Day 59 - Thursday 29th April

Arrived in The Point Hostel around 6am to find the most incredibly comfy bed in South America. Just what I needed after the bus! Another standard bread and jam breakfast while watching New Moon rounded off the morning. For the afternoon I walked into town with some guys from my room, Brishan (from Manchester), Anders (from Norway, IS my cousin Charlie in 10 years time) and Omri (from Israel). We found the most incredible Turkish kebab house in my life for lunch and checked out the Monastry de Santa Catalina where nuns had lived in solace for hundreds of years, a city within a city. For the evening we watched Marky Mark Walberg in Shooter while munching on a huge barbequed steak...

Day 60 - Friday 30th April

Omri and I got up at 3am for a two-day hike through The Colca Canyon, the world's deepest at 4200m at points!! Most people do it in 3 days but with time always pressing we did it in 2. Lads. We ate a great buffet breakfast and the bus headed to a lookout point, perfectly poised to see Condors soar past. Except when it's unbelievably cloudy. Clouds pass between you when you're a meter away from someone. It was a pretty cool experience in itself anyway.

We hiked down the canyonside and since we had a little bit of time, I swam in the ice-cold water with a Danish guy called Meds. For the afternoon it was just Omri, myself and our guide Julio to trudge on in a light drizzle down the canyon to 'Paradise' where we were spending the night. When it actually came into view though it was a pretty beautiful place nuzzled in at the bottom of the valley. The swimming pool was built around huge boulders and we got to sleep in little mud huts. We made friends with the new group, a mixture of French, Spanish, Brazilian and Peruvians for cards and dinner before an early bed. But not before Omri had an epic battle to blow out the candle in the middle of our room, both of us determined not to get out from under our blankets...

Day 61 - Saturday 1st May

Another early start, this time at 4 to catch first light and make our way out of the canyon before it got too hot. 1000m virtually straight up they gave us 3 hours to climb it with 2 being a good time. I set off with the Brazilian, training to climb the highest mountain in South America (somewhere in Argentina at over 7000m!!) but we were being caught up by a persistent Dutch couple so sadly I had to leave him behind. Befriending a local dog on the way I pushed to the top in 1 hour 30 minutes flat and collapsed after treating myself to a banana and a powerade from the nice lady at the top. Holding the couple off though HURT and it took me a few days to recover! For breakfast I ate a stupid amount of bread before we set off for some amazing Blue Lagoon-esque hot springs. Being the tired intelligent person I am I managed to lock my locker key inside the locker. Luckily all the locks and keys are the same so we soon had it open again. Perfect Peruvian Security.

Back in Arequipa we treated ourselves to another great kebab and I headed out for my first bus on the fabled Cruz Del Sur. The best bus company known to man. A crummy bus station but you check in at the desk and are ushered into a BA business lounge-esque departure area and are escorted onto the bus. Ultra polite, our waistcoated assistant Jonathon introduced himself to everybody seat by seat and would help us to our every need. Even on the semi-beds we got good food and were treated like kings. The perfect British way.