Our nightbus woke us up and took our blankets away at 4:20am, and we arrived in Lima a good 30 minutes later. We took a taxi to the hotel that Mum had booked for the 3 of us, which is far nicer than anywhere that we have stayed before (save the Aida Maria of course). Obviously they didn´t yet have a room ready for us, but asked if we wanted to to sit on the sofa by the restaurant until later... we interpreted this as "would you like to sleep on the sofa until 10am while all the other guests came, had breakfast and left", and so Alex curled up on an armchair and I laid out on the sofa. I wonder what all the other guests thought of two scruffy backpackers asleep in the living room!

We made the most of our fancy hotel room and spent a good few hours showering before catching up on the blog in an internet cafe in Miraflores. Some very odd Peruvian guy sat next to Alex and started talking to her, telling her how much he loves the Royal family and showing her all the British people he´s friends with on facebook (including Prince William). He then made her add him as a friend, which was very amusing for me, sat safely the other side of her.

While online we got in touch with Henry (who we met in our hostel in Rio, and is Peruvian and lives in Lima) who said he happened to be in Miraflores that day and was free to meet up. So we ditched the weirdo and spent the afternoon with Henry and his british friend James in a bar. At one point another english man dressed in a quilted barbour came and joined us, who was extremely strange... he came to Peru to persue a now ex-girlfriend; when I asked him what he did for a living his response was "I have human rights issues with MI-6".... if that´s not a conversation stopper I don´t know what is!

We then went to a polleria for some delicious rotisserie chicken and chips... a Lima must-eat apparently. We had to say farewell to Henry fairly early as we returned to the hotel and made Mum a sign for the airport (shown in the photo of me jumping on her bed).

Jorge the taxi driver came and picked us up at our request and take us to the airport to meet Mum. The journey took over an hour, through the city centre and along the river - the traffic was awful and at one point I started getting concerned whether we would make it on time. We had been waiting only about 5 minutes when Gillian Powell came through the doors and was faced with a sea of name-signs. Apparently one man at the front asked if she was John! As she started veering in the wrong direction I shouted "oi" and she immediately recognised the voice and looked up to see Alex and I stood there; one with Jorge´s offical placard saying `Gillian Powell` and the other with a sign just saying `Mum`.

Jorge drove us back to the hotel a completely different way along the coast, making it a round (and worthwhile) trip for Alex and I. In our room Mum started dishing out requested goodies such as sensodyne toothpaste and factor 50 sun cream... as well as a letter from my Grandma and a new torch each from my Dad. The three of us then zonked out in bed, but not before Alex treated us to a shadow lama on the wall using her new torch. What a treat indeed.

Day 94 - First job was a trip to the launderette and then on to Parque Kennedy in Miraflores to organise an open-top tour bus for the afternoon. We spent the rest of the morning walking around Miraflores and to the coast, with a view of the beach, surfers and paragliders landing on the cliff. Then for a mid-morning coffee followed by a fish ceviche (another Lima specialty) in a very nice restaurant recommended by the LP.

We had to rush to the park to catch our bus, which then drove us around the city and to the central area of Lima, which was a huge surprise for us. The bus took us past the really nice plazas surrounded by immaculate colonial buildings and then out to the Museo Larco, located in one of the city´s suburbs. The museum had a huge collection of pottery from across Peru, as well as textiles (one piece had the world record for number of threads per centimetre), metals and (the piece de resistance) very erotic, ancient ceramics!

With the sights of Lima nailed we picked up our washing and returned to the hotel in time to meet Henry again. He took us out to Barranco, which is a really nice, historic area of Lima by the ocean and had a Peruvian dinner of cauca (potato, chicken and mayonnaise) and tuca tuca (fried bean paste) with seafood. The view of the coast and restaurants lit up below was worth seeing. We then caught a taxi downtown to Plaza de San Martin, where we finally tracked down the statue of Mary with a small lama on her head (apparently the spanish for flame and lama are the same, so when they asked for a crown of flames...). We went and had our first pisco sour in the Hotel Bolivar, which Henry tells us is where they were invented, and where they are the best. Finally a taxi back to the hotel, with some really choice driving and especially loud salsa.

Day 95 - 5am start to get dressed, enjoy a special continental breakfast (put on only at this hour because I asked for a refund on our first breakfast), and use Jorge´s services for the last time to what seemed like an impenetrable Cruz del Sur bus terminal hidden behind a fortress of traffic islands and one-way lanes.

The bus left at 6.30am and arrived at Arequipa at 12:30am the next morning, 18 hours later. Being sat by Mum (Alex got a seat some rows away surrounded by annoying, elderly French tourists) that meant 18 hours of ´say what you see´. The landscape changed very little, following the coast in foggy desert. Highlights included:

1. When we were stopped in traffic we looked at a bus stopped on the other side of the road, and all of a sudden the hold door opened and out popped a second driver, fresh from a nap and ready to pee in front of the bus and then get on and drive.
2. Mum managed to spill a bottle of water all over someone elses seat, and then pretended to be asleep when they got on at the next stop.
3. Bus bingo (won by Mum´s victim, which was well-deserved since he had a wet bottom).

We didn´t have a chance to get off the bus once, and so food was brought to us by the hostess, like on a plane. We also got to enjoy a number of choice films (better standard than many buses), including Fast and the Furious 6, Troll Hunter, Hansel and Gretal (truly awful) and some lion documentary that was far too sad to be put in front of a bus load of bored passengers with no alternative but to watch.