Get Thee to a Nunnery

Yes, it's true. It seemed the worst had finally happened and my iPod, my source of familiarity and instant homesickness cure had died. Panic ensued; could it be repaired? Could I buy a new one? Could the budget cope with either of these situations? These questions were certainly not going to be answered in Bolivia.

Peru is a lot cheaper than the UK with the average price of a hostel bed in a dorm at £5-£8. Bolivia is even cheaper with our private room with TV and supposed hot shower (at this point icy cold and death-risk) at £3. Not too bad. We'd come to see Lake Titicaca, the highest commercially navigable lake in the world at 3 800 m. One of the largest islands in the lake is the Isla Del Sol which, every morning at 8.30am, a load of boats take unsuspecting gringos over to (~ 2 h journey) to get exhausted and burnt. Due to the fact that there's so much water you forget that you're still at high altitude given that you're climbing between 3 800 and 4 000 m, you really feel it. The views are spectacular though and along the way we bumped into one of the Irish Couchsurfers from Juan Carlos' place back in Cuzco. He decided to take issue with the fact that there are checkpoints along the hike where you have to pay Bs5 or Bs 10 ( 50p or £1) and had a fight with one of the money collectors. We headed off so we didn't see the outcome but I believe he paid in the end. The boat picked us up at the other end of the island and we headed back to Copacabana for a hamburger in one of the touristy bars. Good chips mind.

The next day it was another bus to Puno and then to Arequipa - the second biggest city in Peru. We were joined on the bus to Puno by a load of people most of whom were trying to Cuzco but as there was a major transport strike on, there was little chance of that despite the fact that some of them had paid extra for their bus to take a "detour" so they could get there anyway. A couple of them decided to come to Arequipa instead and joined us on the bus.

It was a fairly exciting ride. For one thing, there was no toilet on the bus and as it was a 6 h journey, this meant no drinking and thus lots of dehydration. It also turned out to be a driving street market with people getting on every so often to try and sell us things. One particular gentleman spent about half an hour shouting a lecture about coca leaves and their possibly being banned before ranting on about the magic cure all which he was selling (effected against syphilis and herpes amongst other things I gathered). We politely declined and were relieved when he got off the bus. We rolled into Arequipa and got a taxi to our hostel - part of a chain called "Point Hostels". The hostel itself was nice enough and the desk staff friendly but it became dreadfully apparent that there was a large group of staff members getting extremely drunk, loud and unpleasant in the bar and they continued this 'till quite late. I'm usually one to live and let live but these guys were also being unpleasant and extremely disrespectful to the locals who also worked there making food and cleaning rooms etc. We had the evening meal which was very nice and we made sure we said so to the Peruvian lady who made it. In short, don't stay at Point Hostels unless you’ve heard that they've cleaned up their act and laid off their freeloading staff.

Anyhow, we met our Couchsurfer, Andrew the next morning. He's from Wyoming and has spent his life teaching English in a number of different places including South Korea, Ecuador and Botswana to name just a few. He uses it as a means to travel and live in different places - great work if you can get it. He took us into the centre of town and for a fantastic lunch at one of the local establishments. We then took a walk around ourselves to see if we could take a trip to the Colca Canyon, about 3 h drive away. We could have done but most of the trips involved staying there at least one night with a 3.00am get up and after our Inca Trail and Jungle experiences, we felt more inclined to have a quite few days. We did decide to do a little Arequipa sightseeing though (we usually avoid paying for stuff) and next day visited the Santa Catalina monastery.

When the Spanish took over Peru they brought Catholicism with them and it didn't take long for monks and nuns to follow. To this end, a number of monasteries and convents were built including this one. I have to say that it was stunning and was a lovely, peaceful, relaxing place to hang out. You could hardly believe that there was a bustling city outside the walls. We spent several hours exploring, admiring the paintwork, artwork and big clay ovens that the nuns would have used. Charlotte quite fancied taking holy order if it afforded the opportunity to live there but alas…

The real nuns live next door as the original monastery was evacuated after earthquake damage (Arequipa is built on the side of an active volcano) but it was our gain - a real highlight for me and, as you’ll see on Flickr no effort was required taking nice photos of it.

We also met Momia Juanita, the Inca Ice maiden who’d been found on one of the mountains nearby. She’d been perfectly preserved in the ice for ~500 years before being melted out by one of the volcanic eruptions. She rolled down the mountain about 100 feet and her face was exposed to the sun for a bit so it was bleached and a slightly damaged but she really is amazingly preserved.

That evening Andrew and Maru made us “Pastel De Papa” which is a Peruvian potato dish a bit like potatoes dauphinois. It was served with a spicy orange sauce called “Ocopa”. All delicious - both of these you can find on the recipes page. Incidentally, there was some discussion about Burns (Charlotte has it on the Couchsurfing profile that I do Burns poetry) so the second serving of Pastel De Papa was addressed as a haggis. Peruvian shandies (beer and Inca Cola) and sweet red wine were drunk, tunes were played and the Gay Gordons was demonstrated again - a great evening.

The next day we decided to try and have a normal day as if we were at home so we went to the cinema to see “Wall Street”. It was a bit financial and complex but good and I was struck by how much Michael Douglas looks like my grandfather (Alan’s side). Our final meal with our lovely Couchsurfers was my classic home-made hamburgers with apricots and tattie wedges. I really did beging to feel like I was back home. That feeling was accentuated when, that evening my iPod magically started working again. I don’t like to count my chickens but at the time of writing it is behaving as if nothing ever happened. I’m really glad as it makes such a difference to the long journeys.

We now had two days before our flight from lima to Cuba so we decided to be safe rather than sorry and head to Lima two days early using the posh bus service, Cruz Del Sur. It couldn’t have been more different to the crazy Julsa bus from Puno to Arequipa. At the bus station we were scanned for weapons before getting on the bus where we found on-board cabin crew, TVs (3 movies were shown during the journey), blankets, pillows, dinner, breakfast and even bingo. The combination of that and my now healthy iPod made the 16 h journey pleasurable. We arrived in Lima this morning and we’re now staying at the Pariwana hostel – really nice and a big contrast to the nasty Point Hostel in Arequipa. Today we took around Lima which despite being a crazy big city actually has some really nice buildings. We took in the Chinatown and had some of the Chinese-Peruvian crossover food. We even came across another possibly ethnological event which along with the really cool green crossing man in Arequipa is part of our Peru video.

Although we’re not staying with Couchsurfers here, we have been invited to a pot-luck Couchsurfing party tomorrow so our main job tomorrow is to try and make some shortbread to contribute. Given that the hostel oven is pretty dodgy and there’s no dish to make it in, this could be very interesting.

Love to all.