Writing from Peru...

Well the salt flats were incredible, I never knew SA had such diverse landscape to offer! Flamingos, wind eroded rocks, dust tracks, lagoons of red blue and green, coloured mountains, volcanoes, miles of flat salt and villages made of it. It was rediculously cold with 4 blnakets and sleepingbag not constituting enough to get out of clothes and into pajamas.
La Paz was less incredible, but then i mostly saw it from the inside of my bedroom as i caught a nasty food bug on day 3. Before that we did little but meet the seeming millions of people that were staying at Loki hostel. It had everything you could have needed which made it very difficult to leave and what with the demonstrations and steep slopes of the valley we were contained in combined with altitude rendering us breathless with every flight of stairs, it near impossible to see the city! The markets we did see were just row after row of the bolivian bright strip so common in the aream and the millions of alapaca jumpers and scarves in all sizes down to baby outfits! The death road was a trip and half too; the most dangerous road in the world, for which i have a teeshirt to prove I completed it without dying! So much fun I had forgotten how much i love biking. There were a few points where I had to put my foot down to slow the downhill pick up of speed that just KEPT happening right before I came across a corner but so thrilling!
We left on the coldest bus journey of our lives after a day on isla del sol - aptly named as the back of my arms are STILL raw with the burn I stupidly got that day (ok it was yesterday). We walked from the North of the Island to the south and that was no easy feat! Some seriously steep slopes and 4 hours of breathlessness was worth it for the stunning views of lake Titicaca. It was so huge we had to keep reminding ourselves that it was NOT the sea! Some of the rocks just rose out of the still crystal blue water effortlessly at slanting angles and the boats floating on the shore of the island were so picturesque. There were no vehicles AT ALL on the island and the path was stony and impassable by them anyway. Huge sense of achievement when we finished. With no time for dinner before the boat home the only thing that distracted me from my hunger was the wind whipping through my hair on the top deck as the smaller islands chugged by and the Che Guevara book that had been leant to me for the day - Fancinating, even more so when you have visited the places he had seen and where he'd grown up.
Arived in Cuzco at 5am local time this morning with no Sol to pay for the taxi - luckily we were travelling with friends we'd made in La Paz who bailed us through that one! The hostel has wonderfuly hot showers (not a necessarily available commodity in the mountains where its coldest anyway) and the city is so beautiful. There are plazas on every couple of blocks giving the city a massive spacious feel in comparison to La Paz which is all poured on top of itself into the valley. We plan to indulge in some shopping of souveniers tomrrow now that we are nearing the end of our trip and wont have to carry bags TOO much further. The jewelry is rife here so I plan to start with that! We also came across a building with the entire 2m base made of stones cut perfectly to fit into one another - no cement was used to make the structure solid at all - and it was built at a 7 degree angle, together making a building that can withstand earthquakes without any modern engineering! I was shouted at when I touched it... We plan to get off to Machu Picchu in the next couple of days so that is the next tourist attraction in my sights. Adios para a hora amigos. XXXX