From Arequipa we headed on to the Colca Canyon. It is the second deepest canyon in the world, the deepest canyon is the one next to it. Why did we not go to that one? Now we have to settle for telling people that we once visited the second deepest canyon in the world. The canyon is famous for its condors, some of which grow up to three metres in length. We were pretty lucky and saw about four or five flying just above our heads. It was pretty strange that as soon as our bus arrived at the Cruz del Condor where the tourist board has built a lookout point the condors appeared and started flying above our heads. We suspect they have either been trained by the tourist board or are robots.

We caught a night bus to Cusco, on a posh bus company. Decided to spend a bit more and get a comfy bus since it was a long journey. A guy we keep meeting along the way calls us champagne backpackers because of our (relatively) expensive tastes. We are staying in ten pound a night places while he stays in super cheap dorms. We're not sure spending a tenner a night makes you a champagne backpacker, more of a tesco finest cava backpacker. Anyway arrived in cusco and it is Gringo city, lots of old tour groups here to see Inca ruins. As a result everything very expensive and lots of people trying to sell you indigenous style knitwear and other rubbish. Our hostel was right up on a hill and really quiet. The woman running it had to go out to get something one evening and as there was no one else there asked us to man the phones. We were a bit worried that this was the thin end of the wedge and she would have us cleaning toilets next.

We joined up with our group for walking the Inca trail and were a bit disappointed to find they were all americans. The first two we met were a mother and twelve year old son (it later emerged that the 'son' was called Catherine and was a 24 year old member of the American air force but you honestly couldn't tell). There was also an older guy and his wife, he had been in the marine core in his youth and him and the boy/girl talked endlessly about life in the forces. After four days everyone was getting seriously bored of the GI Joe/Jane chat. Our main guide was a maradonna look alike with extremely greasy hair. He was pretty good at keeping everyone motivated and was pretty knowledgable about all the ruins and stuff along the way. The second guide was called Washington (one of the Americans actually said the following quote 'He's not just the father of our country, he's the father of every country'). Washington is studying to be a dentist which obviously excited Kate a lot. I will let her talk about dentistry for a while now while I fall asleep in the corner.......

That is all lies it did not excite me, infact he horrified me. He explained that they needed extracted teeth to practice on and were unable to get any from local dentists so they hid outside a graveyard until midnight and then proceeded to dig up bodies and extract the teeth from the corpses! I can{t imagine that behaviour would have went down well in Dundee. I will pass you back to Max before he starts snoring...

Anyway the walk itself took four days in total. We were camping all the way, luckily the tents were pretty good as it rained a lot. The second day was by far the hardest with ten hours of walking in total. We went over a pass that day that was 4300 metres above sea level called the dead woman's pass. Check out how high Ben Nevis is for a comparison (hint: it is much lower). Eventually arrived at Machu Pichu for sunrise, we got up at 3.45 especially to catch it. Unfortunately it had been raining for two days by this point and the mountains were completely covered in cloud. So no long range photos of Machu Pichu so will need to download some of the internet. Had a walk around the ruins for a few hours, they are amazingly intact and huge. There was a train strike that day which meant there were hardly any other tourists at the site, only people who had walked from Cusco were there as there are no roads to it. Stayed in the little village called Aguas Calientes where they have natural hot springs good for sore muscles. We ended up going out that night and stayed out till 3.30. Not a good idea as we had to get up early to catch the train back to Cusco. We then had another night bus that evening to make it five nights in a row without a proper sleep in a bed.

The night bus got us to Bolivia safely despite everyone telling us lots of horror stories about the border crossing. The guards at the border barely even looked at our passports let alone search our bags before waving us on. We are now in Copacabana on the banks of Lake Titicaca. Apparently it is the second highest navigable lake in the world (who planned this trip? Is it the second best trip in the world?). The scenery is amazing, it looks like the mediterranean with bright blue water and clear skies. Bolivia is unbelievably cheap even for big spenders like us.