Hello everyone. We are now in Peru and it is a world away from home and New Zealand.

We started our week off in Auckland, spending the day pottering round the city and preparing for our flight to South America. We walked to the studenty and arty areas which were really cool. Then on our last night we had dinner in the Sky Tower, which is a needle-like tower that looks out all over the city. The restaurant is about 350m from the ground and it revolves. I´d never been in a revolving restaurant so I really enjoyed that. We had cocktails too. The best thing about it though was that it was a bargain. It costs 24 dollars to get a lift to the top of the building, but if you eat in the restaurant the lift is free. And obviously we would have paid to go out for dinner and to go up in the lift anyway, so really by eating up there we saved ourselves money, and got to eat in an amazing restaurant.

The next day we flew to Santiago, Chile. It was an 11 hour flight and would have been fine, if the damn couple next to me had managed to stop snogging for at least 30 seconds of the flight. But they didn´t. While I was eating, sleeping, watching TV, all I could hear was them washing each others mouths out... even with my ear plugs in! Grrr. Plus they were leaning towards me so I basically had them both on top of me. Gross. Even a few jabs of my elbow didn´t stop them. We think it´s a South American thing though, as we´ve seen loads of other couples doing the same thing, totally oblivious to the what others around them might think.

Anyway, we arrived in Santiago to find that our hostel, La Casa Rosa, was lovely. It was sort of in the style of a castle/chapel. We had our own bathroom too which was a treat, and they had a hostel dog who I loved making a fuss of. We were only in Santiago for a day and a half so we just walked around the city a bit, and used the time to have a Spanish lesson. It only cost 5 quid for an hour and a half so was well worth it, as hardly anyone speaks English here. We were surprised at how clean Santiago was, and how smart too. We saw pretty buildings, humming birds, and loads of men playing chess in squares. It was actually very European, apart from the Andes hovering in the background. They even had a Starbucks, but no we didn´t go in.

Early Thursday morning (4am), we got a taxi to Santiago airport, to fly on to Lima. The LAN plane was one of the nicest we´d been on so far. Although the flight was only about three hours we were convinced we´d flow to India when we landed, as we saw that we were flying over desert and shanty towns. For some reason I hadn´t been expecting that. We got to our hotel and basically stayed there until the next morning, when we got a coach out of the Lima, which we were both relieved to do. It wasn´t that anything bad happened in Lima, I just think we were both experiencing a bit of a culture shock, and were keen to move on.

So we got a coach to a place called Pisco, which experienced an earthquake on August 15th last year. Consequently most of the buildings were reduced to rubble, which we weren´t expecting. As it is almost a year since the earthquake there was a big commemorative event here last night. These poor people. They obviously didn´t have a lot to start off with but now most of their houses and even their roads have been destroyed. Our hotel on the other hand was lovely, as they obviously had quite a bit of money to begin with. We had a nice room there, which is a good thing because our coach arrival and departure times meant that we spent quite a lot of time there.

Why are we here? Yesterday we did a tour to Islas Ballestas, islands a little off the coast from Pisco. On the tour we saw loads of pelicans, sea lions, penguins and even boobies. Before you ask boobies are a kind of bird, and they are a huge produced of guano (bird poo, to you and me), which is a major export here. Nice. Apparently every seven years people go and live on the island and spend months collecting the stuff. Lush. We also were lucky enough to see quite a few bottlenose dolphins on the trip, which apparently doesn´t happen every day. We also say an etching of a massive candelabra in the rock, made in the same way as the Nazca lines. It was amazing, especially as no-one really knows why it´s there or who put it there.

I have to wrap up now as we´re catching a coach to Nazca in a bit. I hope you are all well. I´m missing home quite a bit now and can´t wait to see you all. Please keep in touch.

Love and hugs,

Laura xxx