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Another day dawned on our bus from the desert as we bounced across the border into Peru leaving Ecuador behind. When we say bus, think anything from riding with a chicken on the seat next to you, right up to Cruz Del Sur, which is essentially what famous rock bands and footballers travel in. Fully reclining seats, aircon, TV, movies in English (although really bad 3rd rate cheesy American stuff with Adam Sandler or some awful chick flick) and then a stewardess who brings you free coffee, tea or Inca cola and food. I must tell you about Inca Cola. Apparently Peru is the only place in the world that Coke has not conquered. So everyone drinks Inca Cola. Three things, one there are no Inca’s in it two, it does not taste anything like cola; it tastes just like cream soda and three it is bright florescent green!! Having a wee in the on board bathroom is fun too as you just sort of ‘generally aim’ as you bounce along at 90kmh trying not to crack your head of the 5 foot 5″ ceiling without weeing in the sink.

Loads has happened now that we have been on the road for 40 days stopping in 20 different places so this story is a bit long, sorry and I do try to keep them as short as possible.

Some of the other stuff that makes me chuckle as the km’s whizz by outside the window of the bus is stuff like, Fanny Jam, Fanny Cream, Fanny Tuna and Butt toothpaste, ha ha ha. Shortly after entering Peru via the coastal route we stopped off at a place which is one of the only new kite spots in all of Peru - Mancora. Think Egypt about 15 years ago and Spain 60 years ago. The wind comes at 10am everyday and blows until 4pm with solid 12m then 9m and a swell to match. We stayed the first night in a Godforsaken place we crowned bedbug city. It is an unfortunate downside to travel that some of the hostels aren’t as good as others. So we checked out and got a lovely place overlooking the beach with our own sun terrace for £11 per night. A bizarre thing is that hot water is a bit hit and miss. What I mean by that is they just don’t have it. There is just a cold tap???

The local dish here is BBQ Guinea Pig which apparently tastes like roast duck. My one problem with this is that before they shove a BBQ pole up the poor things butt, they then force on smile onto its poor little face. So you are faced with a dead BBQ family pet grinning at you. We keep passing on it but there is an Alpaca out there with some French mustard and my name very much on it’s hind quarters.

The thing that is surprising us about this journey is how big every is and how long it takes to get from A to B. What I mean by that is that if you got on a coach/bus in say London and headed North for 10 hours, you would run out of road and drop into the North Sea off North Scotland. Well, here you get on a bus and travel for 12 hours, get off, site see a few things, sleep, get back on, drive another 12 hours and do the same for 4 days and you aren’t even half way there! To give you even more of an idea, if we were to drive from here to Santiago in Chile (where we are heading for) we would have to drive for 12 hours a day, 12 days!!!

The towns roll by and the minutes turn to hours, then days as a Peru stretches out in front of us. You either take the mountain route which takes twice as long or you take the coast which we did. Eventually we hit Lima, a strange place that is preceded by 9 hours of driving along the deserted coastline with stunning views of the desert changing in colour from sand to blue, to red and through to green as the imagination of these people said, ‘I know, let’s grow stuff from the desert’, so you get sort of Oasis’s popping up in the sand. And of course not forgetting the huge hanger like sheds along the beach which on closer inspection are no less than chicken farms, millions of the things escape so where ever you look, there’s chickens. It seems that the transperuvian bus drivers (called Pilots!) take pride in hitting as many as they can as the bus swerves to hit them.

The peoples faces are much more different to those of the mountain or cloud people of Ecuador. I sort of miss the more traditional side of Peru and can’t wait to get back to altitude again. We have a way of judging a town which is when you arrive at a new bus station is to smile at the scariest looking person you can find and 9-10 times they suddenly grin back at you and want to ask you where you are from. For sure we have to have our guard up at 100% most of the time for fear of being mugged or kidnapped but these people are great. We got served in a cafe by twin brothers aged 10 who wanted to talk to us about stuff but only spoke Spanish and then sat there reading a newspaper, it just kinda makes you relax a bit more. By that I mean that just because a stranger talks to you it doesn’t mean that want to kill you, although we do treat everyone like that at first. Tipping the kid $10 was like giving a waitress at Brewers Fayre £150. His face was just great.

