Peru, Peru, we love you so we do.

From the comfort and relative distance of the small town surfer town of Montañita in Ecuador, I am finally getting my act togerher and getting this blog up to date. This means writing about our time in Peru and on reflection it was really one of the best countries for me in South America. Peru offers SO much to the average visitor, and its been one of the most enjoyable places for us. Theres so much diversity in the landscapes and locations all around the country, similar to Bolivia, but there are certain things that put Peru a notch above its neighbours, in my book anyway. Firstly, Machu Pichu, the "lost city of the incas", hidden deep in the mountains in the Urubamba valley is one of the most striking, impressive, and atmospheric places I have ever been (more on that later). The nearby town of Cusco, altough full of tourists, is like Peru´s cultural capital and a great place to spend some time in. We ended up setting up base there in our nice quiet wee family house type hostel on avenida del sol - where somebody has to get up out of bed to let you in at night, happened a lot - and staying in cusco for 2 weeks! We finally managed to drag ourselves out of cusco and, after saying goodbye to two unreplacable members of the family (Sarah and Zoe headed back to ingleterra), and we headed east and finally came down to a lower altitude, ears popping all the way on the 24 hour bus ride away from the stinging cold heights of the andes, toards a town called Ica. Here you can find the largest sand dunes in south america. You take a tour in a dune buggy and if that doest rattle you enough you can rent a sandboard and fling yourself down the ridiculously steep slopes, ending up rolling down mostly and getting sand in places you never thought sand should go....

After Ica we continued up the coast towards the countries capital, Lima. We ended up spending a very enjoyable week there thanks to our good friend Pablo, who played host to us for 6 days and let us stay in his house. It as great to finally be in an actual house for the first time in months.... Lima is a HUGE city and thankfully Pablo did a great job showing us around, driving us mostly to the best parts of the city, giving us a chance to get a taste for the different barrios/neighbourhoods and some nights out in some very cool places. In the downtime, of which there was a lot, we basically did 2 things; watched DVDs and played pro evolution football on Pablos playstation. Oh, then there were the two actual football games that we played against Pablos friends ; and in both games hammered the peruvians 11-3 and then 7-0....these games took so much out of me that I ended up getting a flu after over-excerting myself in the second one....for Ali and Quinny it as just a run around, they really enjoyed themselves.

Onwards and upwards then and by now we were getting quite excited about the prospect of leaving all that high altitude mountain and city life behind and getting to the coast for sun, sand and surf. I cant really surf, it just sounds right to say that. More accurate would be sun, sand, beer, ballantines and sleeping in....We went directly by overnight bus (overnight buses by now are second nature to us; 16 hours, 20 hours, I will never again complain about the horrors of a bus eireann journey which might strech a whole 5 or 6 hours across our wee island) to Mancora, in the very north of Peru, close to the border with Equador. A nice little surf town, Mancora is known for its year round sun shine and right after arriving we got straight into the aul shorts and flip flops, and down to the beach, cold beer and suncream. Nice. No more wooly jumpers a la bolivia or cusco, thank you very much!!

So there you have it. Peru has been a blast. Diverse, like Bolivia, but offering so much more...and this was only a summary of what we got up to... Trekking, Quad biking, mountain biking, white water rafting, big city night life, small surfer town hippie life...and more....Peru will exci- wait a minute....im starting to sound really like a cheesy advert for the country, like some paid advertising monkey to boost tourism, so ill stop right there. you get the point. Peru = cool

Hasta luego (till next time)

Brian