Getting wet at the falls!

The bus journey was almost as bad as we´d expected. Our seats were quite near the smelly toilets at the back and just 54 minutes (Ad was timing!) into the journey the little girl behind us started being sick all over herself . . .nice! Things didn´t improve and we watched Spanish movie after Spanish movie whilst being served hot slop . . . . definitely no whiskey or Tia Maria!

We eventually arrived at Puerto Iguazu and set off to see the famous waterfalls. Now we had heard great stories about these falls but really, come on, they´re just big waterfalls, how impressive could they really be?

Absolutely amazing . . . seriously, words just can´t describe how awesome the Iguazu falls are, utterly breath taking. After standing at the top and gawking at them for ages whilst jostling for prime photo positions with thousands of Argentinian tourists we decided to take a boat trip to the bottom of the falls. Whilst booking our tickets the boat operator smiled and just said, ´be prepared to get a bit wet´. A bit wet was an understatement to say the least.

We sat in a little speed boat and raced towards the bottom of the falls at high speed. We expected to stop a short distance from the waterfalls and were looking forwards to experiencing their ferociousness close up. However, our captain had other plans, with a wicked little laugh he steered us right up to the bottom of the falls so that the water was falling directly onto us. It was like sitting in a power shower fully clothed . . but worse!

The following day we made our final border crossing of the trip, destination Brazil. As we were pretty hooked on the falls by this point we decided to go and have a look at them from the Brazilian side. The views were even more spectacular and we also got to walk out on a platform above the falls and look down the face, pretty scary. We thought these views were good but apparently in the early days of Latin American tourism you used to be able to hire a mad boatsman who would row you to the top of the falls and then paddle furiously backwards while you happily enjoyed the views and took photos. After a while though the inevitable happened and a boat plummeted over the edge so that was the end of that. Pretty glad it wasn´t still an option as my travel partner would have definitely wanted a go!

And so we boarded yet another night bus (one thing I´m not going to miss!) and continued our journey into Brazil.

Horsing around!

As we boarded the bus that would be our home for the next 14 hours, something felt different. We had had to book the executive class bus as the others were full, but `executive` usually means that you get Spanish films and your own chair. This however was amazing, huge leather chairs with more leg room than you need and the chair reclined in to a horizontal position so that it was actually a bed. Things got better as the film was in English, a 3 course meal was served and then pre sleep drinks of Whiskey and Tia Maria were given. Why the hell aren´t all buses like this? It could have been an advert for Carlsberg.... "if Carlsberg made buses!".

Anyway, we arrived in Mendoza, which is in the heart of the wine region, feeling very refreshed from our luxury bus. As I said Mendoza is the main wine region in Argentina so as you can imagine just a little more wine was enjoyed during our stay here. However there was the added bonus of our hostel being on one of the many grassy plazas the town has. Our Plaza was "Plaza De Chile", the bonus being that as it was Chilean Independence day and there was a 4 day party going on with whole cows being roasted on bonfires and as much drink as you could shake a stick at (so this meant more wine, beer and steak!!! it´s a hard life!).

However we hadn´t come to Mendoza for the wine.... honest! We had come because the town is on the fringe of the spectacular Andean range and we wanted to get into the mountains. We had planned to go hiking but my knee has been hurting recently (probably gout, considering my current diet!) so we had to re-think. How could we get into the mountains without walking, but without sitting on a tour bus. HORSES!!!! One problem Ellie is very scared of them. Still it sounded really cool and if she could get on a motor bike in Vietnam horses should be easy. "Not that many people die in horse accidents El" I said as she climbed onto her horse "No, most of them are paralysed!" This helped her fear massively.

The riding was fantastic and Ellie, much to her relief, had the slowest most docile horse in the world and plodded along happily without risk of death. The scenery was breathtaking, although we were slightly beaten by the clouds again as the highest peaks could not be seen. My horse was called Mr Gaucho, which actually translates into English as "Devil horse!". He hated all the other horses so tried to bite them, spit on them and actually crapped on 2 of them. I liked him a lot and with a kick he liked to gallop, which my bum now doesn´t like much!

After a morning spent with our very different horses it was time to try a very different activity. We had considered spending a few hours abseiling but as the drops were only 18m we decided on canopying. I think that canopying is the official word but I would call it "zip lining". Standing on top of a mountain, connected to a piece of wire that spanned several hundreds meters of jagged rock and river 50m below me, I suddenly really wished that the safety talk had been in English. I Knew that if the instructor at the end of the wire started shouting and waving his arms around frantically I had to slow down. Unfortunately I had missed how to slow down and so had Ellie (our Spanish is still bad!). This however added to the risk of the activity and we just jumped off and decided it would be fine.

