Time for some altitude trekking

Seeing as we are now in Bolivia and have failed to blog about the last 6 weeks, here we are.....Back to the blog......

After a decent nights sleep in a good hostel we were ready for a trek through the beautiful Peruvian Andes, albeit waking up at 2am for a 3am píck up (plus the taxi was 30 mins late so we chilled out in the TV room).

Four hours later we jumped off at altitude for breakfast which was a weird cereal topped with strawberry milk, as well as some scrambled eggs. Anyway enough about crappy breakfasts, more importantly we rocked up to `Cruz del Condor`, a view point over a different part of the canyon. Spending 45 minutes here we watched the mighty condors soar through the sky and chill out on their perches trying to get the perfect picture. Literally 2 minutes before our minibús was leaving I captured this guy gliding not far above our heads. Hopefully you guys can appreciate how majestic this creature is, was a beautiful thing to see as they effortlessy swooped by with their 10.5ft wingspan.

At this viewpoint there were loads of women dressed in traditional attire selling pretty much anything they could get their hands on.

Jumping back on the minibus we arrived at our starting part of the our trek where we also grabbed lunch at about 3,200 metres above sea level. With a bit of time to explore the village we randomly bumped into our Scottish friends Scott and Holly we had met in Buenos Aires and had a little chat, only to be ushered into the place for lunch as we were running late. Was so random to meet up with these guys here as we had no idea they were here and we hadn`t seen them for 2 months!

Anyway, we saw some locals with their mules walking down the street which was pretty cool, said goodbye to our mates and sat down with our group of 6 and tour guide for lunch which was pesto spaghetti and alpacha which was actually pretty nice.

With lunch munched it was time to start the trek so off we set on a five hour downhill mission. The views of the Peruvian Andes were quite spectacular with our tour guide stopping to tell us about certain things such as the original langauge of the natives before Spanish was introduced and about a road they had built recently through the Andes to imrove trade etc (was all done on foot and with mules before).

With the sun beaming down we both went for the sunhat look, but we looked more like we had gone fishing.

Half way down the thin track along the mountain a dude was coming up the other way with his mules, meaning we had to try and get out the way by squishing into the vegetation on the side. Our tour guide would shout "to the mountain my friends", when there wasn`t exactly much `mountain` to go to.

Jen lost her footing at one point and hit the deck pretty hard, leaving a massive black bruise on her upper leg. One of the chaps gave her a walking pole thereafter to help her get by, however she didn`t like it much and gave it back 30 mins later. To be fair it was just an old broom stick!

Coming down from altitude had an unexpected effect on both of our hands, with our fingers ballooning out. No idea why this happened, something to do with coming down with the pressure relenquishing but all the same, the end result was sausage fingers. (These are Jen`s fingers if you couldn`t tell!)

There were pretty cool cacti on route, with this one having some pretty mean spines. Our tour guide told us about some parasites which lived on these cacti which were white, but when you squashed one it had a really vibrant red colour inside, which the natives used for dying things and also for tattooing.

After the five hour slog down winding narrow paths we were mealy at our pitstop for the night when we came across a tiny settlement where they hung up bits of meat on washing lines, their version of cured meat. Our tour guide told us that there was a ghost here, good job we were staying around the corner.

Finally, we had made it and posed for a group photo. There were literally two households perched on the edge of a creek in the valley, one of which would be our resting place for the night. Our group consisted of the two of us, a Canadian couple, and two Canadian friends. Oddly the Canadians had never met but discovered they lived about 30 minutes away from each other back home. Small world!

They had the cutest little puppy ever here and of course I couldn`t help put pick the little guy up and give him a stroke. He was dead shy at first, but my persist attempts to pet him paid off!

With two rooms with two single beds and one room with a double, we argued with the other Canadian couple as to who should have the double room......amusingly, we were both arguing as to who shouldnt have the double. Eventually we lost and set up for the night in our double room, which consisted of a stone hut, with two mattresses on a wooden frame. No eledctricty here, so candle light was the way to see, but we used our head torches more.

