The end of the tour

Hola!

I think it may have been a week since I last wrote, and it was the day before I was to head off to Puno for 2 nights of ´homestay´, for me to really understand the way of life of the farmers.  Two nights in a mud brick hut with no shower and no flushing toilet, oh boy!  I couldn´t wait.

Fortunately, there was still one more night in Cuzco.  Given there was no need to be overly alert on a 7 hour bus ride the following day, we head out with our fellow trekkers for one last night in Cuzco.

We decide to go really authentic Peruvian:  Paddy´s Irish Pub!

After a few too many Guinesses (or is it Guini?) and bourbons, (and purchasing Paddy´s Irish Pub tshirts that say ´No Grazias´, the phrase you utter about once every two seconds to all of the people trying to sell you wrist bands and beanies etc.), we head over to a night club called mythology, or mystical, or something beginning with ´M´ (...mmmmmAlcohol).

This place is awesome, and basically plays all your favourite hits from the 80s and 90s.  Here we are partying down, in our newly acquired tshirts.

We may have partied a little too hard, but fortunately our tour guide, Patricia, manages to get us all into cabs back to the hostel.

We awake the next morning a little late, and realise we are supposed to be on a bus in about half an hour.  It seems that even though Patricia got all of us home, she did not manage to get herself back to the hostel!  When you have been on a tour for a few weeks, you completely lose your ability to be independent.  So we just sat at the front of the hostel and waited.  Eventually a man appears and tells us he is here to collect the intrepid group and take us to the bus station.

At the bus station, still no sign of Patricia, we board the bus.  Alice and I find that someone is already sitting in our seats!  We try to argue, but he refuses to move.  He has been sold seat number 11, but that seat doesn´t exist, so he has sat in our seats.  See, in South America, it doesn´t matter if something exists.  Wherever you have a willing buyer, there you will find a willing seller.  It will be someone elses problem when the product or service, or seat you have sold doesn´t exist.

We ask another tour leader to help, but she has no luck getting them to move either.  Eventually Alice and I are ushered downstairs (it is a double decker bus) and told to crawl through a small door.  Turns out, we will be sitting in the cabin, in the co-drivers seat for the journey!

A little alarming, but a great view!

Our tour guide tries to sneak onto the bus un-noticed.  She doesn´t suspect that we will be sitting in the front seat to catch her in the act!

After a long day we arrive in Puno and check into a hostel, we are to head to the homestays the following morning.  To get from the hostel to the port we catch a very safe tricycle... called ´Titanic´.  It is cold, but hopefully not cold enough for an iceberg to form on the dry land.

And eventually, we are here and on the boat!

Lake Tits

We head off to some reed islands.  We are on possibly the slowest boat on Earth.  It takes about 2 hours and I think we have only travelled about the length of a swimming pool.

The reed islands are literally tiny islands made of reeds, no more than 20 or so metres in length and breadth.  These people are in a constant state of rebuilding the islands, because it turns out floating reeds are not entirely imperveous to water.  They started living on these 400 years ago when the Spaniards were killing their ancestors.  Apparently nobody has let them know that the Spanish have gone and its safe to return to the dry land.

After about an hour on the floating reed island we head off to a peninsula on Lake Tits which will be the location of our homestay.  Of course, the locals do not miss an opportunity to dress us up.

I am originally given a bright coloured poncho.  But my fat western head will not fit through it, so our host retrieves what is probably just a potato sack for me to wear.  Far less impressive than Ryan´s bright pink number!  The hat also doesn´t fit, so has to perch on my head.

We head down to the shore of the lake for lunch where they have cooked us potatoes in the dirt.  The same dirt that I can see 3 cows, 2 pigs, and a goat, crappign on.  To ´clean´ the potatoes after they come out of the ground, they whack them with leaves... I don´t really see how this is cleaning them, but our tour leader assures us they are safe.

I choose to peel mine just in case.



