A week's worth of travel

Well, we are both still alive having made it though a week’s worth of travel! It really feels as though I've been gone for months already, with all that we've seen and done. I never really imaged what the landscape was going to be like – I thought there would be possibly quite a lot of vegetation and the like, but in the last week, I think we would have been lucky to see more than about 2 dozen trees. Along the coastline it is such a dry and barren area, with mountains of sand and stone and nothing else…and still there are these little townships that exist there.

Since we left the Nazca Lines, we have been following the major highway - the Pan American - that seems to have been engineered with amazing feats - it is just cut into nothing and seems to hug closely to the edge of the mountain side.

We had a couple of days in the second largest Peruvian city, Arequipa. Compared to any other city we've been to it was clean, prosperous and very safe to look around. We spent some time looking through the Santa Catalina Convent and the museum.

Our next major sight was to Colca Canyon. To get to this point, we had to pass a peak of 4910m above sea level!!! Not an experience I wish to repeat as I nearly fainted at the top with such thin air!

The Colca Canyon is also renowned for the condors that glide on the thermal currents that come up for the base of the valley. Given that we were there at about midday, the chances of us seeing them were reduced, but the gods must have been smiling on us, because as soon as we got out of the bus, there was a condor above us! And, later down the path, another one just seemed to rise out of now where about 15 meters from Nicole and I! We could really appreciate the approx 3 meters in length that they are. In total we had a about 7 sightings of these amazing birds

We are now in Cuzco, the old Inca capital, for 3 free days to explore before beginning the Inca trail. Cuzco has so many amazing things to see and do that we're really going to have to try and decide what we have time not to do!

Other than that we are travelling well - at least nothing that a good cup of coca tea won't help with any anyway!

Will let you all know how we survive the trek and will tell you about Machu Picchu very soon!

Keep on smiling!!!!

Love Cathy