We had arrived in Cusco a few days earlier (August 24th) to aclimatise to the altitude (3300m). I was a bit aprehensive about getting altitude sickness again since the Quito/Cotopaxi experience was not all that pleasent. I had a great time at Wild Rover in Arequpia so before I knew it I was knocking at the door of the Cusco branch. On Thursday we did a tour of the city given by a guy from Donegal who has been living there for about two and half years. It was a ...

Apologies for the delay in posting a blog but it has been a busy few weeks coupled with a few places without Internet and a few days in the vortex that is Cuscos nightlife. The last blog finished with a quick trip to Lima to pick up Sean and from there we headed south to a place called Huachchina (its similiar to the blog pic). It is a tiny town of about 200 people. The only reason gringos head there is to sandboard down some wicked dunes. For a ridiculous price...

So after a three days of early mornings, two dives per day and a little study we completed the diving course.Pete and I now have our PADI Open Water certification. After a few nervous starts and several tanks of air later I was diving like a pro. Generally we did forty five minute dives (or there abouts) reaching depths of twenty meters.The dive sites are located in Tayrona National Park so there are coral reefs throughout which makes for some great marine lif...

Note this is going to be a long one as I did a major tourist event, apologies in advance ;-) As there was a lot of activities to do in San Gil we decide to stay another day. It was a toss up between some more rafting and cave exploring but by the time we got our act together the rafting was full. I was not too pushed about it though as we already had done some in Banos. Caving was a great experince. Pretty much walking, diving ,swimming and crawling in a mile l...

First place we hit in Colombia was a place called Cali. It's down south of the country but it's still a hell of a long bus trip from the Ecuadorian border! I am coming to think that my two and a half hour drive from Dublin to Cork was not that much of a pain after all. Still though driving through the Andes makes the road a bit bumby, bendy and sway-y. As we arrived in Cali on a Sunday it was a bit dead. The only thing that is open is the giant very American-es...