Princess Glenn wants to go home

So by about now I have already realised that I am not going to last two nights of dressing up, eating food cooked in the ground, and not having a shower.  I approach the tour guide Patricia, and ask if I can head back to Puno with the other group.  She agrees, Alice also decides she wants to come back.

We head back to our homestay huts, and about half an hour later we get a knock on the door.  It is Patricia, with the other members of our group.  It turns out Beth and Michelle, two of the other girls on our trip, also wish to head back to Puno.  Everyone uses the guise of wanting to spend an extra day in La Paz.  I am honest, and say I want a hot shower, a flushing toilet, a TV, and a warm comfortable bed.  Ryan, the 5th member of our group, is less keen on going back, but democracy rules and he reluctantly agrees.


During the day, before heading back to Puno, we go to an Island.  Island of the moon? Island of the sun? one of those, can´t recall.  Anyway, there is a festival going on that day and we are treated to a performance by a band of pipers.

They kind of sound like a grade 2 recorder band.  People around me seem offended by my comment.  Maybe I was referring to a really good grade 2 recorder band?  (... because we have all heard so many of those!).  Political correctness was never my strong point.

Anyway, I have solved their problem.  It turns out they can´t see what they´re playing as they wear hats that completely cover their face!

Moving past the band, the island we are on is particularly beauitful. It is a very clear day with little wind so Lake Tits is blue and smooth.  We had lunch at a local restaurant with an amazing view.  It is trout and quite delicious!

Ask and you shall receive...
...whinge and you shall receive an upgrade

After a few hours on the island we head back to Puno.  Fortunately, I am rewarded for my whinging!  The 3 star hostel where we were staying is fully booked out as they weren´t expecting us until the following night.  So we are upgraded to a 4 star hotel at no extra cost!  I am so, so happy!

Not again...
The next day we are to board a bus to take us from Puno to La Paz, Bolivia.  We arrive at the bus station.  The bus is at least half an hour late.  Once again, Alice and I board to find out that our seats are taken AGAIN!

Patricia argues with the bus company for a while.  Alice and I, once again, are lead downstairs.  Expecting to be sent through to the cabin again, we are surprised to find we are asked to instead head towards the back of the bus, where the business class seats are!

These leather seats are sooooo comfortable!  Later that day, Patricia informs us that is actually us who were in the wrong this time!  Apparently she booked us on a different bus, but that bus was crap, so she took a chance that she could convince the bus company that they had made an error.  Her acting skills deserve an Oscar for an outcome like this!

This is the border between Bolivia and Peru.  Looks secure don´t it?

We stroll across the border withouy anyone so much as blinking at us, and search for somewhere to get our passport stamped.

Once in Bolivia we have to change busses and leave our comfortable seats.  We get on a crappier bus.  Our guide tells us to go to the front of the queue because we are special.  This causes an Italian man who has been waiting an hour for the bus to become quite irate.  Everyone ignores him as he carries on for the next 15 minutes about how unfair it is, and how he hopes it happens to us.  Fortunately, he assumes we are all Americans and none of us correct him.

There is a point where we have to get ourselves, and the bus, across Lake Titikaka.  We disembark the bus and board a very shoddy overcrowded boat, to cross to the other side.

Our bus also has to board a barge.  This thing appears to just rely entirely on the barge drifting randomly across the lake to get to the other side.  Our bus does several 360s before reaching the other side.

La Paz
Here is a photo of La Paz.

 Its a city of quite stark contrasts.  There are very poor parts, where the home owners choose not to build the roof of their house so as to avoid paying taxes on the property.  There is also an area of town where the houses are mansions which cost US$1m.

We go on a city tour.  This is possibly the most boring tour EVER.  The local guide (not Patricia) finishes each sentence by asking us if we have any questions.  However, everytime we ask a question he answers something completely unrelated.  A question about the various districts in town (i.e., business, arts, food etc.) is met with an answer to do with the Spanish, the federation of Peru and Bolivia, and its collapse.  Not one part of his answer comes even close to responding to the question.  After that we give up on questions.