In Lima we went to the museum of The Inca Gold which bizarrely is in a Mall cut right into the cliffs with some 20 paragliders whizzing passed with screaming America’s strapped to their chests yelling, ‘Oh My Gawd’ and ‘Totally Awesome’. I swear if I hear that once more!  So into the darkened chambers of the ‘STICTLY NO PHOTOGRAPHY’ we went (as you can see it didn’t work) and ‘Oh MY Gawd’ the gold is just beyond words and money come to that. Think Crown Jewels of ELR (The Queen) her very self, and now double the value, in actual fact times it by 100. This Gold is INCA Gold and almost 3000 years old. So, in short, it is priceless. In the darkened room I so nearly sparked a major international incident by walking up to the main display case, leaning forward to inspect it closer and headbutting the case so hard that I had to sit down for 15 minutes.I fully expect a tooled up and very pee’ed off Peruvian shotgun toting guard to be pointing the ‘noisy end’ of his gun  at me yelling to get on the floor ‘MF’! But instead he was standing by the window pointing his gun at the American Paragliders mimicking bang bang noises. He gave me a knowing nod as I walked out and we both looked up at the fat Americans and tutted.

Oh and walking along the cliff we saw a new apartment block about 15 stories high. And there on about the 10th floor was a totally naked chick being boffed against the window by a naked bloke. The glass was floor to ceiling so we could see ‘everything’ and I do mean everything! Then the paragliders saw it so there was a stack of them trying to get a better look! Ah you can’t beat a 400mm Canon lens ha ha ha.

Another funny thing on the bus was a grubby kid of about 10 years old got on in the middle of absolutely no where and started to mumm/buzz out an unrecognisable tune on nothing other than a comb and a piece of paper. He then sung a few lines and went back to blowing his comb. After 20 minutes the natives were getting restless and told him to stop, by which time I was in utter hysterics. He then sat behind me counting out his $3. I gave him $2 extra and he was the happiest kid when we jumped off the bus again in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

The road South of Peru was again stacked with line after line of surf rolling onto the coast and not a soul riding the waves. Finally, we got to a place which is in the desert where they have the highest sand dune in the world. We booked a bizarre looking 8 seater 4×4 V8 8 litre off road monster driven by a bloke called ‘Kermit’. When this thing started the fillings loosened in your teeth and you bottom was forced to clench as it roared into life. You get strapped in by a bloke with no teeth who smelled of poo and then head off into the desert. Kermit stopped and selected 4WD. Then we were off with 450 bhp dragging us along. Now bearing in mind that my Jaguar XK8 does 0-60mph in 6 seconds on tarmac, this thing did it on sand! We roared up the sides of mountain sized dunes and tore along ridges.

Then Kermit slid his sunglasses down onto his dark skinned face and grinned. As we roared up the biggest one, he backed off at the very top, we crested the peak and just hung there staring at the pure blue sky. Then we rolled forward to see this 400 foot drop the other side which felt like near vertical. And yes, he punched the throttle and we leapt over the other side. I screamed like a girl and broke wind as we hurtled down the other side with dribble coming from my nose and mouth due to the speed of wind hitting my face. Blondie was laughing so much it was just great.

Then at the top of a big dune, Kermit got out, pulled out some snowboards (18mm marine plywood in the shape of a board) and then instructed us to lay on them and toboggan down the slope. I went for the good old stand up style though. 100 foot down the slope I fell over and planted my left buttock firmly in the sand whilst the rest of me continued south. Suffice to say I have never had a ’strained buttock’ before and can sympathise with Moses with his ‘parting of the ways’. To be so high in the desert and away from anyone else and to be able to look in all directions and see nothing but sand mountains was incredible, just incredible.