Leaving our room for a cooked dinner from the host family, the sight above us was spectacular with thousands of stars as bright as could be, with no cloud or light polution getting in the way of appreciating the natural phenomonem.

After a good nights sleep we were awoken at 6am for the weird srawberry milk topped cereal but this time we were treated to pancakes....shame they were literally 2cm thick!

Today was a six hour walk uphill to start with, but then a nice stroll on the flat (ish) through the Peruvian Andes visiting some settlements on the way. Getting to the high point we could appreciate some more amazing views.

After a hard push uphill we all took in a bit of sun whilst relaxing, and were treated to a cactus fruit which was actually pretty nice, albeit it quite sour. I took the opportunity for a lie down.

After a decent break, we posed for a team photo and set off downhill towards the villages we aimed to visit today.

Arriving at the first village we had a stroll around after leaving our backpacks with a local woman, and came across an old church, and an interestingly dressed cross, seemed it was quite a religious place.

Our tour guide would tell us some more interesting things about local plants such as ones used to tackle altitude sickness as well as one for a soar throat. Who needs Westernised medicines?! Just chew on a plant instead, Rogers medical advice 101.....you´re welcome.

Arriving at the second village, we saw much of the same, however we did come across some local kids playing football. This picture was taken just before the funniest incident of our Colca Canyon trip, with my arms out to catch the sun and our tour guide looking like a gnome infront. Anyway...the funny incident....as the kids were playing football, one of them kicked the ball away and over the wall they were playing behind and as they chased after it I picked it up and threw it back not thinking that they would run after it through the gate. But run after it they did, and with one bounce of the ball after I threw it back, it bounced perfectly into this little kids face. He took it like a little trooper though, without making a sound he scooped the ball up and ran back. Didn`t stop our group from pissing themselves though. Won`t be making a habbit of hitting small Andean children in the face so don`t judge!

With the option of carrying on for a further 2 hours for not really much of a reason but to walk more, we decided to just head straight down to the ´oasis´ where we would stay for our second night. It literally was a green patch in the middle of the valley with a swimming pool and a bar, and cute little straw hut thingies. It was a bit of a mission getting there with tired legs as they wasn`t really a recognised path in, instead we had to follow a little stream and hug a bush where the path disappeared. But anyway, we got there for lunch which was rice with alpaca, which Jen and I enjoyed, but the other four left theres and fed it to the dog which had followed us all the way from the first family home. The dog had to fight the cat at the oasis though, who persistantly jumped up onto our table to nick what he could.

With an afternoon to relax, I took a nap, whilst Jen took a dip in the pool and sunbathed. Didn`t last long though as the sun disappeared behind the mountain so she came back to wake me up and took this photo of me in my thermals.

Heading back out to the bar for happy hour, we grabbed a drink or two with our group and enjoyed a delicious pasta dish cooked by our guide himself.

Oh, here`s the little pescy cat who wouldn`t stay away from our food. The only way to stop him was to pick him up so the others could enjoy their food. He sat on my lap for most of the evening, whilst I forced him to stay there and out of trouble.

Another super early start, and this time we left in the dark with our headlamps on. The reason.....to get a good start on our 3 hour uphill trek before the sun came out to make things even harder. The other bloke in the group forgot his mobile phone, and after realising this only 15 minutes uphill, he went back to get it, leaving his girlfriend with the guide on the side of the path. Being as awesome as I am, the guide nominated me to be group leader and I trudged off at a slow pace with Jen and the other two Canadian girls in tow.

Not a whole lot to say about the mornings trek, other than the fact it sucked (in that it was super difficult, especially when the sun eventually came up). Little did we know this trek would prove to be good training for other altitute trekking we would take on. Anyway, arriving at the top, it was all high fives and cheers, followed by a nice group photo. You can see that we are all knackered with our tour guide not even with a heavy breath with his thumbs up.

Leaving the top, we came downhill ever so slightly and walked to the place for brekkie, passing by fields which had been farmed in the usual Incan way with terraces. Made for a pretty cool photo.