This is the last official night of our tour.

It is sad to say goodbye to our companions, who have been a source of much fun over the last three weeks!  Also VERY sad to say goodbye to Patricia, who has done a sterling job of guiding us across Peru and into Bolivia.  Not an easy task!

From here, Alice and I are on our own.  Tomorrow we are heading to the salt flats for three days.  Apparently it will get to minus 15 at night... sounds a bit frosty.  We will be staying in salt hotels???  I am not sure that salt is a great insulator... I guess I will find out.

Will write again in a few days when we are back, I don´t think there is internet in the salt...

I came, I saw, I conquered...

...I passed out.

Somehow, despite doing absolutely no physical preparation, I completed, unaidded, the grueling four days that is the Inca Trail. AND, I wasn´t even the slowest in my group!  I probably came about fourth out of the nine in our group, not that it was a race (everyone knows it is a race...).

But before getting to the start of the Inca Trail, it was time for Alice and I to don our authentic Inca attire, and get to know some locals in the Sacred Valley.

Yeah we wear this all the time....

This was the first of our activities that really involved ´becoming part of´ the way of life of the indigenous peoples of Peru.  ´Senior´ Alice is mistaken at first for a boy (this is actually the second time today!) and given a poncho.  She corrects them, and is rewarded with that skirt and very smart yellow hat, which could easily double as a lamp shade.

Basically, this activity is an excuse for the farmers to dress us up, and make us do their work for them. I am pretty sure these are not the clothes they are using for their daily farming activities.

Here we are, wearing our brightly coloured garments, working the fields.

Not entirely sure what the objective is, I randomly swing my pick at clumps of dirt.  After doing potentially irreversible damage to their soil, which will probably take weeks for them to undo, they decide that working the field isn´t for us.  Time to get some barley off the stems.  How? By standing on it of course...

Once again, pretty useless at this.  Also slightly disturbing because earlier today, while wearing those same shoes, we visited a llama farm.

Here I am sure we stood in an untold amount of llama and alpaca poo.  Which is now marinating the barley they will later serve us as part of our lunch...

They serve us a traditional lunch of soup, potatoes, and guinea pig (cuy or guy in their language).  We are served in a very simple room, with a basic table and chairs and very humble decoration.  Oh, and an authentic indigenous Samsung TV, DVD, and satellite television box.

I decide my guinea pig looks a bit dodgy and leave it alone.  Alice eats hers, giving her a delightful bout of gastro just in time to start the Inca Trail! It´s apparently of a good vintage, so manages to last her all the way through the trek.

Here we are with our Inca Trail group.

9 trekkers, (7 Australians, 1 Brit, 1 Irish), and our 15 or so porters.  Porters outnumber the trekkers because we are fat gringos and need 4 hot meels a day, and each meal needs to be three courses, and no two meals should be the same, and meals should be gourmet.  This means our porters must lug a stove, a gas bottle, tables, chairs, a dining tent, and a heap of food.  Feeling mildly guilty... but no time for those feelings, we set off.

I hate camping
This won´t come as a surprise to many, and didn´t come as a surprise to me.  I have long known that I have hated camping.  People have tried to convince me it is because I have never been ´proper´ camping, I haven´t had the right equipment, I haven´t been to the right places.

Well, what I have just done is as close to 5 star camping as you get, and I still hated it.

I present my case.

Comfort
Tents, and camping mattresses, are unbelieveably uncomfortable.  You can feel every rock in the ground digging into you all night.  It is freezing cold, even though we are in sleeping bags apparently made for sub zero temperatures.  Further, because there is a chance of rain, they have to set the tents up on uneven ground so the water will run underneath the tent.  You are in a tiny, enclosed space, so when Alice accidentally (on purpose) decides to let one rip just before we go to sleep at night, there is no escape.

Hygiene
Camping is a filthy habit.  For four days I did not have a shower.  For four days, none of my group had a shower.  In fact, for four days, the 500 sweating, dirty people walking the Inca Trail did not have a shower.