We spent several hours hurtling down different wires that screamed as you reached top speed. We managed to work out how to stop, in fact Ellie´s breaking was a little to strong on the last zip and she ended up stranded, 50m above the river with the Andean wind blowing her from side to side. After a quick rescue mission she was pulled to the end, much to my amusement. Luckily I had been ready with the camera when this happened!

We´re just about get on a 36 hour bus, Oh what fun! It´s not the executive bus either so we may be sharing our seats with several Argentinian families!

Having a riot in Buenos Aires

After a few days relaxing and getting tear gassed we headed to Buenos Aires (BA) in Argentina. We had heard some really good things about Argentina from friends, when I say good things I actually mean, the steak is amazing, the wine is even better than the steak and they are both dirt cheap, so I was very excited about our visit!

Once we found accommodation we wasted no time in sampling the "good things" ! In fact I went 4 days having steak in different forms for every meal WAHOOO!

While in BA there are several things that you have to do, see a tango show and visit the Evita Museum and graveyard (the others are wine and steak but I had done plenty of those!!). So the first night we were there we went to see a tango show. I wasn´t that excited about it, the thought of spending several hours watching some dancers dressing in different costumes to depict the history of tango didn´t sound that great to me. However I was amazed!!! I´d forgotten that tango started in the brothels of BA, this meant that for the first part of the show the women were wearing hardly anything. Suddenly tango was very interesting!
The next stop on the sights list was the Evita museum. It was very interesting to get a really good insight into Argentina´s political history and Evita appeared to be a very compassionate women who helped millions of impoverished people. However there were no half naked ladies there so it didn´t beat the tango show! The graveyard was a great laugh as you can imagine, but it was impressive, as every family that is buried there has its own crypt and there are thousands of them, all trying to be more elaborate than the next. But again there were no half naked ladies wondering around so the tango show was still the best by far!

Oh, our time in BA was not without a riot incident. While enjoying dinner one evening, watching the world go by outside the cafe, I noticed a small mob of angry looking people heading up the street. I joked that this could be another riot, the laughter soon subsided as the mob threw down a few tyres and set fire to them. They then proceed to attack the building we were eating in (actually it was the hostel above the cafe!). Paint and bricks were thrown at the hostel and the sign was set alight. The police soon arrived and the incident ended with no serious injuries and our dinner was brightened up a little too. It appears that the people were all ex-residents of the building who were evicted so that the hostel could expand.

We decided that as we were so close to Uruguay we should pop there for the day and see what another country had to offer. It takes about an hour on a ferry to hop from BA to the small town of Colonial in Uruguay. Uruguay was very similar to Argentina, everyone speaks Spanish and they like wine and meat. On a serious note the town was used by the Portuguese to smuggle pretty much anything in to BA to avoid Spanish taxes and has a real medieval feel. The cobbled streets, forts and old churches really add to the oldie world feel. We also discovered the worlds strangest plant pot in the form of and old car. Weird!!!!! We had such a nice day wondering around the old place that we decided to stay for the night.

Popping back the next day we headed straight for the bus station to catch our 14 hour bus to Mendoza. I´m thinking that another night on a bus will be slightly less relaxing than an evening in Uruguay!

A 'quiet' few days in Santiago!

So after the action packed time we had had in Bolivia it was time to relax a little in Chile´s capital city Santiago. Getting there proved harder than we thought though as the ground crew damaged our plane and it was cancelled. We can´t complain though as we were bussed to a five star hotel for an evening of luxury and free food. Our room also had sky T.V. (a real treat for us) and it was while watching BBC world news that we saw pictures of the riots in Santiago that had happened that afternoon. Whoops!

So one day later and with the images of riot police and water cannons fresh in our minds we set off again. Landing in Santiago we had no trouble finding somewhere to stay and it felt safe in the city. So we spent the evening enjoying the fine wine of Chile, WOW a bottle of fantastic sauvignon blanc for just 1.70 British pounds, Ellie thinks she has died and gone to heaven!

The next day however while we were taking in a few of the sights of the city, things changed a little. Out of nowhere there were riot vans, trucks with water cannon and lots of riot police in full body armour and all the shop shutters came down in a frantic unison. Feeling a little curios we went to see what was happening. As we got to the main road that leads to the Parliament buildings we found ourselves in the middle of reporters, camera men and photographers (all carrying gas masks!). After having a little chat with the one presenter we discovered that the rioters were expected to surface soon and head to the Parliament building to generally cause trouble. It was at this point that everyone started to cough and sneeze. This was the result of tear gas being blown down the street from where the police were dealing with some of the rioters. After 30 minutes of sneezing and coughing we decided that there was not going to be any action where we were standing so gave up and went to see some more sights. Fact of the day, for anyone thinks that they may be tear gassed by police in the near future. Take some lemons with you. Eating the lemon and the skin makes you less susceptible to the effects of tear gas and according to the photographers works like a charm!

