Well, our adventures in Peru have come to an end. I feel richer for the
cultural experience and not too mention how fit I got doing all the trekking.

I met up with Chris in Lima, where we spent 4 days. We must have had a'fresh and fragile' look, since Chris' sunnies got snatched off his head while walking around the city (the only valuable thing Chris was wearing at the time). Honestly, Lima does have a dangerous feel to it, that is if you don't stay in one of the posh neighborhoods. Even taxi drivers lock up all 4 doors in a car and wind up windows when driving gringos around.

Happy to get out of there, we continued north, to Huaraz, 8 hours drive from Lima. Cordillera Blanca is the mountain range of the area with the highest mountain in Peru, Huascaran. They say it's the most beautiful mountain range and I didn't have to be convinced. It has the most breathtaking landscape I've seen so far and we enjoyed every minute of it while trekking Santa Cruz. It is a 4 day trek reaching Punta Union pass at 4750m.

We had to move on, since we've already stayed longer then planned. We took a night bus to Lima and from there to Pisco to save on accommodation costs (tight ass). Pisco is not only famous Peruvian drink, but also a town on the coast surrounded by a desert (as most of Peruvian coast looks like 'a not very attractive' polluted desert).

Pisco had something to offer though. It has a Parascan National Park, which used to be populated by pre-Inkas. They used to live in underground caves and they practiced unhealthy technics to shape their sculls into pinnacle look-a-like heads! Parascan is also a gateway to visit Islas Ballestas populated by hundreds of bird species and sea lion/seal colonies (budget Galapagos islands).

We continued the gringo trail towards Ica, which is in the middle of the desert and it's famous for its beautiful oasis. It's almost a must to try sand boarding. We didn't bother to stop and fly over Nasca lines, which is another gringo thing to do.

Another night bus (Chris hates my savings at this point, since we had to play bingo in Spanish on the bus) to Arequipa, a surprisingly
beautiful 'white' city (built of white volcanic stone). There is a
monastery Santa Catalina and it is the size of a little town and most of it is open to a public today (a city within a city). Well, nuns seemed to have a quite comfortable lifestyle and they had more space in their residential houses then we had in Melbourne!

It was a time for another trek, this time to the deepest canyon, called the Colca. It took us only a day to climb to the bottom of the canyon and another day to climb back up. Although starting hours weren't that
attractive. We left Arequipa by bus at 2am and started the trek at 8am. It was a bumpy, freezing cold bus ride we'll never forget. The trek was beautiful, but we had to get up at 3am again to climb to the top of the canyon in order to arrive on time to see condors.

Another night bus ride to Cusco with a bit less comfortable bus. Cusco is a stunning city though. It's comfortable enough to measure up to any historic city in the western world. It's been built on Inka's ruins and many houses have beautiful carved rock foundations.

Inka trail was a must thing to do and were very lucky to have a perfect
weather conditions all 4 days of our trek. We found the journey itself worth much more then seen Machu Picchu at the end of our trek while we also had the best bunch of people in our group. That made the Inka trail the most enjoyable trek so far.

The last destination in Peru was Puno, a gatawatay to lake Tikicaca. We spent a night on one of the islands, staying with a local family in their home. Meals were not very attractive, but tasty and nutritious (rice and fries). Knowing that the family we were staying with may be eating this sort of a meal every day, cut us up inside.

On our last day in Peru we came across to a strike on the main road to
Bolivia. We had to leave our bus behind and walk across the barricades. Hard work with a 20kg backpack on our back (maybe just for me)!

Petra