Further, there are 500 people a day using the scarce toilets that exist along the trek.  These toilets are all squat toilets, which, despite the presence of well marked foot grates, appear to be invitation for people to just shit wherever they like.  They smell disgusting, and when you get within about 20 metres of them the smell is almost unbearable.

I actually chose not to go number 2 for three days.  Unhealthy? Possibly.  But not as unhealthy of exposing any of my orifices to one of these toilets.  Alice was not this fortunate due to the afforementioned guinea pig.  She had to brave the toilet known as the ´explosive bano´, where someone had managed to spray their business everywhere.  The flush mecahnism is no help, as it basically spreads the mess further around the cubicle.  At another bathroom, someone has managed to place a well formed stool NEXT to the hole, rather than in it.

Fresh air
Unlikely... Most of the way along the trek there are countless donkeys and alpacas and llamas, who do not have the courtesy to move off the track to do their business.

Practicality
There are 500 people walking this trek every day.  Most of the people in groups about our size, with  numerous porters who run ahead, set up tents and tables and chairs, cook food, before disassembling it, and moving onto the next stop.  What is the point?  Seems remarkable impractical and inefficient.  Given everyone stops at the same spots each time, why not just assemble fixed buildings and avoid people having to carry the buildings and appliances from place to place.

Never one to be satisfied with just pointing out the problems, I have even gone that step further and identified the solution.

Build resorts
As I said, there are 500 people walking this everyday.  It would open the trek up to a whole market of wealthy, fat, lazy westerners who want to walk the trail, but would still like to have a soft bed, a hot shower, and a clean toilet.  I am pretty sure Sheraton or Hilton or any chain of hotels would be more than willing to establish these.

Anyway, that is enough of my whinging about camping.  Onto whinging about the trek.

The Trek
Somehow, and I am not sure exactly how, I managed to make my way over the entire 45km journey. This includes a hike at one point up to 4200m above sea level.  To say I was exhausted at the end of each day is an understatement.  When it started raining on the second day of the trek, I was very tempted to turn around and go back and catch the very comfortable, drink serving, air conditioned, train.  In fact, we could hear the train whistle blowing as it carried its smug, satisfied customers on the comfortable 2 hour journey to Machu Picchu.

This is Alice and I after reaching the highest peak of the trek, on the second day.

Getting up to this point was hard work, made even harder by the rain, and our crappy ´eco-poncho´s.  I´ll let you in on a secret, the word ´eco´ in front of any product, is code for ´doesn´t work properly´... at least it is recyclable I guess.

There was some pretty stunning scenery along the way, and a lot of ruins to explore.  Here, Alice and I battle for supremacy on top of some ruins.

I win, giving me the right to do whatever I please with my new territory.  Best to mark it as mine before someone else does.

On day 3 we decide to walk down to waterfall.  This all seemed like a good idea, until we realised that walking down for 10 minutes, means walking all the way up, which takes about 45 minutes with our weary legs.

We walk each day for between 7 and 9 hours.  Always either walking up, or down.  Flat ground is very hard to come by.  Walking up is exhausting.  Walking down absolutely kills your knees.  It is hard to know which is worse.  Special thanks goes out to my cousin Amanda Turner for advising me to get shoes one size too big to make the downhill walking easier!  The rain made all of the stones very slippery. Most of our group take a tumble at some point on this day. This is supposed to be the dry season, so I would hate to see what this is like in the wet season!

On the last day, we have to wake up at 4am to commence the final walk to the sun gate.  We look great.

At the end, it all seems worth it when we finally make it to Macchu Pichu.

Until you realise that there are another 1000 people there, who just caught the train that day, and do not smell like an alpaca´s anus, and have hair that is so greasy and dirty there is no need for styling product, and whose legs are not about to give way beneath them.  I hate each and every one of those people, they don´t deserve to be there!

