Apologies for not updating for a while, but far too much has been happening. I'm not quite sure why, but everything's suddenly started to get really exciting, and there hasn't been much time for mundane things like interneting. Which has ultimately got to be a good thing. But to rewind all the way back to the Peruvian coast, which really does seem like a long time ago, after Nazca we went onto Arequipa, a gorgeous white Spanish-esqe city in the middle of the desert, yet surrounded by snow-capped volcanos - very bizarre. We spent a couple of very luxurious and chilled days there eating a lot of cake (with hot showers and fluffy towels and toilet paper and everything, also the snuggliest pillows encountered all trip). Inbetween eating cake we went and paid a vist to Sarita, a 17 year old girl sacrificed on a nearby mountain by the Incas, perfectly perserved in ice for 500 years (they do seem to like their mummies over here), and also checked out the lovely Santa Catalina convent. Which was like a little city within a city with streets and courtyards and buildings all made out of white volcanic rock, but painted bright blue and red and orange, with colourful flowers everywhere. It was a beautiful place to wander round for a couple of hours in the sunshine.

After Arequipa we crossed the border into Chile (new passport stamp, woohoo!), and had a bit of a shock with the once-again Western prices. We spent a stopover night in Arica, which, even though it was only an hour from the Chilean border, was much more noticeably Westernised and developed. Becky, Andrea and I decided to cook everyone roast dinner with apple crumble instead of going out and spending even more money, and that was an amazing much needed little bit of Englishness.

After Arica we went onto San Pedro, a tiny white and dusty pink oasis village in the middle of the driest desert on Earth (how cool!). Some of us biked out to the 'valley of the Moon' for sunset, and aside from the fact that it was the toughest bike ride I've ever done (largely due to the fact that I was trying to keep up with five guys in the middle of a bloody desert), that became the third coolest moment of expedition, with some of the craziest landscape imaginable. NASA test their space buggies in the Atacama desert, and it really did feel like we were on the surface of another planet. We went clambering through some caves, watched sunset from the top of a sand dune, and then cycled back in the dark without any lights, which was insane.

(To be continued...)