First of all we have to say a massive thank you to everyone who donated some money to the orphanage, we were able to give them over 1,000 GBP which is a truly huge amount of money. We are very lucky to know such generous people and it will make a huge difference to the children.

Today was our last day and we were both really sad to leave. Although we have only been working there for 5 days we have both become really attched to the babies and older children who are all really good kids. It seems a long time ago since our first day when I was informed men were not allowed in the baby room as they have no paternal instincts and I spent about 3 hours peeling potatos, by hand! It turns out that men are allowed in the baby room but first you have to convince them you are not going to ignore a crying baby. I therefore graduated from toddler care all the way to screaming baby responder able to put on the super complicated nappies that involve three different pieces of material, not so easy with the slightly older babies who like to break dance while being wrapped up in the various under garments.

The rule about men in the baby room was not the only slightly odd rule the Tia´s (full-time Peruvian volunteers) have with the contradictions in what should be clean and what isn't the most striking and some of the other volunteers did have some problems with the Tia's. However, it was evident pretty quickly that their sole focus is the well being of the children, that means that occassionally they can be a little curt and there is certainly no HR department. It also meant that they wanted us to work weekends and you often ended up staying late but we were always happy to do this as whatever we were asked to do we were being asked to do it for the benefit of the children.

It's been a really great experience and it feels a little odd that havinmg spent such a short but intense time with the children we won't really have any idea what happens in the remainder of their lives. It is actually remarkable how good natured all of the older kids are given that they have all suffered in one way or another. We were made to feel particularly special on our last day as the kids put on a little dance show where they performed traditional dances for us, they were really good and hopefully we'll be able to upload the videos onto flickr. Another highlight is a video of Alison teaching the kids the hokey cokey which you can find under the video heading on this site.

We didn't do a great deal else in our last week, having agreed to stay on an additional week at the orphanage we have tried to save some pennies. Arequipa has been agreat city to spend six weeks in, there are lots of chgurches and museums that we meant to visit but never got round to it, mainly because we were often exhausted after work. That said we did do another trek and climbed a pretty big mountain so we weren´t completely lacking in travelling activity.

Our time here was also made so much more relaxing by the owners of our hostel, Alejandra and Julia, who were really helpful and friendly and made us feel really welcome, other than the unfortunate incident where our phone and camera charger vanished it´s been a really great six weeks, we have met some really great people and obviously had a memorable experience at the orphanage.

We now face a slightly new travelling experience. So far in our trip we have had the luxury of time and the ability to stay in places we have liked for a little longer. However, on 8 October we have to be in Santiago de Chile for our flight to New Zealand, that gives us just under 4 weeks to visit Bolivia, northern Chile and we hope pop back into Argentina and before we even leave Peru we want to see Machu Pichu and Lake Titicaca which is a lot to cram in - life´s tough hey! So tonight we are taking a night bus to Cusco from where we will head to Machu Pichu.