Stupid gringos
I cannot imagine what the porters think of us.  It takes us a whole day to walk, slowly, carrying only water and snacks, what they manage to run in a couple of hours, each one carrying 25kg of our ´necessities´.

Further, it is clear that when the Incas were building this network of roads and cities around 500 years ago, they were at the cutting edge of technology.  This was the best they could do.  However, I am pretty sure that if they saw us still doing it now, they would think were complete idiots.

Basically, what we need to do is install a giant 45km escalator/travelator, with Sheraton resorts all along the way.  That is my kind of Inca Trail.

But, after all that whinging, I did make it, and I am glad that I never have to do it again.  There are stamps in my passport to prove that I did it.  The most rewarding thing?  Getting back to a hot shower and a clean toilet!

That is about for now.  Tomorrow we head to Lake Tits (that is what we have nicknamed Lake Titicaca. Not overly creative, but funny to say) for two nights of homestay in mud huts with no hot water or heating and shared drop toilets...

A quote from Liz Bastable, who has come this way before, has set our expectations for this part of the tour:

¨Greg and I arrived to see dinner hanging on the clothes line... dinner was meat.¨

Dear God, help me survive this!

At least I was prepared for something...

Free day in Arequipa
So when I last wrote it was the day before we were to head to the Colca Canyon.  This would mean going to heights of above 5000m above sea level, where it was almost certain we would get altitude sickness.  Our tour guide warned us that we should avoid alcohol the night before and avoid being hungover.

Unfortunately, this warning was delivered after Alice and I and the rest of our tour group had polished off the best part of a bottle of vodka during our ´free day´ in Arequipa.  We did this with the help of a trusty Starbucks, who were willing to provide us with some free cups!

Fortunately for me, although I did absolutely no preparation for the trekking, what I did prepare for was alcohol comsunmption and hangovers.  So I actually came through relatively unscathed, and was even up to catch a picture of sunrise over Arequipa the next morning.

We boarded a bus to head to the Colca Valley.  On the way we drive through a nature reserve filled with llama´s and my new favourite animal, the alpaca.

I had alpaca steak for the first time a few nights ago, and it is one of the most DELICIOUS beasts I have eaten, up there with the cow.  Look how tasty they look -

Yum yum yum yum.  I plan on eating mainly this animal for the rest of my time in Peru.

Na na na na na na na BATMAN
We arrive in Chivay in the Colca Valley.

It turns out Hollywood may already be onto our idea to have tuk tuks in films.  Looks like the studios are already trialing a Tuk Tuk Batmobile for the next batman movie!

We head off for a walk around the city.  These two statues are doing a dance of love, so I decide to join in, the world can never have too much love.

I also tackle my first hike.  At about 45 minutes in duration, and going up maybe 100 metres, I feel I performed admirably!  Definitely ready to take on the Inca Trail!

On the eigth day, God was bored
After this trek we head to some hot springs.  These things are basically God´s little joke on the world after he had seen that everything was good...  ¨Sure¨, he said, ¨there is a freezing climate and you will really welcome this warm watery retreat.  But, I am going to make it smell like a wet fart.¨

(It was dark when I took the photo... but you get the idea...)

Eventually you get used to the smell of the sulphur and can just enjoy the warmth of the springs.  The water in the pools is about 38-40 degrees celsius.  Very welcome after the strenuous 45 minute trek.

The next day we head into the Colca Canyon to see the Andean Condor.  The canyon is massive, at its deepest point I think they said it is four kilometres deep.

We managed to see about 20 condors, which were amazing.  Unfortunately my camera was useless at capturing them (sure... blame the camera!), so we will have to wait on the outcome of Alice´s $1,600 camera for that.

We spent one night in Chivay before heading back to Arequipa, one more night there, and then we headed to Cuzco for two nights.  Yesterday we had a ´free day´in Cuzco.  Which means that we are supposed to take ourselves to the various museums around the city and become knowledgeable.  I think our tour guide, however, is realising that leaving 4 Australians and 1 Brit to have a free afternoon, just results in us drifting to the nearest pub and drinking.

