arriba abuela

hi fans

sorry for the lack of blog updates, i´ve been very busy for the last week. i´ve not got time to write properly now, but just to say a few things so you get your pickles travelling fix.

here is a small summary of the last week or so
stayed on amantani island with a lovely family. danced in peruvian costume at the incatheque.
got a strange stomach bug during the night. possibly related to the frenzied dancing, and tightness of the costume, but who can say.
visited the reed islands on lake titicaca on way back to puno from amantani. they sang my bonnie lies over the ocean. they did this last time i was there 2 years ago, so this time i stayed in the boat to sleep off my illness and think how surreal it all was.
got bus to cuzco where we stayed a few days. went paragliding over the sacred valley - amazing. had a brilliant paragliding guide called jose luis infantes. he´s a pro, and is sponsored and wins competitions. he is very modest infact, but using the pickles-persistent-question-asking-technique (patent pending) i prised this information out of him, and got his business card too. result. incidentally is the past tense of paragliding paraglid or paraglided?
then did the inca trail over the weekend. this was really amazing, despite the overload of tourists, which you know is my pet hate, but being one of them myself i had to try to be buddhist about this fact. my ipod helped quite a lot re the buddhism. i know it´s a material possession and therefore not technically allowed, but i think buddha would understand under the circumstances. got up at 4am on the last day and walked along watching the sun rise and listening to mozart (yes helie, i am still a massive geek even though a million miles away, some things never change i´m afraid). was quite special. berated the amount of silly walkers with walking sticks, but in my head, not out loud. not the time or the place to be getting annoyed with other people i thought to myself. climed waynapicchu after looking around machu picchu, this is a higher little mountain to the side of machu picchu. it says it takes 2 hours to the top and back, but me and luke did it in 1 hour 10 mins, as we ran most of it so as not to miss the 2pm train back to cuzco. consequently can hardly walk today, but it was definitely worth it for the views from the top.
we had a load of local porters, who carried all our luggage, the tents, the cooking equipment etc for the whole inca trail. they were amazing. regulations came in a few years ago to limit the amount they´re allowed to carry to 25 kilos. before that they would carry up to 50, which is ridiculous given the terrain and steepness and altitude. the 2nd day was 7k up hill. my muscles shook quite a lot. every morning the porters brought us coca tea, left a little bowl of hot water by our tents to wash with, cooked our breakfast, basically totally looked after us, and were really really sweet. they don´t speak much english, so obviously i took the opportunity to practice my spanish on them. i learnt quite a few new words (mono travieso is cheeky monkey). i thought it would be a nice gesture to learn all their names, so as to make them feel more loved than perhaps they sometimes do, so on the last night with them, i read out another of my pre-prepared spanish speeches (along with drinking whisky this is one of my new hobbies), (i will post it on next blog, don´t have it with me today), and at the end i recited all their names to them, to rapturous applause! then we got a kiss from all 26 of them. you can imagine how exciting all this was for me. (just to update, i still haven´t managed to steal any peruvian children, but have unofficially enquired as to adoption).

went horse riding around the ruins of cuzco this morning. very tame horses, which was good as it was on my list of phobias. my horse was called alason, he was very nice, and had a long mane. i practised my spanish on him too, but he was quite unresponsive other than a few snorts, which is generally the reaction i get anyway.

a message for mr and mrs mackenzie and mr and mrs cook, as i know you have been worrying - all the references to drinking that have appeared on the blog, these do generally refer to me, and not to your very sensible and responsible daughters abi and laura. abi is possible THE most sensible person i know, so i always know i can get blind drunk in her company, and i would say laura is the 2nd most sensible person i know. so basically i am in safe hands, but it might not be quite so much fun for them. ha ha. and to mr and mrs pickles, thank you for your total lack of concern to these particular references.

must go for today as it´s our last night in cuzco, so we are going out. some of us might drink alcohol.

more soon, to lima tomorrow, and then to guatemala on saturday.

before i forget, interesting fact of the week. gringo, the term for a foreigner in south america or spain i think, comes from when mexico was fighting america for independence, and the americans wore green uniforms, thus the mexicans would shout at them ´green, go´. thus the term.

adios por ahora xx