Grabbing brekkie we reflected on our mammoth journey across the Andes and were then ushered onto our minibus after a chat in the square with our tour guide. Just time for a few stops on the way back to Arequipa such as this viewpoint over the valley, where we could see more of the Incan and pre-Incan terracing.

Next stop was a small market village geared towards tourists. We got suckered in and paid a whole 2 soles (50p) for Jen to get a picture of a bird of prey sat on her head, not sure why the cowboy hat was needed.

Another stop was the hot springs, which were more like swimming pools pumped with the hot spring water. Anyway we chilled out here for a while, resting our achy muscles.

Penultimately we stopped at 5,000 metres to see a place where the locals had made loads of small rock piles for good luck. Wasn`t that interesting so no photo and left there quickly for our last stop, where there was a massive heard of lamas and alpacas, with this guy posing for us.

A good few days overall, but slightly tarnished when I noticed some weird green glupey stuff in the corner of Jen`s eye. Asking the Canadian girls if it was okay (as they turned out to be nurses), they said it was probably just a minor reaction to some dust. Days later the gamminess persisted and spread to both eyes which I found funny at times when we realised it was nothing serious, as it passed after 4 or so days.

With a few days to chill in Arequipa, we went and visited the museum that houses a famous mummy found on the mountains there which was more of a frozen body, but was interesting in that the mummy was a sacrificed 14 year old girl called `Juanita`by the Incan`s to appease their gods. Google it, quite interesting. We did plan to go to a monastry but bumped into Scott and Holly and drank the day away instead.

Arequipa done, next stop......Huachachina.

first stop in Peru = Arequipa.....time to party....or so we thought

Crossing the border from Chile and into Peru would prove annoying! All Brits are entitled to at least 183 days on their Peruvian travel visa but for some strange reason the douche bag border control guy decided to only permit us 30 days, which messes up everything as we have the inca trail lined up in 30 or so days meaning we obvisouly didn`t have enough days. This stressed Jen out somewhat and put her in a bit of a strop for the following few days despite my comical genious. Anyway, we got the hostel lady to ring up the immigrations office a week later and we were told that we would only have to pay an American Dollar for every day we stayed over or we could exit the country and come back in. Even though we should have more days, they wouldn`t give them to us by restamping, probably as they are after the money! O well, we`ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

So after the annoying border crossing we arrived to a place called Tacna, where no one travels to as it`s a horrible little town. It simple serves as a stop off to get to Arequipa. So with no Peruvian money we rocked up to the bus station and started our mission to find a reputable looking company to take us on to Arequipa. As soon as we stepped off the bus we were acosted by loads of blokes trying to sell us tickets, the boldest of which wouldn`t leave us alone and walked us about everywhere as we needed a cash point, which didnt work, so he walked us to another which also didn`t work but it did when we used the credit card. He then took us to the bus company he was working for urshering loads of other blokes offering us tickets away as we were obviously now "his" and ordered our tickets for us....looks like we were going with that company then! Turned out the 6  hour bus journey would only cost us 25 soles (about 6 quid) so we happily got these and then gave the bloke his tip which he asked for of course!

Rocking up to the bus we saw a girl who was in our hostel in Arica (Although we didn`t speak to her much there) and she told us she was on the same bus for 20 soles. Thought that was a bit odd so we checked her ticket which said 20 soles on then checked ours. Expecting to see "25 soles" written down we were surprised to see "15 soles" written there! Seems we got done over by 10 soles each, or 5 depending on how you look at it. O well, only a fiver between us.

Enough of being annoyed, we caught a taxi from the bus terminal in Arequipa along with that girl I mentioned along with a Chilean who didn`t speak a word of English as she was going to the same party hostel as us "Wild Rover" (Irish owned).

Being about dinner time, we ordered up some burgers from the hostel`s kitchen which turned out to be mega tasty, we thought we might be in for a winner with this hostel. Happy hour approached so we grabbed some beers on the cheap followed by some rum and cokes, pisco and cokes, anything that was on happy hour really.