Haven´t taken many photos of Cuzco. Here is a photo of me standing next to a large brick which is apparently both interesting and important...

We did notice that it appears on the bottle of the local beer Cusquena while we were not visiting the museums!

Anyhoo, that is about all I have time for.  There are loads more photos of the last few days, but I am using the hostel computer and there are people waiting now.

Today we head to the Sacred Valley, and tomorrow the trek begins!!!  Wish me luck - I will certainly need it!

Adios amigos!

So much to tell!

Hello again,

The last few days have been absolutely hectic.  We have travelled at least 1000km I believe and seen and done so much.

When I last wrote we were about to head to downtown Lima for the first time.  Here we visited a very old church (a monastery perhaps...) which was quite spectacular.  We also went under the church to check out the catacombs.  No photos allowed there unforuntately, but just imagine you are in a very small underground lair surrounded by bones and you get the picture.  Here´s a snap of the interior of the church - built by the Spaniards, have forgotten the date, but a long time ago.

And me out the front of another church in downtown Lima.

One of the strangest things we saw was a bizarre religious ritual invovling a llama.  In the photo below, all these guys are wearing brightly coloured clothes covered in bells.  They basically spin the llama around and stir it up a bit, then one of the guys in bells tries to get it to drink from a bottle of beer!  No idea what this is supposed to symbolise.  I guess its Lima, its hot, there´s nothing else to do, why not get a llama drunk.

After this we jumped on a long bus ride down the coast to Pisco.  On the way we were treated to the cinematic masterpiece that is The Fast and the Furious 5 (or was it 6... can´t remember), played at about 10 times the safe decible limit in Portuguese, with Spanish subtitles.  The bus ride was about four hours long, so Alice and I had time to consider the next movie that might appear in this franchise starring Vin Diesel.

The Fast and the Furious 13 - Tuk Tuk Wheels of Fire

This was inspired by the numerous three wheeled vehicles we spotted on the journey, and we feel it really is the future of the franchise.  Other working titles including ´Get the Tuk Tuk off my road´ and ´Don´t Tuk Tuk with Vin Diesel´ were rejected to appease censor demands.

We even had time to consider the script.

The movie starts with Vin Diesel, wearing a muscle tshirt, screaming down the Pan American highway in a tuk tuk at 40 km/h.  Cut to Vin Diesel, wearing a muscle tshirt, at a pool party with a lot of scanilty clad women.  Cut to Vin Diesel in a tuk tuk hanging out the side holding a machine gun (muscle tshirt optional here).  Cut to a lot of tuk tuks crashing into each other.  Vin Diesel walks out of the flames with no tshirt.  Scantily clad women surround him.  Vin Diesel says ¨Let´s get this tuk tuking party started¨.  Movie ends, possibly include one more tuk tuk race. Roll credits.

We arrive in Pisco.

No Fido, I don´t want your rabies

Also Fido, how on earth did you get on that roof...?

Pisco is still a bit of a mess since an earthquake that destroyed about 80 percent of the city in 2008.  There is mess and rubble everywhere, and a LOT of dogs!  They are everywhere, most of them angry.  Somehow a lot of them, like Fido, are on the roof.  Each of their mouths a drewling laboratory of some strange new strain of rabies.  Not much to see or do in Pisco, we are here just to sleep.  While at dinner I learn that my pronunciation of ´Machu Picchu´ actually translates to ´old dick´.  Apparently I need to pronounce both of the ´c´s somehow, kind of like ´Pikachu´, the loveable pokemon character.

Pisco, like Lima, has very dirty air.  Desperate for some fresh air we decide to take a few hours trip out to the Ballestas Islands to get the sea breeze and check out some birds and sea lions.  The fresh air was short lived, because basically the Ballestas Islands are one big bird shit island.  Not surprisingly, they smell like shit.  We catch a glimpse of a lot of different birds, and a few sea lions!

