Peru

My final tour has been a rather interesting experience.

Peru is a beautiful country. We started off in Lima and I enjoyed exploring the city initially with Cedalia from the previous tour.

Lima has some beautiful churches. Instead of lots of stray dogs, the parks are full of stray cats.

The shopping in Lima is great and I'm really looking forward to my last few days indulging in some retail therapy.

We then went onto Cusco. This is a busy city with more incredible churches and Cusco Cathedral is simply stunning. I found it very peaceful exploring it.

After Cusco, we stayed in Ollantaytambo for three nights. Here we did mountain biking in Sacred valley.

This is the first time I've even done down hill mountain biking. It was actually pretty tough.

You need to be really careful where you steer. Even the first day, after about 10 minutes our guide face planted. It was really bad and he cut his lip with his teeth.

The second day, I didn't do the scary bits of the biking. Although it was a longer route, I felt safer. We completed 17km the second day.

I really enjoyed my free day in Ollantaytambo. I just had a lazy day in bed, talking to Stu mainly. I did go to the market about bought my Mum a lovely present, she should love it!

Then we started on the epic journey of the inca trail. I'm going to do a separate post for that.

After surviving the inca trail, we headed back to Cusco for two more nights.

I had the experience of walking up to the Christ of Cusco. It's nothing on the real deal in Rio but it was still pretty incredible.

Walking up, I took the most random path. I ended up going through the bushes. This was really tough after the trail.

On the way down, I fell and hurt my hand. It's just a bit bruised and swollen but it'll be ok.

The group is getting pretty fragmented. There are a few individuals whom are not the nicest people to be around.

It's a real shame as all my other groups have been great fun and really friendly. I suppose it's to be expected to have some not so nice people every now and again.

We're now on a seven hour bus journey to Puno where we'll be kayaking on Lake Titicaca and then staying with a host family.

I know this is all part of the experience but I'm not too happy about this. I asked our guide if it's safe and he didn't seem to be impressed with me asking that.

Personally I think it was a valid question.