So, we are slowly heading for Machu Picchu and really just cannot wait. Oh we went to a museum yesterday and saw a Mummy which was like 2500 years old…but she was naked, so, er, how do I put this, you could see her beaver (Hi Penny W-J)…seriously, I saw a 2500 year old chicks beaver (Karl/Simon I bet you haven’t seen anything like that on redtube.com despite your years of ‘research’)

So once again, enjoy the images BUT a warning here. FILE 19 does show graphic images of dead things (inc babies) so please do not look if you are easily upset by, er dead stuff.

Finally two things. One, people over on this side of the world just don’t get food. Let me explain, chocolate muffin YES, Blueberry Muffin YES (Hi Lisa) but over here they have, Vegetable Muffins. Wrong on just so many levels. As well as putting meat in icecream???? No No No!

Secondly, The Mummys. Oh my god. What an experience that was. We took a private tour guide who bounced us 7km into the desert where we went to the Mummy Graveyard. This place was only discovered in 1986 on a valley floor. There are about 12 or so tombs that they have uncovered but there is a problem. Over the years many people have robbed the tombs and then died within hours due to the poisonous gases from the Gold….real Indiana Jones stuff.

Okay so the stuff in the photos is real. I grilled the guy saying that it was fake until he got offended. With that he stepped off the path and picked up a human spine and put a chunk of it in my hand! 2000 year old dead person in my hand ewww. Seriously, the graves have been robbed so badly that there are bones just laying all over the place. In a very surreal moment we looked around and realised that all the white stuff that we could see was, yup you guessed it, human bones just laying there on the desert floor. Mixed in with the bones are clumps of Lama and Alpaca Wool and cotton that, yup you guessed it, were used to wrap the Mummys. Think an area the size of two whole football fields littered with bones every step that you took and that was only on the surface. The guide then just pointed out human skulls sticking up in the sand that we assumed were white rocks. We asked him why it was so, exposed for want of a better word. He just said, ‘Peru has so many Mummy burial sites that have been robbed that we just do not know what to do with them so they sit here in the open, as they have done for hundreds of years’………….incredible! He went on to say that the culture of belief is that it was a great honour to be killed when the ruler died so they believe that to interfere with the dead is wrong, so they just leave them. Oh and yup the chopping off of heads was quite a regular thing when the ruler karked it. Then to pop the head on a rope and walk around with it! Even today it is not that uncommon that when someone dies that the head is chopped off the body and kept in the house, for, good luck and to ward off evil spirits. Mmmmmm.

So enjoy the photos. Another shorter update next time.

Chris and Blondie in Peru

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Fast link to view images (W12 - W15 are new files * there are lots of new images* view W15 as slideshow) http://www.lazyblueskies.com/wp/wpg2-2?g2_itemId=9542&g2_page=2

Hi everyone

Laying back in a thermal spa pool heated only by a volcano, at night, in the rain, at 2000m above sea level, with a 300 foot waterfall crashing into a pool next to us has to be up there in the all time top things that we have done. The pools are as hot as any hot bath. You stand under the cascade of the waterfall with freezing water hitting you on the head with a force or, well a 300 foot waterfall, then you leap back into the pools trying desperately not to do the whole monkey bath thing (ooooh hah haah haaah) whilst waving your arms around above your head. All of this is done with very few western faces but a sea of classic indigenous Quichuan’s looking on in a confused manner.

The bus rides here are something to behold. 4 hour rally sessions racing around mountain paths in a small bus driven at brake neck speed by some old dude who has been driving for 2 days nonstop, with red eyes and a grin to match. We met some Canadian’s who’s bus hit a petrol tanker at 1am. No Police, No Paramedics, No AA Rescue Truck just a donkey and a 4×4 to pull the coach back onto the road, and yes the injured dude went to a local vets on the top of the donkey! We will not be travelling at night in Ecuador me thinks. I must mention that on these bus rides a bloke always gets on and starts selling stuff from the front in full on market seller style.

