Well much has happened since the last blog, some good and some bad!

Basically while I was on my four day trek in Peru, Matthew was left to his own devices. Which is not always the best idea. He randomly managed to stumble upon a Shaman with whom he chatted to for a long time. I don´t know much about shamans but this one managed to touch Matthew inappropriately, including a finger into the belly button (thats the second time in 8 months) and told him that he had a lot of energy (I think that was discovered from the belly button test), that he got angry too quickly and that he had to work harder at ... everything. Ha he also read his palm. Literally how do you find these people, I left him alone for 3 days. When I got back he read my palm and told me I´d have two children but couldnt tell me what sex they´d be (covering his back) ha. It was quite interesting tho, he told us all about the wars in south america and about 2012.

After that we started the long journey to Colombia. We had to get a 21 hour bus to Lima. The lady in our hostel convinced us this particular bus was the ONLY bus safe to travel on (normally we just rock up to the station and pick the cheapest). Turned out to be the FANCIEST bus I´ve EVER been on. We had to give fingerprints and get metal detected. It was like a plane. We got 6 movies including Home Alone (dubbed spanish obv) and then they woke us up for a breakfast stop. We got given, a piece of meat, a massive plate of rice, a potato, a glass of papaya juice and a tea. WHO eats that at 7am... south americans apparently. So yeah it turns out we overspent. Ha. We stayed a day and then got another 19 hour bus to the border and another 3 hour bus to cross the border. We were going to spend the night there in Ecuador but decided to just wait a 5 hours and then get an overnight bus to Quito the capital (10 hours). We ended up in this Chinese restaurant that served portions for four people (didnt realise that before ordering). We ate it all. In Quito we stayed in a fancy hostel, with pingpong, table football, a cinema room, 3 kitchens (not that we used any of it - just crashed) for a night then got another 5 hour bus to the border... and finally we were in Colombia! Woo.

We got a taxi with this really talkative English guy who yapped about 50,000 London starting salaries (so not really on our wavelength) but humorous nonetheless as ironically he looked like a tramp. We decided to go straight to this little village that was SUPER catholic to see its cathedral set over a gorge).. now I mean SUPER catholic. We ended up sharing a taxi with a nun called Judie to get there and she gave us an apple and a sweet each haha. So catholics get up at 7am for mass or whatever so checkout was at 06.45. Got to be the earliest checkout in the world. By this time we were super jolly about Colombia, everyone had been so nice to us and the scenery was epic (only rival is NZ). So yeah being unusually jolly we were bound to get a karma slap in the face ... and we did. I got my big rucksack stolen. dun dun dun. Someone just took it out of the luggage department of the bus I was on and walked off with it. So all our valuables, passports, camera etc was all on us, just I have NO CLOTHES. The robber must have been so disappointed. I handled it ok, did all the police reports etc... but cant say I've handled trying to replace those clothes too well. South American clothes are s*** (really tacky) so im pretty much refusing to buy any. Yeah im looking pretty shabby right now. I've been wearing these clothes for a week. The locals on the bus were trying so hard to help us and I cant stress anymore how nice everyone is. Especially considering our spanish is crap. We´ve decided not to let it get us down and have moved on and our now staying in a pretty little city called Popayan in a hostel with two of the FATTEST dogs. Much to my delight.

So thats all for now. Hopefully next time I speak to you I'll be wearing something different. haa xx