Although we have not directly seen any of the rioting there has apparently been quite a lot of it and we discovered this morning that one of the riot police got killed yesterday afternoon. But don´t worry, we are safe and sound!

DEATH ROAD!!

Apart from the rafting, river zip line and generally taking local transport we had not been risking our lives much recently, so we thought it was time to inject a little fear back into our trip.

What better way to do this than to mountain bike down "DEATH ROAD". Now I know that lots of things have scary names when they really aren´t scary at all, but this is NOT one of them!
On average 1 person died on the 32km stretch of road every 3, yes 3 days. Mountain bikers have been riding down it for several years and on average 1 dies every 4 1/2 months. Being a bit geeky Ells and I did a few calculation on the risk involved with mountain biking down this road (unfortunately this was done when half way down, scaring the crap out El) and the odds of dieing while mountain biking are 6500-1. Thinking about this further we concluded that if you rode down as fast a possible with the lead guide the odds were cut dramatically. Which means that as that was what I was doing I stood a chance of about 500-1 of dieing (and we'd PAID to do this). These odds are the risk of being KILLED not injured. It turns out that if you get away injury free you have done very, very, very well.

So this is what we were going to do and what an amazing day it was. We started at an altitude of 4660m in snow and ended several hours later at 1500m in hot sun. Starting with a new tarmac section of road we wound our way down through the mountains, I was keeping up with the lead guide and was a little shocked when we started to overtake buses and lorries ( I think that this also cuts the odds of dieing even more, sorry Mom!).

Ellie was taking it a bit easier as I think she had already started calculating the risks. After this first section we got onto the real "death road", 32km of narrow dirt track that clings to the sides of mountains with countless hairpin bends and shear drops of 600m+ over the edge (this is Bolivia so of course there are no safety barriers).Every bend or long stretch of road was littered with crosses and shrines for the people who had died. It`s almost like the whole road a long never ending reminder of those who didn´t make it to the end.

As I was hurtling down these roads following the suicidal guide I suddenly thought about doing this in the England. I imagined going to the bank with a business plan. I could even hear the bank manager talking to me "So your business idea is to take people down the most dangerous road in the world on mountain bikes. They don´t have to have any experience and there are no safety barriers anywhere on route. You also say that you would like to go down as fast as you can and that the risk of death is about 500-1" It was at this point I realised that this would never be allowed in the UK and probably for very good reasons!








As if the risk of injury and death was not high enough just completing the "death road" the guide decided that I had proven myself worthy enough to attempt some stunts. The main one being to ride as fast as possible down a small down hill section and off some rocks into a shallow pond. This was actually really cool, although I got soaked through. It was so much fun that it had to be done again. As I waited to go I watched in shock as another biker (Matt) had a go, landed, came off and rammed his face into the rocky bottom of the pond. Luckily we were wearing full face helmets so all he suffered was cut arms, a few bruises and a twisted knee (well I say ALL like it was nothing, but he could hardly walk after!). My final jump ended without any injury, although it did make my back tyre explode, the 4th flat tyre in a week. It also caused Ellie to titter and mutter about too much good food and something about fatso, the cheek!!

So we managed to survive the day in one piece and totally unharmed. If anyone every finds themselves in La Paz with a day to spare and a REAL death wish, it´s definitely the thing to do!

4 x 4 Experience

After a crazy journey which included getting off our bus while it crossed a river on what looked like a huge floating plank we found ourselves in La Paz, the world's highest capital. We set off to explore the Mercado de Hechiceria, otherwise known as the Witches Market where they sell such delights as shrivelled llama fetuses (apparently burying one under your house will ward off evil spirits . . . don't think I'll be testing this myth out) and whole preserved frogs with stones in place of their eyes, I haven't got a clue what they are for . . . in place of an ornament maybe?!

So after an action packed day exploring the city we set off on what looked as though it could be the best night bus yet; lots of leg room, reclining seats far away from the smelly toilet, an english film, dinner provided . . . things were looking positively radiant. That is until we heard a massive bang and the bus came to an abrupt halt. All the passengers, including us, looked at each other with rather worried expressions, however it turned out to just be a flat tyre which the driver fixed and we were soon on our way again. We hadn't gone much further though when we heard an even louder bang, another flat (have I mentioned that our driver was driving like an absolute lunatic on unpaved roads?!) . . slight problem, we only had one spare tyre which we had already used. At this point we were about 60km from our final destination, however, that was obviously too far to drive on a flat tyre so we turned round and drove 40km in the wrong direction to the nearest cluster of homes.

