We are now in a lovely old city, Arequipa, at 2300 m altitude at the foot of some huge mountains and 5800m high volcano. Feels like we are on holiday at last and were grateful to have our first proper 8 hr sleep.
Lima was a shock -after our city of 45 000, a city of 9 million, most of them taxi drivers tooting their horns. Food was excellent and fortuneately avoided eating the great delicacy of guinea pig as they had run out !!
We were keen to leave Lima but had to stay an extra day as the bus was cancelled due to a labour protest on the main road south.
Eventually arrived in an oasis in the middle of a real desert with massive sand dunes, no camels but two giant tortoises in the garden of our hostel. We did a sand buggy tour which was very exciting, being driven at high speed up and down the dunes and then stopping to sand board down the dunes. Katie and i came a cropper and were covered in sand but fortuntely not injured.
Its great having Katie and Shay with us - they are both able to communicate well in Spanish which has been most helpful as everyone is so friendly and it is frustrating not being able to say more then gracias and hola.
We re heading to a big canyon tomorrow to do a 3 day trek involving a 1000 m ascent to altitude of around 5000m.
We are now feeling more like backpackers as we survived an overnight bus ride, did our washing in a bucket and are typing on a keyboard with most of the letters rubbed off!
Still can t believe we{re in Peru!
Keeping in touch by Mark s phone when we can get free internet at hostels.
Lve from us in Peru ; ))
