This morning I woke to the sound of pan pipes

well last time I left off, I believe we were all sitting down eating steak. Today we are perched in the beautiful city of Arequipa at the base of the Andes in Peru.

To cut the last few days a little short we got our plane to Peru ok and when we got off found noone had come to pick us up form the airport. We decided to get to our hostel by ourselves and got swindled by a dodgy taxi driver who qouted one price and then demanded a different one. He had 4 angry australians to deal with but there was little we could do at 2 am in the morning. I was confident that I would report him to the proper authorities, something that seems fairly remote now a few days later. We arrived and crashed and woke a few hours later to find Pearcy and Fiona arriving in a taxi with the dawn and a car alarm that went off for about an hour. Our hostel was a lovely and breezy 2 story house overlooking the ocean.

We got out of Lima fast and rode the bus to Pisco. Famous for its sealions and birdlife at nearby Paracus. The scenery was just so wild. It simply doesn^t rain here and the landscape is completly devoid of vegetation. If we can get to a computer with a USB port I will post the pics. Sarah was impressed by the local street theater occuring in the main square in Pisco which basically comprised of two characters speaking rapid spanish at each other, hitting each other with a stick and a little bit of cross dressing thrown in. Although simple, half the town came out to watch - it was good fun.

Yesterday we attempted sandboarding at a desert oasis and last night we caught an overnight bus here to Arequipa(12hrs).It wasn´t much fun, especially when the hostess decided to play traditional peruvian panpipe music at 6 am to wake us up. We have had a recovery sleep now and sarah and I have made it to internet cafe. Tomorrow we are going hiking!

bye for now