So, at 7.30am about 35 westerners descended onto this tiny town in the middle of nowhere in search of toilets and water, much to the surprise of the local community. Meanwhile our bus driver started to attempt to fix the tyre. He pulled and pushed but couldn't get the tyre off the rim. He tried using long iron rods, he even tried lubricating it with cooking oil, but nothing happened. The minutes turned into hours and the sun started to beat down on the dusty little town. We were all getting hot, smelly and pretty irritated. The driver roped in some of the locals to help him in his impossible mission and even some of the passengers gave it a go but to no avail. We were starting to get a bit fed up, we had after all been sitting on the side of the road for about four hours by this point when suddenly a spare tyre arrived, the bus was fixed and we were finally on our way. Not quite the perfect journey we had expected.

We eventually arrived at our destination and jumped into a 4x4 . . .we were off to explore the Bolivian countryside. And what a countryside it is . . .we spent three days driving through some of the most amazing scenery I have ever seen. From the enormous salt flats; a dazzling whiteness spreading out as far as the eye can see in every direction to the dusty desert with Dali style rocks appearing in the middle of nowhere to explosive geysers and boiling, popping mud pools. It was all simply stunning.

The highlight of the trip was still to come though. On our final morning we were to visit the thermal pools in an attempt to warm up our chilly bones (the temperature dropped to about -20C at night, brrrrrr!). Arriving at the thermal pools we found about 6 other car loads of people had had the same idea and were already warming up in the hot water. We were just about to jump out of the car and join them when our driver muttered something to us in Spanish and continued driving. None of us spoke Spanish so feeling a little disappointed we just settled back to continue enjoying the amazing scenery.

Our driver stopped the car in the middle of nowhere and getting out we discovered that he had brought us to our very own private thermal pool. So, while he got down to cooking our breakfast we relaxed in the hot water whilst admiring the splendid views. Perfect! Wasn´t quite as much fun getting out of the lovely hot water and trying to dry ourselves as quickly as is humanly possible in the freezing cold air. It was so cold that our swimming stuff actually froze during the time it took us to eat our breakfast!

The thermal pool was definitely the highlight of my trip, however, Adam preferred a different section. We arrived at our first accomodation late in the afternoon and our guide (who spoke no English) muttered something about a cemetry and pointed to a spot in the distance saying 5 minutes and doing a miming walking action. Having nothing better to do we decided to go and find out what he was going on about. To my horror and Ad´s delight we stumbled across as ancient burial ground. The term burial ground might be a bit misleading here as the people hadn´t actually been buried at all but rather put into hollowed out rocks. Peering inside we could clearly see the skeletons which were crouched over in foetal positions, in the clothes they had been buried in hundreds of years before. It was far too real for my liking however Ad loved it.

Floating in your sleep.

Waking early in the morning after 5 days of hardship and quite a few beers to celebrate our survival, we wished that we had planned to spend the day sleeping and relaxing in the little bars and cafes of Cuzco. However we had decided to catch an early morning bus to Puno, a little town on the edge of Lake Titicaca which is the largest lake over 2000m in the world at a staggering 3820m. Puno itself is not a very remarkable place but it´s the only place to get boats out to the islands on the lake. We had decided that we were going to try and stay on one of the islands if we could.

So with no information about where we could stay or how we could stay there we jumped on a boat and sailed off. We spent several hours visiting the remarkable floating islands. These are islands that are made out of thousands of tons of water reeds and actually float on the lake. The locals put new reeds on top all the time to replace the reeds at the bottom of the island that rot and fall off. The texture resembles a soggy mattress and it feels like you're walking on the moon, very strange.



We liked the islands so much that we decided that we would stay there for the evening. With our Spanish skills (or lack of them) we managed to get ourselves a tee pee like hut for the night, made from guess what.....more reeds! We had a lovely afternoon relaxing and "talking" to the locals. My famous "screwing the finger off" trick (thanks for that one Uncle Mick, it scares children all around the world. Just like it used to scare me!!) came out again to astonish / scare the children and I think it almost got me burned for witchcraft!! After an evening of miming and getting very confused it was time to get our first good nights sleep for ages. As you can imagine we were so happy to find that the mattress was made of......... REEDS arggggggg! However we were surprised to find that it was very comfy and warm and we had an amazing nights sleep (it may have just been that we were exhausted though!).



