It´s good to be back on the road after a ´week off' in England. We´ve been in Cuzco for a few days now and I´m bundled up in our room sporting my new 'Alpaca´ hat, scarf and socks - but I'm still freezing! It´s 8.45pm and Em is in bed, it´s about 15 minutes off our usual bedtime as since we arrived we´ve been trying to acclimatise to the altitude and, with the Inca Trail only a few days off, trying to recover from the hefty journey from London via BA and Lima.

There´s about 6 weeks of catching up to do as the blog has been more than usually neglected recently. The lack of focus was partly due to exhaustion after the 9 months on the road, excitement of returning home for a week, the wedding and the disappointment of losing my bag so close to the end, but I shan't dwell. All this had a kick back on the photo albums aswell, we left some photos of BA and Iguazu back in the UK, so we´ll have to add those later. The BA album is a bit random to say the least, and one would have to ask what exactly we saw in the place after seeing those!

So, very briefly, to catch on the last six weeks, I´ll pick up from where Em left off in Iguazu.

What a place?! It defintely lived up to the all the hype, in fact I can´t believe people don´t hype it even more. Words cannot adequately describe the feeling of standing in front of all that rushing water at the 'Devils Throat'. It´s like Feng Shui on a massive scale and we could only stand and gawp for a few mintues before we got the cameras out. Apparently the negative ions generated by the falling water give the viewer a sense of elation. I don´t know but it was defintely one of highlights of the year and on it´s own merit worth crossing the entire length of Paraguay. After the initial rush of the Devil´s Throat we spent the rest of the day walking round the site and marvelling at the rest of the sights. We met an American/Ukranian who paid for Em to go on a 'jet boat' ride into one of the water falls. And I went for a walk with him round Isla San Martin while Em did some sun bathing. He was a good lad, unfortunately we lost his contact details with my bag.

The rest of the time in Puerto Iguazu was spent with the guys we´d met on the bus. Two Argentinians, a Mexican and a Norwegian girl.They introduced us to 'Fernet and Coke' an Argentine drinking institution, made us some Caiprinhas and took us to an excellent heladaria. The next morning, whilst waiting for the bus to BA and recovering from the previous night, we took a long walk in the extreme heat to Tres Fonteras, a point on three river banks were you can simultaneously see Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.

Arriving in BA, a bit groggy, we let our guard down and paid the price, but i´m not going to dwell on that any longer!

We had to come back to BA primarily to catch the flight to England. But we decided to spend a couple of weeks there as we liked it so much the previous time. The plan was for Em to do some vounteer teaching in La Boca and I was going get some ´work´done on my laptop utilising Susanna´s super quick wifi.

Em: "I enjoyed my volunteering, most especially for the chance to meet some more people and see what life was like in La Boca, a working-class district with a few problems. I was working with a co-operative, firstly helping out in their kitchen which provides meals for the workers (sewing machinists who make the lab-coat school uniforms) as well as help with housing. I chopped up more meat in one day than I ever have in my whole life. They also provided an after-school club and English lessons, so it was good to spend time helping out here too, though I wish it could have been for longer. La Boca is being somewhat gentrified, and many tourists go to Caminita, by the old port. However, this has not helped the local residents at all and poverty and unemployment is rife. Corruption is also a problem and there is lots of graffiti blaming the mayor, Macri. I had seen his name everywhere and at first did not know who/what Macri was, only that he meant hunger or s***. One of the co-operative told me about how some woman got a grant from the US government to clean up the harbour and pollution, but instead spent the money on herself and her house. She is now under house arrest in her beautiful house. The building next to where I was working used to be a bank, which had shut down and used to have ten families living in it. The council wanted them to move out but they hadn´t, until someone threw a petrol bomb through the window, killing 4 children. But there was a nice atmosphere in the co-operative and people were helping themselves. We also made packed lunches for people on marches and demonstrations, and gave extra food for dinner to those in the co-operative. I think they earnt about 200 pesos a month, which is nothing, but at least they had breakfast, lunch and dinner every day."

Without a laptop MY plans were scuppered on arrival and the whole week is a bit of a blur. Apart from wandering round San Telmo with a long face looking for a wedding present, and going back and forth to the embassy to arrange my replacement passport I think I did little else than hang round the apartment and read/watch football. It was the first week in the whole year that I wished away as if we were in England. Practically counting the days till we came home.

In an effort to make something of our last week in BA and save some cash we decided to do a few days couchsurfing. Fortunately for us, with only a few days warning, the extremely busy Marcela and Jota took us in.They lived out near Parque de la Centenario, where we happened to be the previous Sunday looking for presents at the massive flea market. It was around that time that I set my mind on bringing back one of the cool bikes that are so popular with the Porteños - Las Playeras or Beach Cruisers.Withraised handle bars and peddle back brakes surely ideal for the steep hills of Nottingham! We gave it 2 weeks in Nottingham before it was either stolen or proved to be completely impractical.In reality, on arrival in Heathrow we found it crushed beyond use so we were rather generous with our estimation.

Staying with Marcela and Jota proved to be an inspirational decision and the ideal tonic and even though they were so busy we have some great memeries of our last few days in BA.

As chance had it we also bumped into Marianna, our previous couch surfing host. She was one of the guest speakers at the issue launch party of Marcela´s magazine, set in a beautiful book shop they had a presentation and discussion of which we didn´t understand a word. Bumping into Marianna like that is no small coincidence in a city with above 1000 couchsurfers.

Afterwards they invited us to their dinner and we managed to cram in one last mouth watering steak. It was great to talk to Jota some more and also a really cute 11 year old girl.But they all seemed shocked, almost offended, that we hadn´t heard of a TV show called 'Get Smart'! Afterwards we went for some more Fernet and some local brew and stopped off on the way home for some more delicious homemade ice cream (plus they also do ice cream delivery!!!)

The next moring, very early and a bit hazy as is the custom when flying, we caught a taxi to the airport and on the way picked up my new bike and 17 hrs later we arrived at Heathrow.

Do I need to Blog England? Apart from to say it was great to see everybody and the wedding was excellent and that I´m NEVER going to the Emirates again! In truth after only a week back in blighty our feet were itching to get back out here and it´s a great feeling to know we still have about three months left.

So in between freezing our butts off, exploring the markets, shops, cheap restaurants and museams of Cuzco, taking a day tour of the Sacred Valley of Urabamba, purchasing the obligatory assortment of alpaca woollies - we´ve finally worked out a plan for the next few months.

Not so brief in the end.