Sorry about the email alert yesterday, when there was nothing to read! Updating the blog has proved really difficult this time. I´m in the third internet cafe I´ve tried today, and have managed to upload 4 albums of photos, Zorritos, Ollantaytambo, Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu. Let´s hope I can save the text as well.

On Weds 15th I set off from Cusco on a 2 day trip to Machu Picchu the idea was to arrive at 6 a.m. on the Thursday to see the sunrise. NonPeruvians are not allowed to travel on the direct train from Cusco to Machu Picchu, so the first part of the journey was in a shared taxi to Ollantaytambo, where tourists are allowed to board the train, with much queuing up and checking of passports. Ollantaytambo is an attractive little town with significant Inca ruins. It was built on top of the original Inca town, with very narrow streets and a lot of Inca stonework, including trapezoidal doorways. It also has a very good wholefood cafe, run by an Englishwoman in her 70´s, where the profits go to social and educational projects. The choc chip cookies are the size of a small plate, and the houmous-avocado-tomato-olive- roll was so good I had another one on the way back. One of the photos in the Ollantaytambo album shos women in green tabards in the main square. You see these people in most of the towns I´ve been to. They carry mobile phones that you can use for a small charge.

The train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes, the town near Machu Picchu, runs alongside the Urubamba river, which is mostly white water, and there are wonderful views of snowcapped mountains. Aguas Calientes relies heavily on tourism, and consists almost entirelely of hotels, restaurants and gift shops, but the river is very attractive and there is a pleasant botanic garden alongside it. There was a fiesta during the 2 days I was there, with all the usual dancing, processions and fireworks. The participants seemed to spend quite a lot of time hanging around waiting for their turn, as some of the photos show. There´s also a picture of an enormous moth, about 6 inches across, that I rescued from inside a shop where it was fluttering around under the lights.

I was up at 4.30 a.m. on the Thursday to make sure I was at the gates to Machu Picchu at 6 o´clock. The bus zigzags up the mountain through the mist, and the mountains look just as they do in ¨lost city¨films. There must have been 200 people already there when I arrived and we went in en masse. It would have been better to arrive an hour later, when the crowds had dispersed around the site, especially as I didn´t get to see a dramatic sunrise due to the low clouds and mist. The ruins cover a vast area of the very steep mountainside, and are so substantial that it´s easy to imagine the whole buildings. I didn´t go with a guide, so didn´t get all the historical background, though I eavesdropped on a few groups. I also enjoyed the resident herd of llamas and spent several minutes watching two lizards sunning themselves.

I went back to Cusco in the afternoon. At least half the passengers in the minibus were coughing and sneezing. Schools in peru are closed for 2 weeks to try and prevent the spread of swine flu, which has been affecting mostly children under eight.

On the Friday morning I left Cuscio for good to fly via Lima to Tumbes on the north coast. I had time to spare at the airport and had a 25 minute seated massage, which got rid of a lot of knots in my back and neck and cost less than 5 pounds. The flight to Lima only took about 50 minutes, but the views of the mountains were beautiful, and as the plane approached Lima the clouds looked like the foaming sea crashing into cliffs in Cornwall.

Tumbes is almost on the border with Ecuador, and the guidebook describes it as a peaceful town. I had booked a hostel there for 3 nights, but everyone I met who had been there told me it was a hellhole, and they were right, although it has a friendly little airport which was surrounded by bats when I arrived. I didn´t stay at the intended hostel as I couldn´t lock my bedroom door and the shower didn´t have a head. I spent the night in the hostel next door, where I was able to lock the door, but the place was like a prison, with much banging on metal at 3 a.m. I was exhausted after 2 bad nights, so I forced myself to sleep, but I was in a taxi to Zorritos by 7 in the morning.

