Hello again!

Our plans had to change slightly due to miners´strikes preventing us getting to Lima due to road blocks. So we headed to Arequipa which is meant to be a very nice city. Which it is. Unfortunately we spent the first day trying to send packages of things home (cuosin lucy it´s mostly your alpaca requests!) and going to the doctors as I still wasn´t feeling well.

From Arequipa we decided to doa tour of the Colca Canyon, the 2nd deepest canyon in the world. It was a 3 day trek and quite hard work! The first day we were taken to a lookout point to try and see the condors that nest in the sides of the canyon. We were lucky and spotted 3 or 4! Then we began the trek. The first day was all downhill to take us to the bottom of the canyon and after a solid 4hours we arrived at our accommodation. We had the luxury of hot water but no electricity, so everyone was in bed at 8.30pm after dinner! The next day we visited a little village (2hours of only walking UP the sides of the canyon) where tourists very rarely go, it was our guide´s recommendation and it was a beautiful old colonial village. Hard work to live there though as there are no roads and to get to and from the village is having to in and out/up and down the second deepest canyon int he world! After a few more hours walking, thankfully on slightly flatter ground we arrived at our Oasis where we stayed for the second night next to freshwater swimming pools. It was beautiful and very welcome after a days walking in the burning hot sun! Day 3 started very early at 5am and it consisted of getting ourselves out of the canyon. Due to still being a little under the weather I found it quite tough and so took it very slowly. The low point was when the guide told me I was walking too slowly and he needed to go ahead and check on our breakfast, at which point he began to run up the very steep hill! We eventually arrived at the top tired and hungry for our breakfast!

We headed to Lima that night and didn´t expect much from the city as people hadn´t been very complimentary. But when we got there we had a lovely surprise, Fraser! Rhys´ housemate from university was there and we had a lovely evening and day with him. Lima itself (even without Fraser) was much nicer than we had expected!From here we´re heading to Iquitos, the largest city in the world impossible to reach by road. We´ll be flying as we dont have much time but it´s possible to get a boat, and it´s only a few kilometres away from where the Amazon River is born!

Hannah and Rhys xxxx