Week 1.

We are now sitting in a hostel in Cuzco – Peru after the most amazing but hectic week. We have travelled most of the way down Peru and we are just preparing ourselves for our Trek on the Inca Trail.

So here´s what we´ve done so far –

After a hectic day on Friday trying to get our lives for the next 8 months into two bags, we headed down to Heathrow with Dad for our first of many flights – Heathrow to Miami. After checking in we headed for our traditional full English and a few beers to calm the nerves and get ourselves in the mood, both feeling a bit taken by the whole thing. After a few last minute ´ see you later´s´ we were faced with a potential 3 hr delay due to Shannon Air traffic control failure - great! Luckily the pilot found an alternative route and the 3hr delay turned into an hour. Eventually we were on our way to Miami for our transfer to Lima – Peru. The flight was great! We had our own touch screen in the back of the seat infront, packed out with all the latest films and a bar full of Gin... Needless to say after 4 films each we didn´t get a lot of sleep.

When we arrived in Miami we were expecting a luxurious, celebrity ridden airport, however no such luck – its more of an 80´s throwback, dull yellow terminal. Not bothered though as we were only there for a few hours before our American Airlines flight to Lima. Certainly not as exciting as our BA flight from London..

We arrived in Lima at about 10.30, 24 hrs after setting off from home and waited around for our transfer that never turned up. We headed for one of many Taxi´s outside and we were just minutes away from sleep. The Hostel was fine, nothing to shout and scream about but we welcomed a lie down and some much needed sleep. We had a leasurely morning and decided that we would rather leave the Ghetto and continue our travels than stay too long in Lima so we headed for the Cruz De Sur – AKA posh bus. Carol decided to offer the taxi man 10 soles rather than the 5 that he quoted us. Carol then had her head in the Spanish fraise book… Felt a little nervous about the taxi man as he was sat in a self made cage!! Carol and I looked at eachother, thinking where´s our bloody cage! The poor guy had obviously had a previous bad experience. We arrived at the bus station, which was more like an airport with ´Brit abroad´ written all over our faces as we were handed tickets and push into a queuing system. Armed with our ticket to Ica, we went up to the waiting room for a coffee. I returned from loo to find Carol holding an English lesson with the waitor. He had been learing English for 3 months and wanted Carol´s help with his understanding and prenounsiation of words. Carol helped him with a list of around 12 words and he went on his way. He later returned with a scrap of paper with the neatly written words - ´what the f***´ (sorry mums), asking in a very polite voice what it meant. How do you explain that!! We tried to explain to him that this isn´t a nice word and certainly not one to take back to class. You can see him in the picture with Carol wearing a black cap and bow tie. This tickled us for most of the day. The bus trip was great! We had fully reclining seats and a meal that you would expect to find on a plane. We spent most of the journey listening to tunes and battling with the Jet lag as we didn´t want to fall asleep and miss any of the beautiful scenery on our way to Ica. Stunning!!

We arrived in Ica at around 7 PM and made our way, by taxi to Huacachina. Carol and I knew that we were heading to the sand dunes and were going to be staying at a lagoon. We arrived in the dark so had no idea of our surroundings and went for a bite to eat and much needed beer. I´d had a bit of a bee in my bonet about my hair is it had started to resemble a motorcycle helmet. When returning to our room I proceeded to cut my hair with the scissors on a swiss army knife and a set of clippers in a mirror the size of a postage stamp. It actually looks surprisingly cool – Carol was quite surprised with the outcome. I got eaten alive by Mosquito´s that night, I even got one on the knuckle of my little finger – that’s just harsh! I couldn´t whinge too much though as poor Carol had been bitten on the face twice…ouch!

We woke up in the morning and were both quite stunned by the view from our bedroom door. We were quite literally surrounded by the biggest, most beautiful sand dunes. Not forgetting the lagoon that our Hostel was built on. We had a bit of a lazy day as we had booked ourselves onto the Sandboarding trip at 4pm so that we got to see the sun set. The Sandboarding was amazing. We got picked up in a beast of a dune buggey. The dune buggy blasted around the sand dunes at stupid speeds, driving over the edge of virticle drops, leaving your stomach in your mouth. The Sandboarding was great fun, however it isn´t quite like snowboarding. The board is much thicker, making turning almost impossible. We started off on some small dunes, with the guide recommending that you lie down on the board and go down the dunes head first, which was also great fun. Our guide did let me have a go with his snowboard which was great fun. We then headed to the big dune which was around 150 meters high (see pics). Carol went straight down head first – very brave! I was persistent with standing up so, much to Carol´s dispare, I tried going down the big dune standing up. It was almost impossible to control the board so I decided that the only choice was to go down on my front. That was the best buzz.. The sun set was absolutely stunning as all you could see in each direction was sand dune after sand dune. We sat with our guide and our buggy driver, who was the spitting image of B A from the A team, then headed back for our next bus journey to Ariquipa. Another long journey, and unluckly for us, the back seats, next to the toilet. 1) its smelly, 2) everyone uses it all night and 3) the back of the bus is probably the most tippy part so the whole journey is spent praying that the bus wont tip over!!! Neadless to say, we were shattered when we arrived in Arequipa.

After a few hours sleep and 547.45 miles from where we started in Lima, we woke up to the bus hostess lady putting on cartoons and serving breakfast, it was about 6am and the view out of the window was amazing. Very excited. We managed to track down a reasonable hostel just off the Plaza in Arequipa, Hostel Europa. Raymon was the owner, the nicest man we have met so far. He could just about speak English but certainly managed our names and said ´hello tom, hello carol´everytime we came in or left the hostel. This is where we first started to experience altitude. Even climbing the steps to the resturant on one of he balconys surrounding the Plaza square to have a drink, sent us dizzy and nauseas. The view from there, however was worth it. The waitresses said that we could go up onto the roof to have a look to, from here there was an amazing view of the city. We booked our trip to the Colca Canyon here. A 2 day trip that would leave tommorow morning. For 15 pounds each, it was a bargain, especially as it included the overnight accomodation to. We were pretty shattered again after the 12 hour bus trip and lack of sleep so went back to our hostel for a snooze and a shower, the jet lag and travel really had started to take its toll on us. After tea, we went and brought supplies for our breakfast for the morning and had an early night watching tv.