The next morning we boarded another boat and sailed for 3 hours further into the lake (yes 3 hours, the lake is bloody massive!) to the island of Tequili. There we were treated to a demonstration of local dancing and informed of local customs. Men on the island always wear hats. If the hat is white they are not married and if it´s red and white then they are. Not very interesting but the hats are made by the men themselves. Walking around the island you see men going about their normal daily duties but knitting ferociously as they go. If they get married they also get to make a scarf out of their wife's hair, NICE!! It brings a whole new meaning to my wife is a pain in the neck! Apart from the strange local customs the island was beautiful and the views were amazing.

Our Alternative Inca Trail!

With the fun of rafting behind us it was time to expose ourselves to the extremely high altitudes of the Inca trail. As we did not know exactly when we would be doing this trek we had not booked in advance. We knew that the classic Inca trail would probably be fully booked but thought that we would try anyway. We were not surprised to find that the earliest available trek was mid November. We were however surprised that the agent actually thought that we were going to say "Yeah no problem, we'll sit around in this small town and wait for 3 months." BLOODY IDIOT! Needless to say we found a different agent to help us. As the classic Inca trail was full we had several other choices, one of them being the Salkantay route. We were told that it was one day longer than the classic, a little further and at higher altitude. No problems we'll have that one please.

However we didn't realise the true error of our slap dash approach to booking the trek until we arrived at the start of the trek and casually asked the guide "so how many kilometres are we walking today?" Imagine our shock when he announced that it would be 24km, all up hill to an altitude of 3900m. All that Ellie could manage was a small "oh" when he added that it would probably take about 9 hours! It appears however that the other people on the trek were in the same, uninformed boat as us and we all had a good laugh as we wheezed and grunted our way through the thin air of the first day. Oh how we laughed!!! The general consensus in the group is that the agents are purposefully vague as to the distance as they know that no sane person would pay money to do this! The best was yet to come however, as the guide casually dropped in halfway through the first day that this is the easy day compared to tomorrow, oh how we all laughed again!! "WHAT, harder than this?" we all asked. Yeah tomorrow is 26km and we will be climbing the Salkantay pass. Which has an altitude of 4600m and takes you between two glaciers. MUCHO, MUCHO FREEO (very, very cold!) he laughed as he continued to taunt us.

Still the first day was amazing with the scenery changing from small farming towns with little pastures and rolling hills, to the huge mountains of the Andean range with imposing glaciers clinging to their craggy sides. Getting to the camp ground (oh yes a forgot to mention that we would be camping on this trip!) just before dark, we set up our tents at the base of the two huge mountains (one being Mt Salkantay) and were stunned by the amazing views we had of their peaks and glaciers.

This stunned joy however turned to bitter cold pain as the sun set and arctic like wind blew down from the glaciers! I have NEVER, NEVER been so cold in my life. We went to bed that night in as many clothes as we could fit on.

Ellie's crazy attire included, thermal bottoms, thermal top, 4 jumpers, 2 coats, 1 pair of trousers, 4 pairs of socks, 1 pair of gloves and a hat. I was not quite as well dressed but did put my hat and gloves on in the middle of the night. It was so cold that the condensation on the inside of the tent had frozen. Just the great nights sleep we needed after hiking for 9 hours and having the hardest day still to come!

Setting off the next morning we were not looking forward to the gruelling trek but definitely looking forward to amazing views of Mt Salkantay from the top of the pass. As you can see from the picture, the weather turned slightly and the amazing views were not quite what we were expecting. You can imagine our joy after slogging for 3 1/2 hours up a steep mountain pass in the thin air of the altitude to be able to see 3 feet in front of us. We've seen pictures of the view though and it does look amazing.

Eating lunch at the top of the pass in the bitter cold was not the best moment of our trip so far, but the 6 hours that followed were a lot worse.

The mist and cloud stayed with us until we got to our next camp and wandering through the unseen mountainous terrain reminded me of the start to American Werewolf in London. SPOOKY!

Descending through the clouds our camp appeared and we were pleased to find that were no glaciers in sight to freeze us and that some of the jungle scenery was actually visible. It was in a beautiful valley with a wild torrent of a river running through that sounded like an never ending freight train as we lay in bed and finally got some sleep.

