Hi folks,

So the last time i left you we were on our way to Uruguay, now that does seem like a long time ago as we have done so much since then.

We caught the ferry from Buenos Aires over to Colonia in Uruguay which is a lovely old town with great old buildings and a sweet little lighthouse where we could have spent all afternoon at the top of. We decided to make us of the parilla (bbq) so we headed to the shop and bought meat and there was shed loads, the boys (Alan & Tom) got going and made a very good job, whilst the girls drank wine ! THe following day we made our way to Montevideo the capital and had a good wander around including the dodgy areas where we saw a "potential mugger" throwing his knife into the ground....scary ! WEnt for a quiet beer in the main square and people watched which i love doing. The following day we hired ourselves a little car and made our way along the coast to a place called Puerto Diablo (Devils Point), a tiny fishing village which was really nice. We explored the area the following day and made our way round to a few Fortes, saw a lot of wildlife and are almost sure we crossed the boarder into Brazil without our passports !

Headed back into Buenos Aires for a night and had a wander wound San Telmo market which i love. Then we were back on a bus for 18 hours to Peninsula Valdes home to penguins, Elephant seals and the only place in the world that Orcas beach themselves to grab their lunch of a seal pup ! What an amazing experience to see, we spent many hours waiting to see an Orca and on day 3 we were successful, we saw "Mel" a 9 tonne Orca beach himself several times and grab an innocent seal pup, it was incredible. Can you remember the famous Blue Planet scene with the Orcas tossing a seal pup in the air? well it was that very same orca and very same beach !

Tom and i left our friends Alan and Steph and fly to Arequipa, Peru. That's definitely the most turbulence i have experiece the trolley dolly had just given me my morning coffee and i never got even a taster as it was all over my tray with in a matter of seconds ! Arequipa is lovely, we visited the Old Monastery which is like a city within itself, The Ice Princess Museum, back in 1995 an american explore was climbing Mt Chachamy and stumbled across a mummy of a little girl which had be frozen in time dated back to the Inca times. She was fully intact with skin, hair and all her insides, it was incredible to see that's for sure. We hired a taxi for the day and made our way out of Arequipa city into the dessert to see over 3000 volcanic rocks that had been engraved pre-Inca time quite impressive and we even got caught in several sand storms not fun ! Tom and i also tried Alpaca for dinner one night and cheese ice-cream which is very nice by the way.

So we parted from Arequipa and made our way to Cusco 3399m above sea level in order to acclimatize in preparation for our 4 day Inca Trek and that is another email ...

So until the next time i have time to kill waiting for a plane or a bus i will update you all on the inca trek, all i will say is that i survived and made it to Machu Picchu and it was amazing !

Love Jo and Tom xxx

p.s Not long till we get home now 1st May hope its all in your diaries !