Zorritos is a fishing village about 30 miles down the coast from Tumbes, and I stayed at a hostel called Casa Grillo on the beach about a mile further south, which was recommended by Tina, the jungle guide. It´s very laidback and friendly, and I loved it so much I spent a week there. I stayed in a cabin built from split bamboo on a wooden frame, with a corrugated iron roof, and I could see the sea and watch birds from my bed. Each cabin has a tiny private terrace with a table and stools, a light, and a hammock. I loved the shower room, which was partly mosaic. Meals are eaten on a big terrace where the roof is supported by gnarled and twisted treetrunks. The owner, Leon, breeds Peruvian hairless dogs. I think there were 17, and they seemed very happy running around in a pack, but they have a lot of skin problems and there were always some daubed with iodine, or wearing a coat or old teeshirt. One had its name, Kenny, written on its flank in iodine!

The beach is endless and I went down before breakfast and at sunset every day to watch the tiny crabs that run around on tiptoe like spiders, the flypasts of pelicans and the 2 or 3 oystercatchers that patrol the beach. Further along, where the fishing boats land, the crabs are bigger, redder and more numerous, frigate birds wheel over the boats and vultures shuffle around.

On the dry area between the beach itself and the buildings, there are lots of lizards, which one of Leon´s 3 cats likes to hunt. Around the buildings there are trees and bushes and birds, I saw something new nearly every day. The commonest are raucous longtailed mockingbirds, which are everywhere, and there are a lot of Pacific horneos, blackbird-sized, very elegant with fox-coloured wings and buff fronts, strutting on the ground. They build ball-shaped nests of mud that hang from tree branches. There are some vibrantly coloured birds, especially the vermilion flycatcher, bright green Pacific parrotlets that descend in chattering groups, and buttercup-coloured yello-bellied grosbeaks, with black bibs and wings. Some of the smaller birds are more easily heard than seen - there´s a house wren that hops about the buildings, and a tiny gnatcatcher that makes a loud buzzing noise as it searches for food in the bushes. One day I saw miniature pigeons - croaking ground doves. Further away there are a lot of vultures, sitting on trees, fences and lamp-posts or circling overhead.

The climate is lovely - reliably very warm all day - sometimes too hot, mostly sunny, and pleasantly warm at night. And I´m very happy to be at low altitude! Somebody told me that the ability to cope physiologically at high altitudes is genetically determined, which made me feel less of a wimp!

On the day I arrived, Leon invited me to join him on a trip to the forets to cvollect wood for one of his construction projects. I rode in the back of an ancient truck with an 18 year old Colombian lad, who wanted to opractise his English, until we were upgraded to the cab. We saw a fox - zorrito, as in the name of the village - and it stood watching us for a while. It was smaller than a Britich fox, grey with a reddidsh tinge on its tail. Leon found a disused termite nest containing a small scorpion, and took us to visit a family who live in the forest. They showed us their goat, that had been killed by a mountain lion, leaving 3 kids - I was just about in tears. There are herds of goats living free in the forest, as well as donkeys and white cattle with long ears and baggy skin on their necks.

That evening, Leon took most of the guests in his truck to the nearby hot springs. I didn´t go in, but enjoyed sitting on the edge with my feet dangling in the hot water. On the way back we stopped at a tiny bakery and shared a bag of delicious warm rolls.

The next day I took a collectivo back to Tumbes and on to Puerto Pizarro for a boat trip to the mangroves - not the real thing, but the trip included a visit to a crocodile sanctuary where crocs are bred and looked after until they are adult, at the age of fifteen, when they are released into the River Tumbes. They are endangered because they´ve been hunted for their skins and meat. The highlight of the trip was the bird islands, where thousands of frigate birds are nesting. At this time of year, the males puff up their red throat sacs like bullfrogs, the skin is so tight it looks as though it will burst. The boat went within a few feet of the birds. After the trip I had lunch at a restaurant with a peeling mural of a mermaid in a bikini top. I´ve also photographed some other bizarre shop signs and displays.