The next 2 days of the trek were pretty uneventful (apart from both of Ellie`s little toes being replaced with huge blisters!) and the distances were only a mere 18km each day through mountains and jungle with only little "supermarkets" like this one to refresh us! The highlight was arriving at our third campsite to find a cow being tied up over the road. Withtypical morbid curiosity it was time to investigate. Just as I thought, it was the cows unlucky day as it's owners obviously fancied some steak for dinner. So for almost an hour we watched the local butcher teach his 7 year old son the tricks of the trade. It was bizarre to watch this small boy wielding a very sharp knife hack and chop off various parts of the cow. My personal favourite moment was when he attacked the horns on the skinned cows head with a hack saw and the cows eyes almost fell out. COOL. It was at this point however, I realised the difference between English and Spanish cuisine. We had become really good friends with a Spanish couple (Rafa and Natalia) during our trekking ordeal and Rafa started to explain all the Spanish dished that involve the parts of the cow that in England get carted off and end up in Pedigree Chum, Stomach, intestines and the tongue NICE! (when we visit you guys there had better be none of these little delicacies on my dinner plate!!).

Oh.. I almost forgot the river crossing. When we booked, our vague agent didn´t mention that anyone with a fear of heights should´t go. We were walking along on the third day when we came to very ferocious river about 100ft below us. It was a fantastic sight so we never though anything of it, until we went to continue walking and the guide called us back. "No, no we cross here" he informed us. To our surprise we noticed a piece of wire going across the river to the

other side with a small cage attached.

The realisation then sunk in to each member of the group that we were actually going to sit in this contraption and kind of zip line over the river. As Ellie and Rafa sat in it on the first run, Rafa´s concerns became vocal as he informed Ellie that "if the cable breaks we will definitely die!!" We all got over in one piece although Natalia and Ellie´s nerves were a little shook up!

Oh.. and I almost forgot the train tunnel incident! The last 10km Ellie and I walked alone as we were too tight to pay the $8 to get a train. We were given directions by the guide and we set off. However his directions were not great so we ended up having to walk (well kind of run) through 2 train tunnels where there was no way of knowing if the train was coming. We made it through safe and sound but, about 2 minutes later the tourist train came thundering along the track Just a bit of a close shave! So actually the last few days were no where near as uneventful as I thought, sorry.

The end of the forth day bought us to Aguas Calientes, the village at the base of the Machu Picchu (our final destination). So after over 86km we finally had the opportunity to sleep in bed and relax.

We had a great night with Rafa and Natalia, but unfortunately we had to wake up at 3:45 the following morning to begin the final climb up to Machu Picchu, the site of the most intact Inca Ruins in the world. After several hours of walking up the sometimes near shear track in torrential rain and climbing over 1200 steps the four of us arrived at the top to be greeted for the second time with a pitiful view. All we could see was mist . . not one Inca ruin was in sight!

We went on a guided tour around the ruins in the mist and it did add a certain air of mystery to the ancient buildings. Luckily the Inca weather gods were not totally against us and the cloud and mist cleared to give us stunning views of the huge site perched on the edge of the mountain. Unfortunately it also gave us no excuse not to climb the final higher mountain of Huayna Picchu.

Reaching the top and looking back at the famous city was worth every hard minute we had spent over the last few days and it really made us appreciate just how amazing the Inca people were (although I still think that they were bloody stupid building their most important city at the top of a mountain!) Sitting in a bar back in Cuzco with Rafa and Natalia we could finally all laugh properly about the experiences that we had shared and the blisters, hurt knees, twisted ankles and sore legs we suffered (over a few well earned beers of course!!!!!).

Deepest, darkest Peru . . . the home of Paddington Bear!

And so we found ourselves heading towards our final continent, South America. Having only learnt of the devastating earthquake the day before our flight we felt quite apprehensive as we boarded the plane, especially as about a quarter of the people on our flight were aid and rescue workers. We started to wonder if this was such a great holiday destination . . .

All fears were soon abandoned though when we landed in deepest, darkest Peru. We found ourselves in an amazing city, full of history and culture.

Flicking through the ever trusted guide book I discovered a Monastery in Lima that is famous for it's catacombs which are thought to be the final resting place for an estimated 70,000 humans. So off we set. After an interesting tour of the monastery itself we ventured underground. I was starting to feel a little claustrophobic at being underground in these spooky hollowed out rooms and also a little nervous at the thought of suddenly being faced with thousands of human skeletons. Now, being faced with all those skeletons underground would have been daunting enough but some bright spark had decided it would be a good idea to count the bodies so that they could have a more accurate figure of exactly how many people were buried here. Good idea, I hear you say, except for the fact that to count the bodies they took them apart and counted each type of bone separately. As you walk around you discover a pile of skulls, then a pile of femurs etc. . . . pretty weird. Even more bizarrely someone had decided to use some of the bones to make a circular design which seemed to follow the pattern of skull, skull, femur, femur, skull, skull . . you get the idea. I found the whole experience rather bizarre and felt quite relieved when we emerged into the fresh air once again.

