Well what an eventful few days in South America!! First we arrvied in Santiago in Chile, which was a great city but largely wasted on us because we had been hit by a steam train called ´jet lag´! It wiped us out completely for the first time in the whole trip. We had just crossed the international date line though, travelling from New Zealand round to Chile, so Thursday 14th January was 40 hours long for us. We had also just had a very traumatic last day in New Zealand when we realised our flight was two days earlier than we thought! So we had to drive 400km over night from the other side of the island to make it to the airport in time! Nightmare!

Anyway, we then made it to Lima in Peru - which was uneventful and not much to write home about so we moved onto Cusco to start our ´Sacred Valley´ experience, which was supposed to culminate in a visit to the famous Macchu Picchu ruins. Firstly we were both struck down with food poisoning, we think from the airport of all places. It put me in bed for two days so we didn´t get to see all the Cusco sites as planned (Robin consoled himself with a beer in the hotel courtyard though so he didn´t seem to mind too much!). Then we headed off into the Sacred Valley to see all the Inca ruins. The first night saw so much rain that the river was the highest it had been in over 15 years. We woke up to no power, no water, no transport back to Cusco and all trains in the direction of Macchu Picchu cancelled! So we moved onto the next town Ollantaytambo hoping it would all sort itself out in a couple of days and we would be able to continue our journey. We drowned our sorrows with a Brazilian couple we met in the same predicament and all went off to bed in the hope of getting our train the following day.

It all got much worse the following morning though when we were woken early and told there had been so much more rain over night we had to get back to Cusco immediately, before all the bridges collapsed and the roads were closed. The bridge in the village had gone over night and hundreds of homes had been washed away, crops ruined, and mudslides everywhere. We made it back to Cusco no problem, but 2000 tourists have been stranded further down the valley in Macchu Picchu. They have been airlifting them out for the last couple of days because they are running out of food. By far the saddest part though is seeing the locals standing in the spot where their house and all their belongings once stood - looking completely helpless. Whole villages have been affected. Have a look on Google for images of the Macchu Picchu floods - its very scary. Thank God we got turned around before we got stranded there!!

We´ve been stranded in Cusco for the last two days (we´re 3500m above sea level so there´s no flooding here but all the roads around have been closed.) We can finally get out tonight so we are heading for Bolivia in a complete change of plans!

So no Macchu Picchu, which is a shame because it was high on our list of sites to see, but we´re not stuck either so it´s not all bad! Hopefully that will be our fair share of problems for the trip out the way in one go.