This trip we had, ready for this, a Viagra Salesmen!!! He showed pictures of Beavers (Penny W-J I can tell you I was in hysterics) but then he moved onto how it can improve the ‘male loving’ too and showed us pictures of male buttholes, ewww! He claimed that his natural Ginseng remedy could even cure cancer as well as putting an end to world famine, but I soon forgot all of that when he moved back to the detailed description of the female ‘working bits’….his photo looked just like a big black cat run over by a moped. The worst bit was that he handed out free samples to everyone but refused to give them to any of the Westerners! Finally, I got hold of one and swallowed it whole, it got stuck in my throat and I’ve had a stiff neck for 3 days now and have started to grow an impressive set of 34C’s  ha ha ha

This story is going to be a bit long but we are doing so much it is difficult to keep it short and wait until you hear about the humpback whales.

The geography here is quite something. We drove along the side of a volcano that let one go in 2006 and cut a vast swathe through the land like a hot spoon through melted icecream. The sides of these ravines and mountain side stretch up into the clouds some 1000m’s above! Everything seems to cost $1 here, cab rides, 2 Cokes, bags of fruit and hostels with double beds and great views cost $20 per night. Look at one of the first photos after the waterfall to see what a volcano does to the solid rock!

We had a bizarre experience with one of the last running trains in Ecuador. It’s called El Nazir Del Diablo, or Devil’s Nose to you and me. You rock up at the end of the line station at 05.45hrs dressed in all your warmest gear and purchase a leather seat cushion off a rather vocal bloke for $1 a go. I purchase two cushions (one for each buttock), then you mount up on top of the train. The carriages are box cars which no one sits in, you only have the roof as an option. You climb up a ladder and sit on essentially a corrugated iron roof, on said bum cushions, and then you wait, in the cold. As dawn approaches you watch the town come to life and the roads start to fill with taxi’s, people honking their horns at each other  and people going about their business. At about 07.00hrs the diesel engine five carriages up in front fires into life and plunges thick black smoke high into the sky, then the magic starts. It blows it’s whistle over and over waking the whole town. People come running out of their houses to wave and smile, dogs bark and children excitedly chase after the train shouting stuff. Looking back on it, I know understand what they were shouting. ‘You are all going to die, get off as soon as possible you mad crazy gringo people’!

Barely, five minutes into the five hour journey we come to a juddering halt. Yes, one of the 6 carriages derailed. Twenty minutes later and we are off again before, yes you’ve guessed it, we derail again. This continues as the scenery slides passed through small remote towns, on into steep valleys, river bends and abandoned mining towns. On about our 7th derail of the day it became obvious there was a ‘bit of a problem’ said the crisp and banana seller up on the roof who incidentally had no teeth whatsoever. Five hours turned into seven then eight and then nine. Finally we hit the canyon with the train teetering along the edge of about 400-500 feet shear drops to the valley floor and certain death. As we got to the bottom of Switchback Canyon, it became obvious on our 11th derailment that we had a serious problem. When derail 12 happened and we were stuck on a narrow ledge for 50 minutes whilst they tried to retrack the actual engine using rocks and crowbars we started to get nervous, very nervous. So much so that a group of us got off and saw just how bad the track was. All of the sleepers were rotten beyond repair and the track had completely buckled under the engines weight and circa 200 on the roof.

So we got off and hiked up the mountain. Yes, 2500m’s above sea level and we hiked up a steep mountain face. We now discover that it has only just been reopened after a ’serious incident’ of which no one is allowed to talk about. So  a five hour trip was actually 14 hours in the end! Everyone panned this trip as being incredible but the most dangerous trip ever that one day soon with kill everyone on board. You know when you read in the paper that a train in India crashes killing 200 people, this place will be the next. But it kind of makes you appreciate that South Western Trains may very well be a bunch of baboons but at least they get you there. Album W13 shows true Ecuadorian life shot from the roof of the moving train. I am personally stunned at the images I managed to capture, as I am sure you will be. Remember these are shot from the roof of a moving train.