Looking around, we started to realise that everyone was a bit clicky, hanging around in their same groups and thought they were the cool kids. Determined to have a good time ourselves we drank away but these kids didn`t wanna know anyone else. The "leader" who thought he was a funny boy (he really wasn`t) thought he was hilarious and did weird poses whilst lying on the bar much to the delight of his crew. I think I`ve laughed more when I once saw a McDonalds sign which had a yellow M instead of a golden one....now that was funny that.

To add to the annoyance of the clientele, literally everyone but us was smoking whilst at the bar, there was a smoking area about 5 feet away but no one seemed to care. That would be smokey clothes then. O well, we were determined to have a good night and drank away whilst cheap, and were met by the Chilean girl who didn`t know anyone else so we took pity on her and let her awkwardly stand next to me and Jen whilst my attempts of Spanish failed. There`s only so far "Como estas" can get you! Time for bed me thinks!

The next day we decided to see what Arequipa had to offer, rocking up first to the main square "Plaza de Armas" which was pretty cool.  Cool fountain in the middle surounded by nice architecture with the mountains in the backdrop.

.....even more impressive with the sun coming down

Saturday night approaching, it was time to party some more, this time with some actual nice people. They weren`t hard to find, this night would be the hostels 2nd year anniversary so they had gone all out and decked the place out along with a live band and other entertainers. This all meant that everyone was in party mood so we met lots of cool people pretty easily. It didn`t take long however for the same douche bag and his mate to dress up and take to the bar again, thinking they were hilarious.

They ended up doing this about 3 times, each time in a different outfit, such as a lycra body suit onesie thingy, this no funnier than the antics from the day before.

With me spending more money on drinks (cos I is bad azz) Jen opted to spend her share on getting some face paint, which she proudly paraded around for the rest of the night. I think more beer was the better choice personally.

After meeting some pretty cool people and having a fun night we decided to call it a night and headed back to our dorm. Now this is where the story of the "image that will never go away" starts! We were in a room with only two bunk beds..... me and Jen in the one, and two guys who didn`t know each other in the other. Being pretty merrily drunk from our activities we passed out in our beds pretty quick and were in for the night....that is until the guy from the bottom bunk turned up from a club at about 3am with a girl. They were obviously getting pretty cosy in the bed which is something you come to expect in a party hostel. However their lack of hostel etiquette (if there is such a thing) was something quite unexpected. After the blokes advances the girl finally gave in with "what...here?" and they started going at it on the bed about 3 feet away from us. Not really knowing what was going on in our half asleep drunk state I peered over to see literally everything that you wouldn`t want to see in that situation....the two of them at it, not even hidden under the covers, with his white arse bobbling up and down. Great sight. Thinking that old casanova would be done in a few minutes or at least cover themselves up I put up with it pretending they hadn`t woken us up. With her groans growing ever louder and literally 30 minutes later still in plain sight like they had forgotten they had a duvet or that others were in the room we had enough so I jumped out of my top bunk making the loudest sound I could and left the room, with Jen following me. Off we went to reception in an attempt to stop this live show (I`m not up for cock blocking but in this instance it had gone far enough!). The guys went to apparently sort it out so after about 15 minutes we went back to our room to find them lying still so off we went to sleep again. Literally about 10 minutes later, a white arse appears through the dark room and noises start happening. This time Jen isn`t having any of it so she says loudly "are you being serious" so their obvious answer was to leave the room stark naked and go to the toilet to finish off their little canoodles. A while later we hear the door open for the both of them to stroll back in still completely naked and settle into bed for the night, with is hoping we could now get some sleep.

A bit over 3 hours later and 8am arrives, for us to be woken up by yet more noises. I was in no mood to take any more of this, especially in our tired state so as soon as he even attempted anything I jumped outta bed again and said "I ain`t gott put up with this shit" and went out to the toilet for a wee wee. Seems I forgot that was their back up destination and gave them some evils as they both strolled into the toilet as I walked out, at least this time they had clothes on. If you think the story for us so far is bad, have you thought about the guy who was on the top bunk the whole time this was going on?! The poor guy was being rocked about everywhere, with the guy below not really attempting to hide his macho moves. Bless him though, the top bunk guy remained up there the whole time, either too drunk to notice or one hell of a resiliant chap.