Wednesday morning, we got up early to pack and get ready for our bus to pick us up. At 8am we boarded the bus for the trip and were suprised to see that the trip was mainly Peruvian people and not many westerners, also that our guide really didnt talk much English, and as we didnt talk much, well any Spanish, this could be interesting! After a 30 minute drive around the city collecting everyone else, we arrived back at our hostel...to collect the Swiss group, who were also going to be going on our trip. Although the extra 30 minutes drive around the city was interesting, 30 minutes extra in bed would have been more preferable! On day one of our Colca Canyon trip we stopped in a National Park where there were loads and loads of Llamas. Llamas are a big part of Peruvian life. They provide wool for clothes, hats and scarfs, and feed everyone with Alpaca Bifstek and ribs. The thing that we found was that there are just huge expanses of nothingness, just sand, rubble and aridness. It is beautiful though. We stopped for a Coca tea at one of the little stop places en route.Even in the heat of the desert area, there is always room for a brew! Coca tea is made from teh Coca leaf and is also meant to help you mange altitude sickness, up to now the tea and the sweets have done nothing!!! The bus journey again was pretty hairy, the roads are cliff edges that wind around the mountains, you also go up to 4900m very quickly. This nearly made Carol pass out, that was not good! When we arrived at our first night stop, Chivay, we were taken to a tourist ´typical buffet´, what this really was was a very expensive lunch stop which the guide obviously gets commision for. No one from our group was happy to pay the 5 pounds that this was so we went along with the group and treked into town to find ourselves something else. The Swiss group proved to be very useful as they spoke fluent Spanish. We ended up paying 50p for our 2 course lunch and had a soup with rice, veg and some meat and bones which was interesting and a second course of cold noodle cake and potato with a spicy sauce, again interesting!!! The cocky one from the group ended up with soup made from every internal part of an animal, we couldnt tell you what was in it but it made us giggle! After lunch we got to our Hostel for the night and were later collected to get a trip to the hot springs. We were freezing by this point as the sun had started to go down, but after 10 minutes of walking round in our swimmies looking for a towel to rent, we got ointo the hot hot water. 39 degrees, hotter than a bath and stinking of sulpher, or poo as Tom thought! This was a pretty nice end to the day. In the evening we had a ´traditional folk dancing´ night included in our ticket. Once again though this was a con to get you to pay over the odds for your food and drink, something we were now wise to. Instead we went for dinner with 3 Peruvians. Unfortunatly the resturant that Carol chose was empty and pretty odd. The converstion, didnt flow as only one of them spoke English, however they did offer and did pay for our dinner as a thank you for coming to Peru. We were pretty humbled by this. Peruvian people are very proud of their country and thankfull to those that visit. When it comes to safety, they call people that ruin it for everyone, the mice. Unfortunalty as always, its the minority that ruin it for the majority. One of the guys we had dinner with we named the shouting man. For some reason he couldnt talk, he had to shout, he was the kind of guy that would make you choke on your dinner as you jumped every time he opened his mouth. We had to try to stop our giggles every time he spoke / shouted! After tea, it was time for a beer, and so we headed to the always there, Irish Pub! In here we found the Swiss group and a German lad travelling on his own as he waited to see whether he would be accepted into Oxford unversity. Funny who you meet.

Thursday morning we had to get up for breakfast at 5.30am, something that we were getting used to as the jet lag woke us up at 5am still. We went for breakfast, with the shouting man as he was the only other person staying at our hostel. Not only did he shout, he ate with his mouth open, loudly, squelchy and slurpy. Tom´s face was a picture! He also had great dificulties in opening the sachet of coffee, stabbing it with his fork, ripping it with his teeth,in the end giving up for a cup of tea instead, again something that shouldn´t have but did cause us a giggle. After more travelling on scary roads and stopping at some towns enroute, we arrived at the Colca Canyon and the Cruz del Condor. This place was amazing. At this time in the morning, the Condors fly over the canyon. They were stunning and the scenery was immense. The Colca Canyon is the largest canyon in the world, we arent sure whether this is deep or wide but it was prety mahusive! On the way back to Arequipa, we stopped again a few times, and again Carol got the altitude sickness as we went over the moutain. We arrived back in Arequipa in time to have a drink, get our bags and board the next overnight bus to Cuzco. This bus was pretty uneventful, other than the poor guy with travel sickness, unlucky thing.

Friday morning we arrived in Cuzco at 6am after a further 231.38 miles over the Andes. It was cold. We managed to barter for our taxi and arrived at the hostel that Edwin our sandboard instructor had recomended. It was at the top of a steep cobbled street, which when you are carrying a third of your body weight on your back and the air is thinner, is a good challenge! We booked in, and slept!!! Waking up at midday, we found an internet cafe to call home. Skype is amazing! We then went for breakfast / lunch and looked for a trip to the Amazon for when we get back form the Inca Trail next week. We started our blog, then the computers crashed and the photos took an age, so we gave up, stood on the balcony of our hostel and watched the city lights in amazment. Cuzco is a stunning stunning place.

Saturday morning, we again had the intention of getting up and doing our blog, but after treking around to find a hostel for tonight, we were drawn to the Irish Pub here for a fry up and to watch the football. Feeling full and refreshed, we are now doing it!!!