It´s been a while since we blogged as we´ve really not stopped so here´s the next installment.

After Uyuni we decided to take a short detour to Oruro as it was only £4.50 for a ticket for a 7 hour bus journey. It turns out there was a reason it was so cheap! After the bus to Uyuni we thought it couldn´t get any worse, we were wrong! Firstly there was no toilet on board which is a disaster for Casson as he pee´s like a race horse. Secondly, the road was that bad and the bus driver that crazy that we were actually being lifted out of our seats and thrown around, it was awful. One thing I have perfected though is the art of sleeping anywhere and I still managed to sleep most of the way once i´d gotten over my initial shock of how bad it was. Casson always says he hasn´t slept but then can´t account for about 4 hours so he must have managed it!

We pulled over at about 2am and got out in what can only be described a as another arse crack of nowhere town but normally you stop somewhere you can eat and use the toilet. I asked the bus driver in my best Spanish where the toilet was and he just kind of swept his arm across the road, on further inspection everyone was pretty much squatting by the side of the road! Well when in Rome .......

We only stayed 1 night in Oruro as it was´t that nice and we had decided to work our way back up through to Peru to trek Colca Canyon. This consisted of us crossing the Bolivian border at 8pm at night just before the border closed (so everyone was panicking in case the bus left without them) in the dodgiest town we´d been in yet. It was only when we´d walked the 1 minute across the border into Peru to go through their border control that we realised that we actually had another hour because there was an hours time difference between the 2 countries.

When we finally got to Arequipa it was really nice, it´s quite a big city but doesn´t really feel like it. We even found an Indian restaurant and had the best meal we´d had for ages, it was so good! For the first time in ages we decided to go out for a beer in the evening, we ended up doing a bar crawl and in our last bar (which was supposed to be the last drink of the night) it was happy hour so we ended up with 3 massive beers and then a 4th one appeared even though we hadn´t ordered it. When the bill came it was more expensive than it should have been and we´re really fed up of being ripped off because we don´t speak Spanish and are gringo´s! In my finest drunken Spanish I explained why it was wrong and got it changed, finally a victory to the English. It was only when we were talking about it in the morning did we realise it was only about a £1 they were overcharging us by, so myabe not the victory we had celebrated the night before haha

The day after the bar crawl we (Casson) was craving crap food so we caved and had our first McDonalds of the trip, it was so wrong but so good. Casson also found a McFlurry called Sublime and said it was the best Mcflurry he´d ever had, full of chocolate sauce and chocolate almonds by nestle, his new addiction

Next stop Colca Canyon ......