In Spanish the letter ´h´ is silent and the letter ´J´ is pronounced as a soft ´h´. What this interesting little linguistic fact means is that lots of people who we´ve met in Peru have trouble saying Joel´s name. Instead they say ´Hole´ this amused us greatly and kept us entertained for hours.

Another interesting Peruvian habit is to outright lie about the length of time something takes. It is apparently perfectly acceptable to add an hour to any length of time. e.g. How long does the bus take? If they say 4 hours they mean 5 if they say 10 hours they mean 11. It takes a while to get used to this most annoying of traits and occasionally it is taken to extremes and even more than an hour is added. So when we left Lake Titicaca on a 5 hour journey to the city of Arequipa Joel had a major sense of humour failure when we reached hour 7 (we think this was partly due to the fact that it was a night bus and the lights were out meaning he couldn´t finish his Harry Potter book). Anyway this surliness was a new side of Joel that, although Rachel seemed familiar with, Pete and Polly had never seen before, it was in fact a new person. Hang on it was ... Grumpy Hole!!! Brilliant Joel is no more. Long live Grumpy Hole.

When we eventually got there, Arequipa was a great city. Very colonial with beautiful buildings lots of attractions. A particular highlight was visiting the nunnery! Seriously a really interesting place and the nuns are still there. Although originally it was a silent nunnery, nowadays they are allowed to speak - infact like everyone else in South America they have mobiles! They also are very keen Volley Ball players which (although we didn´t see it) we like the image of nuns in their uniforms getting stuck into a game of Volley Ball - Topgun style I´d like to think.

Leaving the nuns behind us, we headed out for a day of white-water rafting. This was Rach and Grumpy Hole's first time in a raft and it was very sweet to see how on the difficult rapids Hole would lean forward with a protective arm to steady Rach and keep her in the raft. Pete took no such precautions with Polly! Rather he was kind of hoping that she´d fall in so they´d have a very entertaining story for their blog! But unfortunately we all made it safe and dry.

After a hard days rafting there is nothing like a meal of traditional food. Pisco sours and Alpaca steak all-round. However when Pete was young he had a pet called ´Toby´ and Grumpy Hole had a pet called ´Sophie´ this meant they were a little reluctant to tuck into that other famous Peruvian food .... have you guessed what it is yet .... yep that´s right ....Guinea Pig. It was a real moral dilemma can you eat the distant cousin of a close and dear family pet. Well I´m not going to answer that here but all I´ll say is ... quite a lot of bones, tough skin but surprisingly tasty (sorry Toby).

The next day Rach was a little ill so we don´t think she´ll be eating domestic pets again. So being the sympathetic friends (and boyfriend - Grumpy Hole) that we are, we left Rach on her own in the hotel and headed out for a day mountain biking down a volcano. It was a great ride and a top day out, the volcano didn´t erupt (which is always a relief) and we only had a couple of minor falls. The final bit of the days long decent was a 10k stretch through the outskirts of the city...past an awful lot of mongrel dogs that have a tendency to chase bikes. Oh dear. Polly decided to sit this bit out and hopped in the support vehicle. But in a reckless display of machoism Pete and Grumpy Hole went for it. It was seriously like something out of a computer game, pedalling like crazy whilst watching out for dogs. As Polly drove along behind eagerly waiting with camera in hand, Pete and Grumpy Hole pedalled for all their worth ... swerved a couple of potholes and ... made it phewf. No photos of us being mauled today.