Trying to put what had burnt into our eyes behind us, we went out to book a trek in Colca Canyon, which had some awesome treks where everyone based themselves at Arequipa before heading out. We also went and found a different hostel for before and after the trek as there was no way we were staying there again.

With the day behind us we went back to our hostel dorm to find that not only was this guy a inconsiderate douche, he was also a genious with his awesome attempt to conceal what was going on.

Not willing to go through this again we went to try and move rooms but there were none spare so we went back to our room sheepishly. However casanova genious boy over here seemed to have fell foul to assumption and was not joined by his lady friend in his fort knox of a bunkbed and we got a fairly decent nights sleep, even though we were sleeping with one eye open, ready to give him a piece of our mind should he attempt the same antics!

The next morning it was time to check out which we were more than happy to do! As we tried to tie up our bill from previous nights (they offered the dangerous bar tab system) we kind of knew what we had drunk and were surprised to be told our bill was a good 80 soles more than expected. We asked to see the list of drinks attributed to us which had magically been accompanied by 4 long island iced teas we didn`t drink as well as 4 blood bombs which we didn`t even know what they were. We made her go back through the records and got them stricken off and got out of there paying what we owed with not a second thought to the worst hostel we had been in, in all of South America.

With one night remaining before our early morning start to our 3 day Colca Canyon trek, we settled into our new hostel and chilled with a film and got a decents night sleep.

Arica..ca..ca...ca...ca

With Argentina ticked off the list a few weeks ago, it was time to do the same to Chile by visiting our last stop, Arica. It´s pretty northern (no different accents or chips and gravy here though) and it´s on the coast giving us a pretty easy route into Southern Peru.

Rocking up at the bus terminal pretty early in the morning, we had read that it wasn´t the safest place to hang around, so we slung on our packs as soon as we stepped off the bus and scurried out of the station with our heads down. With some rough directions of go down this road and then its half the block down this road we set off and found our hostel pretty easily. Ross the kiwi owner welcomed us and luckily our private room hadn´t been taken the night before so they showed us straight to our room, and following a short break for brekkie at 7am, we crashed out in our new home away from home (Jack do you want to get any cheesier?!)

A fair few hours later and we were ready to eat so off we strolled into town. Claiming it was a 15 minute walk, we didn´t really know if we had gone the right way after 15 minutes, on a road that wasn´t really on our map (er yes it was), but we followed it anyway and ended up in town after 30 minutes. Jen had done her research so we headed straight to the pier where we would meet some larger than life friends. These guys were everywhere, must have been about 15 of them, some swimming about, some trying to eat plastic bottles, others just chilling out on the rocks waiting for the fish heads and offcuts the fisherman throw in the water (would be my option if I were a sea lion).

The sea lions weren´t the only ones waiting to get in on the free fishy action, there were about 100 pelicans or cormorons or whatever they were (I´m sure Jen will chime in with their name when she edits, apparently I´m not trusted to blog myself - no you are not but on this occassion i dont know the correct name). These guys were lining the roofs, waddling around the pier, on the rocks with the sea lions, the boldest even trying to nick some fish from the mongers when they weren´t looking.

After amusing ourselves watching animals for a bit, and after Jen´s 100th photo, we settled into a little restuarant on the pier which wasn´t our first choice, but that was fully packed. Turned out to be a blessing in disguise as the other place was really nice and dead cheap. Being on a pier. of course the menu was seafood based and after we sat down the waitress said something to me and in my usual annoying way I always just reply with "Si" and it usually works out ok. This time however it didn´t as the waitress didn´t come back for absolutely ages, she must have asked if we had been served or something. O well, after flagging down a different waitress we finally got some munch down us. Seafood soup followed by fried fish all washed down with a beer, Jen with a shandy.

After a brief look around town we headed back and chilled out and I streamed some sporting event on the internet, been a while since I´ve blogged so don´t really remember what it was! Following sport we realised that the shops were shut as May 1st was their equivalent of our bank holiday, and asked the hostel staff where we could eat. "Round the corner" was their response so off we went. Not finding anything for 10 minutes Jen was getting stressed out (I was not) but we eventually found a fast food place which was luckily a Jack classic for dinner......chicken and chips.....which was awesome......half a big chicken, a mountain of chips and a massive salad which was accompanied by only a tiny 250ml bottle of coke. We yammed that down and headed back to drink some water after being parched from the meal and lack of coke.

