Hi there!

Just a quick update for you before we do the Inca Trail on Wednesday. We have been in Peru now for about a week and it has mostly involved long bus journeys on bumpy, windy roads.

We passed through the north and centre of Peru to reach a place called Nazca. Nazca is close to the coast of Peru and is located right in the middle of the desert. It was absolutely roasting there even though it is still technically their winter and a local taxi driver was telling us they only get about 30mm of rain a year! (Ireland averages about 1200mm a year although I´m sure that will have risen a fair bit this year!).

Our plan was originally to only spend two days here but unfortunately I picked up the flu somewhere and ended up having to spend a few days in bed recovering. Nurse Barry was fantastic in my time of need although a little too strict at times and freaked me out when he threatened to put me into a bath of cold water to bring down my temp!! I insisted that there was no way I was going to go along with that so he backed down eventually!

To Ger´s delight, our hotel room had a TV, although it only had one English speaking channel…..Fox news from America so we are now officially experts on the Presidential race and the collapse of the economy in the US! (8-10 hours of Fox news a day tends to brainwash you, we almost had American accents by the end of it!).

On our fifth day in Nazca I was finally ready to do what we had come to do in the first place…..take a flight over the famous Nazca lines. There is huge flat area of rocky desert just outside the town which has patterns, images, figures and lines carved into the land. They date back to as early as 300BC and there are a number of theories about why these lines and figures were created but nobody knows for sure. The weird thing about them is most of them are so huge that they can only be properly seen from the air hence the need for us to take a flight. The figures consist of things like spiders, birds, fish, and humans. We managed to take a few snaps from the plane so hopefully you´ll be able to make out some of these figures when you look at the album. Half the thrill for Ger was the actual plane ride which he loved, although I was a bit worse for wear after the whole thing! Aer Arann and Ryanair are ultimate luxuries in comparison.

We travelled from Nazca to Cusco and have been here for the past few days preparing/acclimatising for the Inca Trail. We´re all psyched up and ready to go! Our next blog will let you know whether we survived it or not!!

Lots of love, Linda and Ger xxx