We moved on to an 11 hour bus ride that took us to Puerto Lopez, a real backwards fishing village with just a few Cabañas (straw roofed huts). At 4am I jumped awake when I heard a noise in our room, and there sitting on my back pack was a mouse eating my Oreo cookie. I got up to remonstrate with the pesky varmint and got confronted by a cockroach. On closer inspection of the floor and table we had been infested my a million mini ants. The next day was spent in a new hotel cleaning, washing and drying everything we owned. Ewwwww, but hey that is what we are here to experience I guess as the hostel owner was like, ‘Ah Senior you normally get El Ratto and not El Mouso!

This next section is just beyond words really files W13 and W14. Isla De La Plata is known in Ecuador as ‘Poor Man’s Galapagos because you go there for $55 and not $3000. After a 90 minute powerboat ride covering some 48km’s being pushed by 2 Johnson 115 hps outboard engines the island looms up out of the mist. You really get a Sir Francis Drake feeling at this moment. We went ashore and within seconds were met by the local wildlife namely, Blue Footed Boobies. Now for those of you that know me well, the thought of a pair of Blue Footed Boobies was just too much. I got the feeling that the joke was a bit old but that didn’t stop me for a second trying to explain to the bemused tour guide all about a ‘pair of blue boobies’. The wildlife on this island was incredible. Turtles the size of wheel barrows, Vultures as big as big dogs, Manta Rays the size of lounge floor rugs and Sharks as long as cars!

Shortly after leaving the island we went in search of the Humpback Whales who breed in the area before heading for Antarctica and, just as we were about to give up, a jet of water shot a fifty feet into the air announcing the arrival of a pod of Whales, about 10 of them. Interesting fact, their numbers have dropped from 100,000 worldwide to now under 2500 in the entire world!!! We saw 10 of them including I am very happy to say, newborns. At anything up to 35 tonnes and 15metres in length they truly are one of the biggest things on the planet. In what was quite rough seas shooting was neigh on impossible but in true Lazyblueskies style, we got the shot, and we even got sequences of, are you ready for this…….I can hardly believe I am going to tell you this……ready? We shot and captured sequences of, Humpback Whale BREACHING and teaching their young to do it as well!!!! That essentially means a Whale swimming at full speed to the surface of the water from the depths and bursting out of the water some 15 feet before crashing back in again causing the biggest splash you have ever seen (Yes even bigger than one of Hobbit’s, Plumm’s or even Pash’s double front loops). The images speak for themselves. I was certainly Mr Popular on the boat, swapping email addresses with everyone who only had a small camera. One guy only had a disposable wind on camera. My Canon 100-400 IS USM won the day hands down.

Thanks to Reimer from Dock 11 in Tarifa (one of our site sponsors) we headed for a surfing town called Montanita where we just chilled out for a few days on a small beach. Days were spent eating Empanada’s (deep fried bananas, kind of like a banana and cheese pasty) mmmm and the evenings eating massive prawns washed down with ice cold beer all for $11 (ooh yeah that’s £6)

Whilst I am mentioning sponsors I must say that the snorkelling images would not have been achievable were it not for those clever boffins at Aquapac www.aquapac.net . Yes, that is a £1000 camera with a £600 lens stuck on the front of it that took those images underwater. Now that is what I call trust in a good piece of kit. When we got drenched in a rain storm all our documents survived thanks to the travel pouch. (Thanks again Tim T for the kit - Images speak for themselves.

