hey dudes and duddettes... so much to write, so little time. I'll try to make it quick!! Me and Patricia are now in Equador in the lovely town of Cuenca where the warm weather is clean and fresh and pleasant! We are staying in Paola's house - she is Anthony's brother's ex-girlfriend and they have a daughter together - Maria emilia who is cute and cheeky. I haven{t written in 2 weeks or so and so very much has happened. Firstly, thanks for all the birthday wishes. I did have an AMAZING birthday which I will tell u about in a mo but from where I left off last time, we visited the lovely town of Sucre in Bolivia. It is a gorgeous place where the people look quite well off compared to the rest of Bolivia and they even had a chocolatier!!! Having been in the cold for many a week, we were extremely happy with the warm weather. Went to a bar on the first night where there was a real cutie from Denmark that turned all the girls heads! He invited us to a club after and I was shocked when I got chatting to a girl who is best friends with my college friend Rebecca - what a coincidence.. in the middle of BOLIVIA in a club we were RANDOMLY invited to; and Rebecca had actually told her to keep an eye out for me in S.America! Anyway, it was a great night and I was extremely impressed by Clare's funky dancing (a girl on our tour).The hangover the next day was NOT good and I spent much of the day up on the roof terrace absorbing the energy of the sun with my fellow travellers and showing them my belly dance skills. The next town Tupiza was pretty dead and we had loads of trouble with our tour truck, Doris. She kept breaking down- oil leaks, smoking, the shock absorber fell off and various other things. The last hour of our journey to Tupiza actually involved jumping on an open top ricketty truck with a few locals and using the powers of red wine and rum to keep us entertained! It was probably not the best idea all drinking out of the same bottles as half the people on tour were ill. Tupiza is famous for being the town where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - the friendliest outlaws in history spent their last few days. Me and Ali, a girl on my tour went horse riding amongst the cati and mountains which was quite hair raising because not only did part of my saddle keep falling off but I had no helmet and Ali had me gallopping even though I've only ever trotted at most on a horse before. I tell u what, I was holding on for my life cos when her horse took off then mine followed and I was too scared to let go of the saddle to pull the reigns. My back and then thighs hurt for about 5 days after. We also took a 'Where's Reshma' photo here (like Where's Wally but it's me hidden amongst the rocks). During the long travel days on our truck Doris, we have been keeping ourselves entertained by playing various card game, Uno and s***head are my favourite. We made an adjustment to s***head when we got a sucker shotgun on the truck and we changed the name to 'shothead' where the loser got shot by the winner. We stopped once for a pee stop amongst cacti, which was scary cos the desert floor was covered with them and two girls with flip flops on got unlucky! The second day in Tupiza, we celebrated Sarah's birthday by having a fancy dress party. Alice in Wonderland, Superman and Supergirl, the Peacock Fairy, Zorro, the man with no name and various other characters were there. I was a pirate and Patricia was a leprechaun which quite suited her.

We crossed the border to Argentina the next day and stayed in the wonderful town of Salta, full of all the shops you could imagine. The 1st night we went to a fancy restaurant where everyone else got huge steaks the size of the plate. We spotted a cute guy there who my friend Maya took a liking to and we sent over a note (well it was a piece of tissue paper) saying 'Are u an architect?' cos he looked like an architect and Maya put Yes/No boxes on. He ticked no and wrote 'lawyer' (these are the stupid things we'd get up to on this trip. He gave us a lift home but he thought Maya was too young for him (rare to find a decent man) as he was 32 and she's 19. On the second night we went out to a BBQ night at a hostel which was fab. The barman was a hot, sexy and very cocky South Londoner called Ross who provided the eye candy of the evening. It was a great evening but unfortunately the next day I got really sick, having caught a bug off someone from my tour group just in time for my birthday. NO drinking, NO partying so I was pretty upset about that and I missed an outing cos of the combined hangover and illness. But the day b4 my birthday we went on a horse riding trip in the mountains with the Gaucho's (cowboys of Argentina) and it was such a fab day- we met another group there, 1 Irish guy called Dave had a great voice and played the guitar at lunch. One of the Gaucho's were so stereotypical - he had the long hair, the scarf, the accent, the good looks, the hat, the singing voice, the guitar. the steed and he provided us with hours of entertainment- his voice was amazing an though I couldn't drink, everyone else was on Argentinian wine and it was just fab. I think that the long fiesta lunch was actually the highlight of the whole day horse riding! Dave thought it was hilarious that the darkest girl (me) should get the white horse when everyone else had brown or grey horses. My horse's name was Esperansa, meaning 'hope'. Dave's horse's name was Gypsy, and he was quite upset that the Irish guy should get the 'Gippo'! The day ended by the owners giving me a birthday cake with 27 candles on it! Seeing that amount of candles on your cake is quite disturbing and I hope to never see my age on a cake again. On my actual birthday, we were travelling all day on the truck, we crossed the border into Chile- oh what fun... NOT! We stayed in San Pedro - an amazingly beautiful but also expensive town in the Atacama. I had to wake up at something stupid like 4 am to take a trip to the geysers (hot water shooting up from underground). I dipped my legs in the pool which defrosted my toes- that was nice. I'll have to continue this essay at a later date and upload the photos- I haven't even told you about Santiago yet. Paola, the girl we are staying with is sending the daughter to Ireland for a month so she will be free and she wants me to travel to Columbia with her!!! That would be an unexpected ending to a wonderful year's trip! She speaks Spanish, Columbia is cheap, her daughter is away and I am free so it works out perfecto! Love Rish xxx