The following day we were keen to take in some local culture. Arica was famous for it´s museum´s with mummies in them, as the Chilean´s mummified their dead up to 3,000 years before the Egyptians did yet the pesky Egyptians got all the credit, I don´t see Chilean mummies being taught in school....who the f is Tutankhamun anyway.

But anyway, they had excavated the mummies. Not sure what you can make out in the photo but there are 3 mummies lying flat at the back and three skulls at the front. Sorry if you didn´t want to see that, but its educational people!

Obviously not content with our intake of the dead, we strolled off down the road with a sketchy map and found a graveyard that Ross the Kiwi had recommended as it was really colourful, unlike any other graveyard you´d ever come across normally.

Flagging down a taxi, we headed back to town. The taxi driver had lived in New York a few years back and was keen to practice his English. He was really sound actually and said how Chilean´s thought English pound coins were lucky and after we were desperate to give him one (as he was so sound) we realised my wallet with English money in was back at the hostel. Sorry cabbie.

Getting dropped off in town we ventured back to the pier area as Jen fancied trying the local delicacy, Cebiche which is basically raw fish marinaded in lemon with some onion thrown in there. Sounded disgusting to me but Jen seemed to like it and tried to force me to eat some for about 15 minutes which I refused which annoyed her somewhat. But that ish just ain´t gonna happen!

I instead went back to the same restuarant we had been yesterday as I had spied a seafood empanada which was absolutely awesome when I ate it.

The afternoon would be much of the same cultural activites, this time a museum but on top of a bigass hill which wasn´t that welcome. Head´s down we marched up the hill thingie, stopping for loads of breaks, even getting beaten to the top by some fat dude (I blame Jen for slowing us down) - (er we had one break and the fat dude was ahead of us from the start anyway!)

Was pretty cool when we were up there though. We went into a war museum and some dude was keen to film us "looking natural" at the displays, everytime we glanced around he told us not to. We did see an actual German Luger which was cool, mainly cos soldiers prized them and I´ve seen Band of Brothers so I know all about this shizzle.

They clearly had taken some short cuts on expenses and purchased some shop mannequins to display the war time clothing, clearly detectable by their slightly camp poses. Jen with all her museum-y knowledge wasn´t too impressed - but found it amusing.

However, me being a slightly immature male, was impressed with the guns on show so I obviously had to pretend I was some kind of soldier.

Being on the top of the hill they obviously put a statue up there, as seems to be the custom out here. Big hill = statue, this time a poor man´s version of Christ Redeemer.

Getting back down we were keen to see the famed builded in Arica, a church designed by the same architect as the chap who did the Eiffel Tower. After looking around a bit we think it was this one, not 100% sure but we convinced ourselves it was.

Retiring back to the hostel, we were hungry and decided to go back to the chicken and chips place as it was so awesome and cheap, this time sneaking in a litre of coke to wash it all down with. After stuffing our faces yet again we headed back to the hostel for our last night in Chile. Next stop....Peru!

The driest desert in the world!

If it`s not one of my mates bugging me to update the blog, it`s Jen! so here I go again.

Having spent some time by the sea side, we thought it was time to do the exact opposite, and surround ourself in sand, and what better way to do so than visiting the driest desert in the world, San Pedro de Atacama. 

Arriving in the morning, we jumped on facebook and got in touch with our mate Cyrille who was in the same place, and went out for lunch with him along with our new mate Tori who followed us from La Serena (and for some reason decided I was awesome as I managed to order the three of us a bus ticket in my limited amount of Spanish, which turned out to be better than Jen`s and Tori`s combined.....De Nada).

The hostel was pretty awesome, with the sun beaming down onto the open style communal area we relaxed in the hammocks and played some table tennis until 1pm when we agreed to meet Cyrille.