Speaking of Galapagos we have cancelled our plans to go there. Mainly due to those idiots at STA Travel chopping $1300 out of our budget due to utter incompetence. But also it is a crazy system that they operate. Essentially, it costs between $350 to $500 return to fly there. Then you have to pay about $300 between you for passes. But the worst part is that you cannot get a cruise to where you want to go to. That’s like going to London and only seeing Westminster, yes it’s very nice and yes you get to see a lot, but there are many other places to go but the boats won’t take you there unless you go for the $3500 per person, per week First Class option. It seems that a 4 day cruise is only 2 days with two half day change overs and so on even with 8 day cruises being only 6 full days and one of those is spent on an island. So, reluctantly I will not be able to bring you anymore pairs of Blue Footed Boobies stories. But, fear not, we will go there for a month at some point in the future and island hop.

We are now in Peru by the way in Lima . That makes four countries in 37 days.

Hugs to everyone and welcome to the new batch of people that have signed up to get updates of our travels.

More next time on Banana Splits that involved a Banana being cut in half and plopped on a plate, and the fact that we have now covered a stunning, are you ready for this 194,059 steps and a total so far of 66 hours on buses on our month long trip so far!

Chris and Blondie x

COPYRIGHT - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED means exactly what it says. You will note that the quality of the images has been reduced dramatically. If you would like copies of images please just ask and do not copy from the albums. Low Resolution and Small Images are not what I want to display but I am having to do so for the time being. Chris.

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So, have you ever sat in a Mexican Indian’s hut eating a chicken, whilst being watched by a relative of said chicken who was playing with now very dead BBQ’d chicken that very morning? There was a brief moment between us I think. We stayed the night with some indigenous Indians who put us up in the equivalent of a garden shed before heading off to catch a long wooden boat to ride down the muddy river to the border of Mexico and Guatemala. When you think of a border between the two countries in your mind, that’s exactly what it looks like. Dust, chickens and jungle looking folk just staring at you. Then in front of us was a 5 hour chicken bus ride to Flores along quite literally a dirt track winding through tiny villages with roads full of dogs, chickens, turkeys, horses, pigs and of course the obligatory donkey standing right in the middle of the road who was moving for no one.

The ruins at Tikal (Guatemala) were a major civilization circa 500 BC peaking at about 300 AD with around 100,000 people living there. When you look the images you will see that this place is smack bang in the middle of the jungle. The site takes roughly 5 hours to walk around looking briefly at stuff but the whole site takes, ready for this, 5 days! They say that only 7% of the site has been unearthed! Quite incredible when you think these dudes (Ugg, Bugg and Dugg) made a hill about 60 foot high, and then erected a 130 rock tower on top of it, then made 105 steps up to the alter, on which they, well, chopped people up as sacrifices to The Gods. Trust me, the place is as eerie as it is stunning. Add to that the sound of the Howler Monkeys and the knowledge that Jaguars are common sights each day, along with massive, and I do mean massive thunderstorms, you really get a feel for what it must have been like. The incredible thing is that these things are still standing after 100’s of earthquakes, wars, famine and Mayan Gold thieves.

The tribes lead a simple yet difficult life where as an example the aim of winning a game of sort of football/basketball/hockey was to then walk up the steps to collect your prize…..a black obsidian sword through the chest to remove your heart whilst you stood there looking down at the crowd going bonkers below! Apparently, this was a great honour and secured your entry to the Underworld. Mmmm, I’d rather have the trophy.

We picked up two of the security guards carrying pump action shotguns at the back of the site. Jaguars and Bandits have been known to attack so we walked with them for a bit. As a result we got to see some of the stuff off the tracks, and I still cannot believe this. The guards pointed to a small clearing, where there was a flat rock with small holes in the surface (about drain cover size). He pointed inside saying Mera Mera (Look Look) so I climbed into one of the entrances and there, sure enough, was, a Jaguars den. The guard said that the Jaguar had moved from this one to a new one, but there I was, underground in a Jaguars den. I looked to my left and there 10inches from my face was the hairiest CD sized Tarantula looking spider that I have ever seen. In true Steve Irwin style I farted loudly, screamed like a 6 year old girl in pigtails and left the den like a cruise missile. Now languages are a funny thing when 90% of all communication is non verbal. But the look that the guard gave me was one of utter disgust. He then sort of lost interest in us and walked off. It was okay for him, he had the gun, I had a pair of flip flops! Karen just shook her head and wandered off behind the security guard.

