First things first, we are alive. contrary to some extraneous reports.

Obviously working 5 hours a day has been a little taxing and we´ve been a bit a slack on the blog updates. I´m not sure how we managed to do anything when we had full time jobs at home.

The orphanage has been really enjoyable, hard work and an eye opening experience. We are working about 5-6 hours a day, 5 days a week. We barely see each other from the moment we arrive to the moment we leave as we are put to work by the ´aunts´or ´tias´ for the whole time we are there. I have found myself in the baby room for pretty much the whole time. There are 6 babies, ranging from 3 months to 11 months. They are all gorgeous gorgeous kids and absolutely love to play but with 6 of them to look after there is often very little time to spend much time with them once nappies, bottles and feeds have been done. The tias have some funny ideas about how to look after them, but as we are just here for a month and they are in the orphange looking after the kids 24/7, it doesn´t feel right to me to do anything other than what they ask. The babies are not allowed fresh air as it is bad for them apparently, as is only wearing one pair of socks. I sit in this tiny room all day, in shorts and a singlet feeling the heat and the kids are all wearing at least two pairs of socks, two pairs of trousers, 3 tops and normally a blanket as well, just to keep out the chill. Unfortunately, this doesn´t prevent illness completely as I found out this morning - all the babies had diahorrea and I was on nappy duty for the whole episode. For those of you who haven´t had the pleasure of changing nappies, you can only imagine the smell, the difficulty in cleaning it up and the horrible knowledge that once you have changed one baby, you know that there are 5 lining up just waiting for you to clean them up too. Any feelings of cluckiness are definitely being put on hold at the moment!

Steve spent his entire first day peeling potatoes which I think he found a little tiresome and worrying for his future workload. However, Lilia, the chief tia has since taken a shine to him and he has been promoted to being top toddler entertainer and homework helper. I´ll let him elaborate on his experiences with the older kids.

Life in Arequipa is pretty good. 5 hours at the orphanage gives us plenty of time for enjoying the sunshine - it´s baking hot in the day and chilly at night. I´ve been doing quite a bit of pilates on our roof top, and plenty of crap tv watching too. Grey´s Anatomy ahoy. Really enjoying vegging out and eating cornflakes in bed; feels like home.

In between working at the orphange, we´ve celebrated my birthday - we had a lovely few hours in a spa - massage, exfoliation, steam room, bubble bath. Steve is a different man, though I couldn´t get him to go so far as getting a haircut. He has now shaved off his moustache though.

On our last 2 days off, we decided we´d indulged sufficiently in the spa and that it was time to get back in the mountains. From our rooftop you can see Chachani, one of the highest mountains in the area, whose name in Quechua means ´skirt´. It´s 6,075m high, and one of the few mountains of that height which is able to be climbed without lots of technical equipment or experience. It´s pretty bloody high though, and I spent the days leading up to the trip, completely terrified that I would get altitude sickness and worried that I wasn´t fit enough as I was getting out of breath running up a flight of stairs. For you non mountain buffs and to make the point of how high it is, Everest is 8,848m, Mount Blanc 4,810m and Ben Nevis 1,344m.

Our journey started in a 4x4 with two others; Peter an experienced Austrian climber and Alistair, an English PE teacher and an elite marathon runner. Now, if you had to put your money on which of us wouldn´t make it, I wouldn´t be offended if you had the civil servants down as the ones to need to turn around early. Our extremely bumpy 3 hours trip to where we started walking was delayed a little bit when my bladder couldn´t take any more of the bumpy road, so I insisted on a toilet break. This wouldn´t have been too much of a problem but our driver also took the opportunity to spend a penny and on his return to the jeep, couldn´t get it started. We all bonded a little whilst push starting the car and twenty minutes later or so, we were back on our way to base camp. We set off at an unbelievable snail´s pace, which I couldn´t have been more grateful for at about 5,000 ms. It was just really slow going and tough, even though it wasn´t that steep or difficult terrain. Fortunately, our first day was just an hour and a half of walking with all our gear before we reached the base camp at, 5,300m. I was beginning to suffer the start of a headache, Peter had a bad gut and Alistair looked like he was really not enjoying himself at all. Steve was breezing around, not feeling the effects at all. After a bit of soup for tea at about 5 o´clock, Alistair laid down and was beginning to groan and rock himself back and forward. He wasn´t really in a state to look after himself or ask our guide what his options were, so we looked after him and he bascially said he wanted to go back down. Unfortuately though, our guides were not keen on taking him back down so we had to really persuade them that he needed to go back. Finally, they were persuaded and we all went to bed at about 8. We both slept fitfully, my head hurt and was making me a bit worried about the ascent the next day. Poor Alistair spent 3 hours whimpering in the tent next to ours and I can only imagine his relief when the guide went to his tent to take him down the mountain. At 2 we were woken up, my headache had gone and we set off with just our daypacks, hoping to make the summit in about 6 hours.

Thankfully, it wasn´t too cold and we were both quite excited to be starting. After about 2 hours we donned crampons and were carrying ice axes as we traversed across an ice field. For some reason, my life was deemed to be the most important of the group and i was tied to Gary, our Peruvian guide. I have to say that I probably weighed about twice as much as him and I didn't fancy either of our chances if I slipped off the side of the mountain. Given that he hadn't had any sleep either as he´d taken Alistair back to the car, I was more concerned that I would have to keep him from falling myself. Anyway, fortunately we didn't need to find out if he´d be strong enough to keep me from falling as we all made it safely across the ice and I was once again deemed safe enough to walk on my own. The rest of the walk really kind of went past in a blur. I remember just before it got light at about 5 that i was really tired, not from lack of sleep, but it felt like from a lack of oxygen - i just felt really weary and wanted to slump. When the sun finally broke, it motivated us a bit more and we got plodding on at a snail´s pace until the last km or so, when it was really just so hard going. It had got really steep and although there was no snow, it was sandy and the ground gave way under our feet every step making it even harder. With about 5 minutes to go, i knew that I was really nearly at the end of my strength, but thankfully the summit was soon under our feet and we collapsed gratefully. (I refer you to photo of Steve).

Getting back down, was a whole lot easier on the lungs, but we were really tired and what with our dodgy knees, we took our time, but eventually made it back to our tent where we both had a twenty minute nap before going back down to the jeep and our ride home to Arequipa. All in all, a brilliant experience, I feel pretty proud of us, and it´s good to know that my lungs haven´t given up without playing netball and cycling to work.

yikes, this is a bruiser of an entry... bear with me...

Our hostel in Arequipa is beautiful, it´s a converted colonial house and we are made to feel really at home. The owners, Alejandra and Julia are wonderful, we get a great breakfast every day and they even got me a birthday present - so sweet. We have however had our phone stolen whilst staying here, we are not too sure whether it was taken from our room or pickpocketed while we were out and about. ggrr. If that´s the worst thing that happens to us while we are away, i think we´ll be doing pretty well though.

We are spending quite a lot of time with the other volunteers. Even though i´m normally a miserable git when it comes to fancy dress parties, I did enjoy getting dressed up and borrowing from the girls´wardrobes. Am getting slightly bored of choosing between my 3 tops, wearing a sparkly dress and make up was therefore wholly exciting. In fact, that probably explains why I got a little tipsy and found myself being escorted out of a nightclub, (insert your own joke here ref it not being Steve being thrown out). Bouncers here aren´t like back home - i didn´t even realise i was being thrown out.

Anyway, we have been here three weeks now and plan to leave on Friday and make our way to Bolivia via Machu Pichu.

Missing you all, muchos bisous xxx