Walking down the streets to lunch, the town was like something out of a Western movie, simple dirt roads lined by one story buildings....very dingy but quite cool at the same time. Grabbing lunch we all ordered some kind of burger (annoyingly there were no chips on offer and even more annoyingly...no beer!) and the other three burgers came out all looking delicious. Waiting on mine I was getting even more hungry and a little annoyed as they all sat there yamming food, but eventually mine came out which turned out to be two pathetically small patties on a plate with no bun, and a bit of salad on the side. Now when you order something described as "two hamberguesas and salad" you`d expect an actual burger to come out! With Jen taking pity on me she cut her massive awesome looking burger in half and i gave her half of my stuff so we both had a kind of burger chicken thing cross over which ended up being pretty nice. 

After that mishap of a lunch we were keen to book into one of two of the main activities to do here in San Pedro....sandboarding! (the other being star gazing as its one of the best places in the world to do this).

This sandboarding would turn out to be a little different to the kind of sandboarding that we had expected as fortunately we had timed our trip alongside a full moon. Meaning instead of the normal afternoon sandboarding, we would go at midnight lit by the full moon. You can`t turn down an experience like that! Unfortunately Tori fell ill so it was just the 3 of us (along with the randoms on the group).

After a pretty hair-raising minibus ride through the sand dunes down tiny little path things that they described as "roads" we rocked up to a massive sand dune which was in ´death valley´,where there was already our very own personal DJ blarring out music. Seeing as we were in the desert with the nearest town San Pedro being a good 30 minutes away by car, no one could hear us so we could make as much noise as we wanted!

Kitting up with music cutting through the darkness, we posed for a few photos.....

....told you we were posing!

Then we set off up the sand dune which was a right mission! We were already at altitude, just shy off 3000 metres above sea level, and with sandboard we trudged up the sand, with it giving way with each step it took an age to get up there.

Finally up there we got our feet into the foot clamp thingies and were given a few tips by the guides. However this is all we would recieve and with no practice run we were just told to do it!

No problem for our mate Cyrille who snowboards all the time in his hometown of Lyon, we watched him effortless glide down (even though he did fall over himself claiming that the two sports were entirely different). After much persuasion, Jen finally plucked up the courage to do it herself, as I was taking photos so she had to go first.......and she got all of about 3 metres. You can just about make her out here.

I wasn`t much better though but managed to slide down at least 10 metres before I wiped out (I believe thats the term right?!)

Having had a bit of a rush on our first ever sandboarding experience we had forgot that we needed to do the same walk back up the dune to go back downwards again......which I felt with the altitude but also my accummulated mass of steak and wine sitting in my belly. After taking a good five minute lie down at the top I was ready to go again.

But I used the excuse of a team photo to catch some more breath before heading back down to inevitably crash again.

And unsurprisingly, I was on the floor again, which Jen thought was hilarious as it was quite a harsh fall. As she came over to what I thought would be her helping me up, she instead unzipped my pocket to get my camera and take this shot of me trying to wriggle my way up which is pretty tricky when you`ve never had a sandboard strapped to your feet before.

Back up at the top again I caught a pretty cool photo of Jen sandboarding. No wait, no I didn`t, this is a picture of Jen stationary at the top, but it does kinda look like it`s an action shot. And at no point was Jen this good to actaully be standing up on her board....sorry Jen! (er Jack, you must of missed me that time I went down almost the whole way without falling over!)

After three walks up the dune we thought it was time for a beer courtesy of the tour guides. The only thing to mention about this photo is Cyrille`s attempt at rivalling my beard. Don`t think he achieved the awesomeness that my beard did before shaving it off.

After asking the tour guides how many times people normally took the walk up the dune and being told it was usually 6 or 7, the three of us begrudingly went up another 3 times seeing as we had only done 3 ourselves, stopping for a beer inbetween each and progressively getting worse on the sandboard as a result. It was a pretty awesome experience though, being in the desert with only a handfull of people, the fall moon in the sky and so many stars, whilst listening to some rave music.

