Surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Couldn't quite resist sneaking back to England and surprising everyone with my uber-tan (which turned out to be mainly dirt) at Sandy's 30th birthday party.

In retrospect, perhaps it is better to announce these things in advance, especially as most of my friends are now around the 30 mark, and perhaps will soon get to a stage where their tickers will not take the level of shock I inflicted on them this week!

After everyone regained the power of speech, we had a nice time :) ....now what?!?!? Argh! How much are flights to Buenos Aires again....? To be continued...............................................

Cordillera Blanca

I'd wanted to go to Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca ever since I the last time I was in Peru and didn't quite make it far enough north. In fact, I wanted to go sooo much, that i subjected myself to the embarrassment of advertising myself on various hostel and cafe notice boards. Something along the lines of "loner without friends requires travel partners"....yes, my phone was ringing off the hook.

Luckily I bumped into Dave, who i'd met before in Ecuador, and was able to convince him that the Santa Cruz trek would be the most fun he'd have on his whole trip, and that he should immediately abandon all other plans and make me look less like a person who has to advertise for friends.

The hike was a lot of fun...snowy mountains, pretty flowers, high-altitude passes and glacial valleys carved out of the rock. It was a relatively easy trek (especially with mules to help!), but beautiful. Though give me a tent and a large enough supply of oreo cookies and i'll be happy almost anywhere :)

Yay, hiking with a friend!!

Ah, i have a hiking buddy. We walked up to Laguna Churup near Huaraz in Peru, it was such a brilliant hike! Look how lovely it is!

We had to pretty much rock climb for the last 15 minutes to get there...high up, on slippy rocks, over a waterfall. We had very shaky legs afterwards...

At the bottom of the mountain a nice old couple made us coca mate in their garden....perfect.

Loner hiking

Yes, adventures with auto-photos. It took me about 20 minutes to get a shot that was not mainly grass, so it gets published to the blog regardless of photo quality/interest :)

Quilatoa

A bit of hiking to Quilatoa lake...very nice. It's a volcano crater filled by a freshwater spring, and rain over the years.

I stayed at a place called The Black Sheep Inn in Chugchilan. It's operated with the idea of making only a positive impact on it's environment and the surrunding community. EVERYTHING is reused, recycled or repurposed and most of the food they provide is grown in the gardens around the hostel. Interesting. At the very least, it was nice to eat some healthy food for a while. I am DONE with fried chicken!

How to make a shrunken head...

Instructions below in case anyone needs them...

El Mitad del Mundo

Yes, I am officially the centre of the world, everything revolves around me :)

I did some amusing experiments balancing eggs on nails and watching water going down the plug hole in various directions (don't worry Sandy, have taken extensive video footage so that you can explain to me at length why it's all a hoax!)

Confusingly, there is some disagreement about the exact location of the centre of the world. A few hundred years ago, a French dude did some experiments to confirm where the equator line was. In 1979 a massive monument and museum was erected to signify the spot. Unfortunately, more recently, GPS has determined that the real equator is actually 200 metres down the road....oops. In general, it is still maintained that the monument marks the equator line, but probably it's quite expensive to move a massive stone structure.

How do you know when you've finally reached the Andes?

Answer: The sound of Pan Pipes everywhere you go.

Dezza, you'd be in musical heaven!!! ...probably on your own ;)

Me and Anita in the countryside with some funny old statues

These statues are OLD. And kind of unusual too. I think the ancient Colombians were a fun bunch to hang out with. Their statues are nothing like the dour old statues the Mayans and Incans built. They have penguins, and orangutans and funny little men holding two fish....

Safety

In general, Colombia has felt like a pretty safe place to travel. Could be something to do with an almost constant military presence in anywhere that could be remotely dodgy (Ecuador take note!!!).

This photo was taken when our bus stopped for a rest break on the way to San Augustin. Would have been a better photo if I'd taken it when he was walking towards me, but I was scared of the man with the gun!