I have just spent a night traveling by night bus from Huaraz to Lima - arriving at 6am (not so fun), then a 4 hour bus to Pisco - a small fishing village south. The backpacker hostel was awesome! It had a massive swimming pool, table tennis table, pool table... the works! Spent the day relaxing then booked in a full days worth of activities - boat tour around an island wild life reserve for hundreds of types of birds, sea lions and seals.

Then in a bus to a national park - it was basically a desert that was on a peninsular - fantastic views of the sea and the "Cathedral" - a rock formation. We ate a massive plate of shrimps at a small fishing village - then back to the city for relaxation. 

Another long bus ride to Ica followed. Ica is famous for a beautiful oasis on its outer boundary desert that attracts heaps of tourists. There were palm trees, heaps of sand and wild life. Some of the next day activities involved dune buggy tours of the desert and sand boarding - wicked fun!

We took another night bus to Arequipa, the "White City" because of its light-colored volcanic rock that is used to build all the houses and building. This is definetly the nicest city we have visited. Just finished a tour of the Convento de Santa Catalina, a monastery for nuns - sounds boring but seeing how they lived hundreds of years ago, they seemed to have better living conditions than I did back in Melbourne!

We have booked a 2 day excursion to The Colca Canyon, the world's deepest canyon (so they say!) We are going to walk down to the bottom where river runs into a lake and you can swim and relax. At the entrance to the canyon massive condors circle the sky for rabbits, foxes and small children to eat.

A few days later ..

I have just arrived back to Cusco after completing the Inca Trail, a 4 day trek discovering and exploring the history of the Inca Empire and their cultures and traditions. We past through numerous ruins and remains of the Inca´s settlements, finishing at Machu Picchu, The Lost City, only discovered and excavated in the early 1900´s. OK, enough history, basically we followed one of many trails though the Andean ranges that the Inca´s used to travel in between settlements, but this is the most popular for the typical gringo tourist. The trail was very hard work but very rewarding!

 
We are off to Puno on the edge of Lake Titicaca tomorrow taking a 2 day tour on boat, staying on the the floating islands where the Uros people live - now that is going to be different!
 
We´ve also managed to find a shop that specializes in processing coca leaves into chocolates and toffees... etc instead of horrible drugs like cocaine! They are suppose to help with your heart for the altitude and are very nutritional. Legal to export so we´ve stocked up for anyone who wants a taste test when we get to the UK.
 
Chris.