A little bit of Peru

Our first stop in Peru was the colonial town of Arequipa. A beautiful little place with a very old, city like convent where nuns lived in isolation for hundreds of years before opening their doors to the public. Its very beautiful and apart from the religion, no men, and boredom aspects I think I could have happily lived there. Oh and I'd have had to forego the uncomfortable underwear too I think (and therefore saint status, ah well).

We stayed in Arequipa for a few days before heading to Puno, on Lake Titicaca, to visit the floating islands and their very jolly inhabitants. The islands are made by the islanders themselves using reeds from the lake. They weave these together until a huge platform has been constructed and whole families then construct their houses on top. If they decided they no longer like their neighbours they simply cut them away. An excellent feature if you ask me. The local Cholita women wore neon clothes and were some of the happiest I´d met. They waved and sang us off saying ´We´re all going to the beach´ Not strictly true but a nice sentiment nonetheless.

Our next journey took us to historic Cuzco, the nearest city to Macchu Picchu (forgive the invariably poor spelling) and home itself to many inca ruins. While I´m not hiking the inca trail until April, we decided instead to explore a little of the Sacred Valley. The remains of temples and terraces there are amazing, the engineering feats of the Incas impressive and baffling (carting 12 metre blocks of solid rocks from quarries in distant mountains). Photos as ever on facebook. The experiences in Cuzco were only slightly marred by absolute dickheads staying in our dorm. Not 1 but 2 couples having sex (and this in a 5 bed dorm) despite seeing that other people were clearly awake and annoyed. I also had a top and shorts stolen from my bed, which was bizaare to say the least. Needless to say we moved to a nice hotel with a private room as soon as we could. At the end of the stint in Cuzco, sadly one of the party left to fly back home and so the 3 now down to 2, we continued on a 70 hour bus journey to Bogota.