Back on dry land, we take a bus out to some sand dunes, I think they were near Ica.  We went dune buggying in the sand dunes, and also sand tabogganing.  These two things are unbelieveably fun!  A bit scary, especially the buggies, as they are going very fast and everytime you go over the top of a dune its 50 50 as to whether there is a gentle slope, or complete drop off, on the other side.  Not surprisingly, Intrepid have us sign a waiver to say we realise we may die...

Neither Alice nor I brought any water with us.  Stupid gringos.  It was bloody hot, and the sand dunes seem to go forever.  Fortunately, Alice has spied a source of water -

We head into this mirage for lunch.  After waiting over two hours for our meals, we begin to wonder if it is actually a mirage!  Eventually the food comes, and to make up for the wait we a treated to a free ice cream.  All is well with the world.  The ice cream of choice is named ´Sublime´, which we have coined ´Shit on a stick´, due to its striking resemblence to a nutty turd on a stick...

Time to jump on another bus and head to Nazca.  Also time for a quick photo stop on the way at Sunset.

Once we arrive in Nasca it is time to do some sight seeing.  Not satisfied with just seeing the Nasca Lines, Alice and I are determined to discover a new figure.  The monkey, the hummingbird, everyone has seen them.  We search far and wide, and we are not disappointed!

We present our findings to the world -

New Nasca Line - the Macchu Pichu (the Old Dick)

Expect to see us on the news shortly once the world hears of this great discovery.

To be truthful, we arrived late in Nasca and it was too dark to see the lines.  We did get to see a pretty boring trapezoid line the next day, but it wasn´t worth putting up here.

We also head to a pre-Inca grave site.

I will tell you wahat is interesting - one pre-Inca grave site.  I will tell you what is half interesting, two pre-Inca grave sites.  I will tell you what is boring as hell, 14 pre-Inca grave sites that all basically look the same.  Alice and I resort to classic tourist shots to relieve boredom.

We jump on a bus and head to the Nasca river to take a look at it and the aqueducts.

Wow, that water looks inviting!  Might pop in for a swim!

We spend a night in Nasca, the next night we are leaving and we have to sprint to the bus.  My form at the end of this sprint does not bode well for the Inca Trail that lies ahead...

Arequipa
We jump in a reasonably comfortable overnight bus to Arequipa.  It takes about 10 hours.  Arequipa is quite a beautiful city.  We check out a convent in the morning it is perfectly manicured, and has stunning views of the volcanos.

Doesn´t seem like being a nun in a few hundred years ago was very much of a sacrifice!  Apparently they all got one or two servants.  Mum, check out where the servants had to do the laundry!

Miss Piggy´s Revenge
So after the convent, we head into the markets.  Here we arrive at a stall, serving a drink, which I suspect Miss Piggy, after years of disfunctional muppet marriage to Kermit the Frog, invented.

Meet Kermit

I will spare you all the photos now.  But basically Kermit doesn´t realise he is about to meet a blender, along with a few other local herbs and cereals, to make me a frog thickshake.

I wasn´t going to drink it at first, but it turned out National Geographic were there, and they filmed me saying no... Not happy for the world to think of me as to weak to stomach a blended frog, I agree to be filmed while drying the cup, and give them a review after.  Look out for me on the National Geographic channel soon on a show called Taboo!

Alice has the complete evidence, so I will post that tomorrow or whenever I get access to her camera!  It actually wasnt too bad!  No sign of the apparent side effects though - apparently the Peruvians use it as a natural viagra...

P.S. in that photo Kermit is still alive! They kill him, rather brutally, in front of you, and you watch the whole thing.  Vegetarians and Vegans should possibly steer clear of these markets (that means you Anne-Marie Davies and Zarah Kerly!).

Anyway, that brings us to about now!

Tomorrow we are off to Colca Canyons.  Its about 4 in the afternoon now, so we are off to find somewhere that will serve up some pisco or sangria!

Hasta Luega!