Speaking of guns, guys will understand this. ‘The Guy Nod’, now most of these are exchanged in shops/markets whilst you are shopping with the Doris and you are bored. The whole kinda ‘Yeah dude know the feeling’ thing. Well let me tell you what’s up there in the top 5 of all time Guy Nods, when you get one from a guy carrying an M16 Carbine Fully Automatic Assault Rifle. It just makes you feel like a man. 

So, we took a bus for about 9 hours down to Guatemala City to get a feel for the country and quite a feeling we got. Imagine if you can a load of Class A narcotic fuelled Orangutans who have been at the whisky then trying to load bags onto a bus and then driving across the mountains whilst waving their arms above their heads, that’s close to the bus station vibe. We entered Guatemala City just before dusk and hit the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ first. The first thing we saw, was the smog and the shanty towns, the second thing we saw was a bloke legging it across a freeway with a women’s handbag under his arm. So when the bus finally stopped we leapt into a Taxi and headed for the hostel at which we were staying and didn’t leave until we got on a flight to Ecuador.

Our Travel Agent ‘STA Travel Bournemouth’ as in ‘The Student Travel Association’ made a massive balls up with our round the world ticket by suggesting to us that flights around these parts were $100 - $200. Well they don’t, they in actual fact cost $1300. So we have had to pay it to get onto the next leg. Anyone travelling anywhere with internal flights, take this as a warning, a $1300 warning. Utter incompetence is a goal it appears for most travel agents who then specialise in 100 reasons why it is not their fault. Oh and that’s we had paid these ‘people’ £4000 for the original ticket. That name again, STA Travel. Be warned. Nice people but utter baboons.

So after a brief stop over in San Jose in Costa Rica we are now in Ecuador in a City called Quito. For those of you that know Captain Simon Plumms (good luck on the flight course mate). Well when he did his Long Way Down cycle ride last year he started here at The Marriot Hotel where we have been staying for a few days. Briefly, let me say that how he managed to cycle here is incredible. The altitude is 5000m above sea level. In context, stand up, walk to bathroom, brush teeth, sit on edge of bath to catch breath, walk back to bed, sit down catch breath. It is like being an asthmatic chain smoker with a Ford Focus parked on your chest. Really hard to breath and walking up the smallest hill is difficult.

The city is a bit scary too like Guatemala. This was the advice given by the hostel staff. ‘Okay, so take nothing out with you, no wallets, no cameras, no watches, no videos, no sunglasses, no backpacks, no passports and only enough dollars for food and Taxi. People get mugged here at knife point all the time, even the hotel staff, oh and up town they will rob you at gun point so be really careful’!

‘GUNPOINT’, I said, ‘GUNPOINT’, now hang the fluff on a minute, so in short we are trying to book flights as fast as possible to get to Galapagos and basically get out of the City. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it, but you just don’t feel safe and that is all well and done for a few hours but it just doesn’t make you feel happy and we don’t want to just hold up in a hotel.

All of which is such a shame as this is a photographers dream! The people, the faces, the clothes, the culture. But you can’t take your camera out of your bag for fear of some Alpaca snogging gringo buggering off with it. Oh by the way, my main Canon 17-85 IS USM lens has died on me so I’m struggling with super sharp images, in case you photo hacks notice the difference of drop in quality. Thanks by the way for all the lovely comments of supports and encouragement via email re these blogs and the photos. Strange but over 200 people now get the updates. Blondie says to say hello to everyone and more next time about jumping over the Equator back and forth like a proper tourist monkey.

Best regards and hugs to all from us over here.

Chris and Karen

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