To recover from our spooky experiences we decided to hit one of the local outdoor bars and decided to warm ourselves up with a glass of the famous Peruvian national drink, Pisco Sour. Watching closely we discovered that the drink was a combination of Pisco, sugar, lemon juice and ice. It looked rather good until the raw white of an egg was added! Tasty! Adam thinks it resembles alcoholic, uncooked pancake mix in a glass!

And so it was onto our next city, Cuzco. Fearing that our bums wouldn't be able to withstand the 18 hour bus journey on a partly unpaved road we jumped on a plane and arrived in Cuzco very early one morning. Now, for those of you who don't already know, the city of Cuzco is at an altitude of 3326m, which is pretty high! As we'd flown in from sea level the altitude was a real shock to our systems and so we spent the next couple of days feeling kind of rough, very out of breath and trying to overcome these symptoms by devouring as many coca sweets and as much coca tea as is humanly possible!

To try to jolly ourselves out of this sluggish state of mind we decided some action was needed. We jumped in a bus and headed to the Urubamba River, we were going white water rafting. Now, I think at this point you should know that we had only been white water rafting once before and this experience had ended when our boat deflated mid journey and our guide tried to blow it up manually. Not the best experience . . . with this in mind, off we set.

The rapids were awesome, really spectacular and lots of fun, however, our guide was a bit of a madman. He decided that a great idea would be to paddle back to a set of rapids, all lie with our heads at the back of the boat and 'surf' the rapids in our raft. So, on his signal we all began to paddle furiously back towards the rapids. It was pretty hard going, we weren`t moving very quickly but we eventually managed it and with that our guide shouted 'back' at which point the 5 of us all leapt to the back of the boat. Well, the four boys did, I managed to leap over the side into the freezing cold, turbulent water! Whoops!

´gator spotting!

After our action packed days at KSC and Universal Studios we decided that it was time to take a reality check and see what natural wonders the state of Florida has to offer. The reality check was definitely needed for Adam who actually thought he might get spotted at KSC and asked to be an astronaut on their next mission! I do worry about him. So, we set off south (on a road that had way more toll booths per mile than it´s fair share) towards the Everglades.

Talking about the Everglades used to conjure up images of murky, swampy waters and those river boats with the fans on the back for me. The picture couldn´t be more wrong. For a start those crazy little boats aren´t allowed in the National Park and the scenery instead of being swampy and grimy is pretty spectacular. Beautiful clear water, giant insects and birds of all varieties (including one that could dive and swim underwater to catch it´s fish! pretty cool!). However, there was one preconception that I´d got spot on and that was the reason we were visiting the Everglades in the first place. The alligators!

Now, bearing in mind that these creatures are kind of dangerous, can be hard to spot and that there are thousands of them in the park I was surprised that you could get out of your car and just wander around on your own. It seemed like asking for trouble but never ones to shy away from danger we set off on a short walk. I was kind of nervous (these animals can kill after all!) as we set off, eyes peeled ready to ´gator spot. We didn´t have to wait long, there was movement in the water and an enormous ´gator was swimming our way! Pretty exciting. We saw loads of alligators, all within about 10m of us which was absolutely amazing but quite scary! Ad reassured me with some of his ´Discovery Channel´ knowledge that alligators can´t run very fast on land so I was perfectly safe as long as I didn´t stand too close to the waters edge!

After an awesome day getting very close to nature we headed even further South, past Miami to Florida´s famous Keys. The journey was even more spectacular than the destination, driving along huge bridges with clear blue water stretching out as far as we could see in both directions was phenomenal. So, it was back to the tent, camp fires, marshmallow toasting and relaxing in the sunshine for a couple of days before we set off on the final leg of our journey, South America!

Spaced Out!

Leaving Mexico late one afternoon we headed for Florida. Once again we had not booked anywhere to stay when we got to Miami. To make matters worse we were not planning to stay in a hotel or motel, we were going to camp. As you may have guessed we didn´t have a tent! So first job was to find a tent and then somewhere to sleep. As we had planned to visit the Kenedy Space Centre (KSC!) we headed north out of Miami and drove until it had been dark for several hours. Then by luck (actually it had more to do with my excellent map reading skills than luck!) we managed to find a national park to camp in. So we lit the fire and enjoyed an evening of BBQ and beer, I LOVE camping in America!
After a very hot and uncomfortable night (this is Miami in summer) we headed for the KSC and it was amazing! We spent the day looking at shuttles, rockets, launch pads, parts of the international space station and being thrown around in the take off simulator! I couldn´t believe how large the place was or how big the rockets were. This is a picture of the shuttle preparation building, the flag that you see is the size of a football field!! Yes, it´s HUGE!

