Hola amigos. We are coming to you live from the warm and rocky cactus-town of Arequipa in southern Peru. Apparently we are television stars in Australia care of channel 7 news and a local natural disaster, so we decided to leave Cusco before our stardom got too out of hand. We thought that the best way to celebrate surviving our first trek would be to book in for another one! Before that however we made a few days' stopover in Puno to visit Lake Titicaca (loving that name!). Within an hour of stepping off the bus we found ourselves in the middle of one of Peru's most colourful and musical street festivals - talk about luck being with us this trip! Hundreds of dancing groups and marching bands from all over the country paraded through the town for hours.
We took a Lake Titicaca overnight tour, where we walked on and met the traditional inhabitants of floating islands made entirely of reeds! These islands are so floating in fact that they can move up to 10km in location with strong winds. It was a bit touristy but really interesting. To contrast the floating islands we stayed overnight at Amantani Island with a local family. We ate meals in their very basic kitchen which was powered by a single solar panel, slept in a room which was made out of mud bricks. A beautiful family, incredibly thankful when presented with rice, pasta and chocolate. Such a simple and stress free life!
Today we are heading back from our Colka Canyon trek. It was a 3 day trek staying at a family run homestead the first night and at a tropical oasis (made for tourists) the second night. The first day began at 3am to drive 6hours away where our trek would begin. We stopped at a sight to see Condors (amazingly large birds) before heading to our starting point. The trek was easy for the first 2 days but today was a 7km trek up a mountain starting at 5:30am, climbing a total of 1.2 vertical km as well. Both Pinni and TK are very proud of TK for making it up in one piece and not succombing to giving up and climbing onto a passing donkey.
That's it for this last week. Tonight we catch an overnight bus (first class, if you don't mind) to Huacachina for 2 days of relaxing, sandboarding, dune-buggy riding, boat trips around sea-lion laden islands, hammocks, swimming pools and of course sleep! Shit it´s a hard life over here!!
New photos are up as well - it's easier to scroll through them on slideshow.
Wish you were here 
Love, Pinni and TK xx
