For much of the last week the team has been split up. Phil and Quita taking on the unenviable task of finding a reasonable and affordable pickup truck in Lima, and Nick and Ed with restarting the trek from Cajamarca... Nick and Ed had enjoyed a peaceful couple of days in the lush fields of 'Argentina Farm' where the horses could relax after their truck journey. The boys decided to make things a touch more interesting by taking the wrong road out of Cajamarca. Wi...

Two weeks ago the whole team were reunited in Piura, a busy city in the desert of northern Peru. It was the first time Ed had seen the horses in nearly a month, and Quita's very first encounter. The plan then was to buy a cheap old pickup truck, and to ship the horses up to Cajamarca in a lorry within a week. Things never seem to work out quite that smoothly. First we should add an explanatory note regarding our decision to drive the horses for this stint. When ...

Macara to Piura: The desert bit and a Top Gear finish...Following our arrival in Macara, the border town with Peru, we left you with these words; 'all being well we might even cross the border in the next few days'. It took rather longer than that - a week to be precise - in which time Nick travelled nearly 500 miles in search of endless certificates, licenses and other paperwork which were required by the border bureaucrats. Sadly it seemed that their appetite f...

The End of the Beginning! After a blissful couple of days in Loja in which Nick's gut was finally fixed by a highly proficient medical service, and both the boys and the horses ate far too well for their own good, we left Loja. Once again we were unwittingly following the Panamerican highway. We travelled west to Catamayo over a high pass and down a winding road which, from above, often looked like one of those mazes in kids' puzzle books. Arriving in Catamayo w...

After leaving Ed behind to recieve regular medical treatment the team set off with a new member. This was a guide (Don Lucio) who had been recomeneded by some friends and claimed to know a route from Cuenca to Loja that would take "no more than 3 days." If the team could get down to Loja in this amount of time the whole trek would be back on track.... The horses were loaded into a van to take them across Cuenca but it soon became apparent that this was...