Peru

We are currently in Peru and in Cusco. It is a very pretty old colonial town and it’s a nice place to be for a few days. For those of you in the know you’ll realise that it’s base camp for a trip to Machu Pichu and we have just returned from there as you can tell from the photos.

Following our wonderful trip to the Galapagos we were seriously concerned about getting the holiday blues, but we have been very pleasantly surprised that it seems to have energised us a bit and we’ve been doing some serious ‘travelling’ since our return to the mainland. We’ve caught 3 overnight buses since Guyaquil and done 56 hours (to cusco) en route. Peru has been really good actually, easy to get around, good transportation, honest cab drivers(!) and amazing food and sights. It’s been a good place to get back into the swing of things. We feel very short of time in South America but we’re trying to do as much as we can while we’re here. That said, we have now got one eye on getting back to a ‘developed’ country, and I think we’ll really enjoy a bit of down time in NZ especially.

We travelled to Lima (OK for a stop over) and Arequipa (Very pretty WH listed colonial city nestling in the mountains) on the way here and then onto Cusco. We weren’t planning on Machu Pichu when we left but we had a change of heart, expensive as it was. It’s a very special place, however and I was very happy to get to go there again with Betta. It loses none of it’s wonder the second time. The train ride was pretty spectacular too, and we got amazing food and a rather cheesy fashion show as they tried to flog their Apparel on the way home.


Next up we are heading to Uyuni in Bolivia, via La Paz (highest capital in the world), where we are planning to do a day tour of the salt flats before heading south and into Chile.