A late start this morning, although I was woken about 2:30am by the rest of the group coming back to the hotel. They were incredibly noisy! A lovely breakfast in the glorious sunshine, meeting random Aussie tourists in the queue was a beautiful start to the day. We were onto the bus at 10am and stopped for an ATM, then stopped for snacks and water before finally getting onto the road to the Colca Valley. We stopped at a couple of view points along the way and als...

Up at 6am again!! This time for our flight to Arequipa, Peru. Thankfully being a Sunday morning, traffic is pretty good so with our last glance at Lima (for now...), we departed at 9:45am. Flying into Arequipa, the sky was clear so we had a lovely view of the mountains coming into the airport. We were met by our local guide, Jeanita, who pointed out the three volcanoes that surround Arequipa - Chachanga, Misti and Pichu Pichu. Only Misti is still active but they ...

Headed to breakfast about 7:30am and ready to meet our tour friends at 8am. Meeting went for about an hour and then we set off for a tour of Lima. We drove through Mirasoles (where our hotel is located) to the Pacific Ocean for some photos along the foreshore. From here we visited the centre of Lima, with it's beautiful central square and plaza. We also visited the San Franciscan Monastery, including the catacombs, and a museum to get a brief overview of the hist...

Another travel day.... We woke up late...7am :) We were determined to have a pretty cruisy day today so refused to get out of bed until 9am. Met some ladies at breakfast going on a similar to cruise to ours (and were a little bit glad that they weren't on ours as a couple of them spent breakfast complaining about everything!) and then headed out to wander the streets of Quito. It is a beautiful city - not only the Old Town we saw the other night, but also parts...

Up early yet again (5:45am!) with breakfast at 6am and off the boat at 6:30am. There were three sharks off the back of the boat this morning, about a metre or so long, just playing in the water. We were anchored off Santa Cruz Island in order to visit the Charles Darwin Research Station before our departure. It was quite sad saying goodbye to the crew of the boat as we'd been treated so well during our short stay with them - it really was like you were visiting l...