Fact of the day: If you were closer than 1km to the launch pad at launch the sound of the take off would kill you! WOW! Not sure if that would actually happen or if they were trying to make it sound cool!

After the real world of space travel we headed to the very unreal world of Orlando and Universal studios. Now considering that I was not a fan of the whole American theme park thing prior to meeting Mary Poppins in California I was surprised to be going to another one so soon(especially as the memory of meeting Miss Poppins had faded by now!). I can say however that once again I was blown away and had an amazing day, meeting spider man, the Xmen, Betty Boo (she was hot!), all the characters from Scooby doo (hey SCOOB!), Bart Simpson and the Grinch. The weather was amazing and rides out of this world. Although I was very, very disappointed to find that the back to the future ride had been shut and was being replaced by the Simpson's ride. RUBBISH! I was looking forward to hitting 88 mph and all that, however the car was still there so at least I got to see that.
Over all a fantastic couple of days in Florida topped off with amazing weather!

Chichen Itza

After spending a great few days on the coast (luckily before the hurricane came!) we had to begin the mammoth journey back to Mexico City. The direct bus from Playa Del Carmen back to Mexico City takes over 30 hours so we decided that we should split it up with a stop off at the site of the famous Chichen Itza ruins. We spent the whole day following a tour group around so that we could get explanations about all of the different pyramids and sites (we are so tight!). The tour was really interesting and my personal favourite fact from the extremely camp guide was, "As you can see in the carving there is a Viking man. We think that Vikings may has sailed to Mexico by accident and were treated as gods because they had blonde hair and pale skin!" I was shocked to find that the Vikings had sailed thousands of miles across the Atlantic by "ACCIDENT" over a thousand years before any sailing ships capable of this existed. WOW! After this amazing fact we took some of his other special facts with a pinch of salt.

We did however get to see the sacrifice platform that is decorated with carved skulls and when in use would have been surrounded with hundreds of heads on poles. Even cooler is the most intact ball court in the world is at Chichen. The hoops that were used as goals are still present along with thousands of carvings depicting games. Another interesting fact from the guide, "even though the carvings show losing teams being massacred, I don't think that this happened, I think that it is symbolic" (we would have asked for our money back if we had paid!).

In the evening we attended the........ drum role..... "light and sound show!" We were slightly dubious of attending this as it sounded like Dave's fantastic wedding disco (but in Spanish!). However, we glad to find that translation earphones were available as we were given an acted out audio history of the ancient sight. It also included the different buildings being lit up in an array of colours to make them look pretty and to demonstrate the shadow of the snake that appears every summer solstice. The highlight was the acted audio execution of a rival tribal chief, complete with gargling scream!

So after an interesting day of culture we set off back to Mexico City for our final night before we headed to America. Fancying a few quite drinks we walked into the small cantina that was attached to our hostel. As soon as we entered we realised that sunday night must be the night to go out and get drunk with your guitar! The quite drink ended in lots of drinks and an interesting sing along with the locals. What a great end to Mexico!

Driving and Diving!

Imagine our relief when after two consecutive nights on a bus (our journey broken only by a few hours exploring Palenque in some of the worst humidity I have ever experienced) we eventually arrived on the island of Cozumal and were greeted by white sands and clear aqua sea, just what we needed after our mammoth journey!

Having spent a few days recently on the beach we thought that it was time to do something a little different, so we found a small, back street hire company and hired the most clapped out, creaky, loud and totally cool VW beetle on the island (there are lots of Americans on the island who would only hire the newest, most fantastic car, so we got a real bargain and were quite unique!). It was a bright yellow (although a little sun faded), convertible beetle that didn´t have any windows apart from the windscreen (luckily it didn´t rain as I don´t think the roof would have worked if we had tried to put it up) and people could hear us coming from a few miles away as the exhaust was so loud. All in all a perfect car to drive around a little island. We spent the day cruising around, stopping at deserted beaches for a swim and generally having a great time.

However, the real reason for venturing this far south was to explore the beautiful waters that surround this little island. So, we once again donned our wetsuits and ventured into the underwater world. Our first dive was amazing, 28m underwater we swam through narrow rock tunnels and explored tiny underwater caves made out of coral. However, the highlight of our day was definitely during dive number two. Not only did we once again get to swim with a turtle but while drifting along, minding our own business, we suddenly noticed two sharks swimming towards us! Rest assured, they were Nurse sharks and so our lives were not in immanent danger! Although a little scary it was an awesome experience.