On Monday I needed to get hold of some cash and discovered that the nearest ATM was in Tumbes. I hoped that the centre of town would be less awful than the outskirts, but it wasn´t. There was a queue of about 50 people waiting outside the main bank, allowed in 1 or 2 at a time by a security guard, and about 10 people were waiting for the ATM. The only shops I saw were chemists, mobile phone shops, motorbike and moto taxi dealers, and beauty parlñours, and there was nothing of architectural interest. I decided against trying the restaurant recommended in the book that recommended the hideous hostel, and went back to Casa Grillo for lunch. Afterwards the chef took me to some hot mud springs. I settled on the one marked ¨for the bones¨and went down the steps into chest-deep warm blue water, with my feet in deep mud. Needless to say, I barely let go of his hand. Strange how I´ve been adopted by chefs! This one is in his 20´s and as camp as a row of pink tents. The following day I set off just before daylight on a trip into the dry, as opposed to humid, forest, with a guide and driver. The driver waited for us by the river, while I climbed with the guide up into the forest. It´s autumn here and we crunched through dry leaves, although there were still flowers and some evergreen trees. There were beautiful views of the river and of the humid forest on the other side of ¨Mango Canyon¨. We saw 2 trogons, huge woodpeckers that live in the humid forest, so we were lucky to see them - bright red with dark green backs, and a pair of antbirds - there´s plenty of food for them here! They look rather like cuckoos. I wanted to see an anteater, but we were out of luck. We saw another fox, and a track made by a boa constrictor plus some feathers left from its meal. When we arrived back at the river, there was a tree full of parakeets, attracted by a pool of water remaining at the side of the half-dry river. There were tadpoles in the pool and dark red dragonflies hovering over it. On the way back, we stopped at a small plantation with a few coconut palms and watched the farmer get some fruits down for using with a very long pole with a hook at the top. He hacked the tops with a machete so that we could drink the water. It´s not easy drinking from a hole in the top of a heavy object the size of a football, and in the end I cheated and used the straw from my water bottle. Thanks, B and M, for the multipurpose present! I didn´t think I´d like the drink as I dislike coconut, but it was very pleasant and refreshing. I haven´t been able to download my photos of the forest yet, so they´ll be in the next album.

Wednesday was a day of rest, spent mostly reading in a hammock. The one bit of excitement was trying ceviche for the first time. Ceviche is very fresh fish ¨cooked¨by marinating in lime juice for a few minutes, mixed with finely sliced onion and chopped chilli. It´s served with sweet potatoes, plantain chips, and corn. It was very good.

On Thursday I took a minibus to Mancora, a trendy seaside resort about 40 miles south of Zorritos. Minibuses and collectivos are incredibly cheap - this journey cost me about 1.15 pounds each way. But the vehicles are usually very overloaded, I think there were 19 of us squashed into the minibus, and I´ve been in estate car collectivos with 3 people sitting in the boot. They have to get out or lie on the floor if police are spotted ahead! I walked on the beach, watched surfers and people turning themselves .lobster-red, and had lunch at a wholefood cafe run by an Austrian woman - wholefood cafes don´t seem to be run by Peruvians. It was a pleasant change from daily rations of fish.

I spent yesterday morning getting very frustrated in an internet cafe in Zorritos, trying to upload all of the above, so I retreated to casa Grillo for the rest of my last day there. As a finishing touch, the sunset over the sea was especially spectacular.

I arrived this afternoon in the inland town of Piura, about 5 hours from Zorritos by bus. On the way we passed the sea, semi-desert and fields of rice, and were stopped at a customs post - not that we crossed any borders, I think they just look out for drug smugglers - and had my rucksack and a case halfheartedly searched. There´s nothing special about Piura, but I want to visit the nearby town of Catacoas, which is famous for its craft shops and has a 15th century cathedral, tomorrow morning. Then I´ve booked an afternoon bus to Chiclayo, 3 hours away, where I´ll be staying for 4 nights to visit some pre-Inca sites.