After recovering from our respective Arequipean illnessess (and the trauma of the guinea pig), we got up at 3am to start a 3 day trek in the Colca Canyon - apparently twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US. On the minibus there we got chatting to lots of friendly Ozzies and Dutch, but on disembarking they all set off for the 2 day trip and our depleted group was us, a slightly dour looking French couple and a quiet but approachable looking Chilean lady. The...

Apologies to any Guinea Pig lovers but Dave was determined to try out the traditional Peruvia meal of cuy chactado, which is basically Fried Guinea Pig! So after some wandering around town we spotted a restaurant that sells said delicacy and placed the order. After a wait out came Mr.Guinea Pig spead out on a plate. It really did look like a Guinea Pig that had just been thrown straight into a frier, its entire body was there, legs spread out with its claws sti...

After finishing our stretch at building hospitals in Pisco, we went out with our volunteer friends for our last night and drank too much, including a PSF invention called ´Mangria´ which is the typical Sangria but with vodka (and much more deadly) As you can imagine, that had the effect of Dave and Emily waking up the next morning with very sore heads. To make things worse it was super hot (as usual) and we had to get a taxi and then a bus to the town Ica. Th...

So after 2.5 weeks of working away on a building site, it became time to say our goodbyes and move on. We had to stand up in front of the whole volunteer group and do a speech each (not in Spanish this time which was handy!) and then completed our final day on site whereby the awesome tiling team of Dave and Emily (almost) completed tiling the last room. Dave and Emily have now learnt the skills of sanding, rendering, concrete mixing, concrete floor laying and ...

After working hard all week (and Saturday dont forget!) Dave and Emily decided to spend their free Sunday in a nice relaxing way by heading off to the sand dunes of Huacachina. After a tuc-tuc, then a collectivo out of Pisco we jumped on a bus for the hour trip through the desert, another taxi at the other end took us to the popular Peruvian playground. Lots of super impressive sand dunes around a beautiful (but slightly over developed) lagoon oasis. Before we ...