hey guys! hope everybody is well? just emailing another update of my travels....the tour has finished now but the last few highlights were really cool. had a good birthday, some of the guys from our group organised a meal with entertainment, which unfortunately included me getting up on stage and attemping to dance peruvian...so hilarious!! the inca trail and macchu picchu were fantastic although i can honestly say it was one of the hardest things i've ever done! the first day wasn't too bad, only 10km of walking but the second day literally was torture...it was 7km steep uphill hike and we were at 3600m above sea level climbing to 4200m so the altitude also affected some of us. my ankles we're really sore and we had to descend a further 6km to get to camp. the third day was ok although i was so happy to reach camp in the evening as we all knew that it was an easy walk to macchu picchu. the next morning we had to leave at 4, we arrived at the sun gate entrance to macchu picchu and it was amazing. it's such a feeling of satification when you finally get there after so much hard work!! we spent all day at macchu picchu, the tour of the ruins was really good and then we had to leave and go back to cuzco. we then went to colca canyon which i think is the world's deepest and watched condors flying around, they were literally flying not much more than 1m away from us. from there we went to nazca to fly over the nazca lines...they are shapes that have been created by stones in the ground and there is now known explanation of how they got there. we took a small plane up to see them and they were huge. the best a hummingbird carved right next to a mountain. from there we went sand buggying and boarding in the middle of these huge sand dunes. i was too chicken to actually do it standing up so a few of us went on our stomachs, head first and it was so much fun! the buggying was good too and there were occassions when i actually though we were going to roll over anyway...we spent 2 days lima which was ok...didn't really take to it that much and my friend had her camera stolen so that was a pain. the tour has ended now so we flew to buenos aires, arrived on sunday morning. our hostel is really nice and buenos aires is such a cool place. i'm waiting to party at the weekend 'cos it's supposed to be mad! finally sorted what we're doing with this month...we're leaving buenos aires on the 8th and then travelling to mendoza, which is a tourist town in argentina. we're then travelling to bariloche and because it's winter we're gonna do some snowboarding for a week and then cross the andes to chile. after that we have to somehow make our way to santiago..... anyway...hope everything is ok at home...i heard that the weather is great so i hope your all enjoying it as i am freezing over here!!! take care, sel xx ps..gillian...thanks for the birthday text...missing you too!! if you get this email, please can you email back as i'm not sure what your address is and i've tried a few...cheers hun!! i'll spk to you soon xx