagers´ car...] and we managed to arrange a flight over the lines for that day. there has been some bad press about the planes they use for these flights, but we had no problems whatsoever, and the lines themselves were so incredible. one of those things you see in books but don´t think you´ll ever actually witness yourself. plus, neither of us threw up on the bumpy flight in the four-seater plane, which was an unexpected bonus!

we left the dusty town of nazca that afternoon, to make our way to the gloriously sunny town of huacachina. this had been scheduled as a one-day stop off on our tour, but the sun [and the fact that our hostel had a pool!], kept us there a little longer. not a whole lot to write here, because it really was mostly sunbathing, or reading in the sun every day, [a.k.a. heaven] but we did do a couple of non-lazy things. one of these was going on a little tour of a local vineyard, where we tasted some of the [horrendously sweet] peruvian wine and [horrendously strong] local pisco. the other thing, somewhat unusually, was dune-buggying and sandboarding! huacachina is surrounded by sand-dunes, [which, incidentally, make the whole landscape seem incredibly star wars!] and it´s really easy to organise afternoon trips, where a CRAZY peruvian guy drives you around the dunes in a buggy that feels like it should tip over at any moment, before you strap yourself to a plank of wood and throw yourself down some of the highest dunes. being the non-skier/cycling-retard that i am, i didn´t think i´d have any chance of standing up on the board, so i was chuffed when i actually managed it a little. that´s not to say that there wasn´t plenty of falling-on-bums, though. all part of the fun!

next stop along the coast [and the one i´m going to leave you with] was a town called pisco. here, we were instantly in a good mood, as we managed to get off the bus at the right stop, and in the evening we caught a hilariously uncomfortable bus to a costal town called paracas, where we had phenemonal seafood, followed by the obligatory pisco sours in pisco, upon our return. unfortunately, our cheaper-than-cheap hostel was cheaper-than-cheap for a reason...there didn´t seem to be a moment throughout the whole night where there wasn´t a peruvian shouting or a dog barking! the 6.30am start the next day, then, was less than pleasant, but it was made up for by the incredible tour we had of the islas ballestas, also known as the guano islands. the islands are basically a sanctuary for marine and bird life, and in our boat trip around we saw pelicans, penguins, sealions [with babies!], and absolutely tonnes of birds. AND we successfully avoided the guano, which we´d be warned so much about. the most striking thing for me was the noise that sealions make - like some sort of guttural but incredibly human cry. we passed one beach that must have had literally thousands lazing in the sun, and the noise was deafening. absolutely incredible.

well, we´re back in the andes [and, i´m sure you´ll all be glad to hear, back in the rain] now, but i feel like this blog is long enough to test anyone´s patience. i´ll save the rest of the stories for next time, which hopefully will be without such a wait.

huge love, from an almost-sunkissed suzie xxxxx
p.s. internet in the andes = internet in 1998. photos as soon as i can!