The following day Jen and I went on an afternoon tour of the moon valley (actually lunar valley), named so because of the terrains similarity to that of the moon. It was a surreal place, and kinda did look like the moon I guess (not that I`ve ever been) but more importantly we could see the sand dune in the picture below that we had to trek up with boards the night before.....yeah, that big thing on the left!

There was also a overhanging ledge over the valley which everyone stopped for a pic on. Me and Jen have never edged into a position so slowly (no jokes please) with a massive drop beneath us.

Next up on the tour was a salt cave in the valley where we would have to be back on our hands and knees to get through.

Brought back memories of Ilha Grande, but no awesome views whilst snorkeling at the end of this cave.

However, with a much smaller ledge of about a metre outside the cave, I did what any normal person would do in this situation, and make Jen take a picture of me doing some sweet Matrix moves. Neo ain`t got ish on me.

Apparently these rocks on route were famous, called the three Marias, even though there are now only two of them (the one of the left was broken by a tourist supposedly, hence the rocks prohibiting you to go nearer nowadays). The guide told us that they looked like a pregnant woman, a woman preying to the sky and a woman knealing. She then said you had to use your imagination to see it, seems Chilean`s have pretty weird imaginations.

The last stop on the tour was to see the valley from a view point by sunset, which brought out the amazing colours in the rocks.

With night time approching we cooked up some amazing pasta in the limited tiny kitchen only for our friend Sarah to stroll in who we had met on the Navimag boat. So what did we do......played some drinking games of course with her and others in our hostel and planned to go on a bike ride the following day with her.

The next morning she turned up with a really sound German guy named Sergio from her hostel (as she had to move hostels the next day) and we went off on a bike ride with a French guy (ironically named Francois) from our hostel. Some Inca ruins were on the cards which were about 5k away from our hostel down more dirt roads. Pretty cool view when we got there.

With 5 bikes and only 2 locks we locked up 2 bikes together and the other 3 together only for us to have no idea where the key was for the lock securing 3 bikes! Ironically just as I closed the lock I said ´lets hope we  haev the key for this´. The 5 of us searched for a good 15 minutes and couldnt find it so we decided we were never given a key so we best get it sorted early and sent back Sarah and Sergio to go and argue with the tour bike lady that she hadnt gave us a key. Me, Jen and Francois couldnt work out what was going on as Sarah swore she had a key for the lock, so I decided to go and have one last look....and of course I found it sitting randomly on a step where no-one had looked. Running back to tel Jen and Francois I would go after them and then back to the bike (which in itself was an effort at altitude) I raced off on my now free bike to try and catch them up. Going as quick as I could, I couldn`t catch them, probably hindered by the fact I flew off my bike when trying to bezz it super fast in the sand, and finally caught up with them at the tour office, just as the woman was starting to have a go at them.

Following a leisurely bike ride back as I was absolutely breathing out my arse at altitude, we set off up the inca ruins, with me struggling to catch my breath depicted in this photo below.

After the ruins you could also walk up a long uphill path to a viewpoint, coming across this weird unexplained circular thingy so we obviously got in the middle of it for a photo.

Back down from the viewpoint and we only had an hour left to get the bikes back, we set off on one more short bike ride to see a gate thingy that Sergio knew about. With Jen saying she wasn`t going to do death road in La Paz the whole journey I had to point out that she successfully rode down this path on the way which is about 10 times thinner than death road, ignoring the fact that if you fell off here you would have about 3 feet to roll compared to thousands of feet on death road!

And to the gate we arrived, which had a weird head carving on the left. There was some significance here as when the Inca`s invaded they beheaded the locals who resisted and put them on poles giving the valley the name "valley of the heads".

Cultural activities done, we settled back into drinking games at the hostel with our good friend Ron costing 2 quid. Sarah came along with her friend from ther UK who flew out to meet her that very day and with her first day in Chile, Sarah brought her along just for drinking games (I like her style). Following drinking games the night before with Ron, we discovered that it was 2 quid a bottle for a reason and tasted like pee, leading Jen to be sober for the night....didn`t stop me from reaquainting myself with Ron though.

The next day we just chilled in San Pedro until it was time to get the bus to our last stop in Chile.....