Awesome treks and eating pets...

After several nights in the Amazon Jungle and the Inca Trail we have finally returned to electricity and the blogging world! What an absolutely fantastic` time we have been having here in Peru.

The Inca Trail was without a doubt one of the most incredible times of our trip. It was challenging, it was rewarding and it was so much fun! 42km over 4 days with an altitude gain of 1500m to finish in Machu Picchu.

This hiking business is tiring!

Conquering the highest peak on the Trai

At the end of the hike with our two fantastic guides

The incredible view from our campsite on the last night

We had a huge and and inspiring team with us. We had the eight of us in our team doing the trek, with a support team of 12 (two guides, two cooks and nine porters). The porters were out of this world. Most of them were built like scrawny halfbacks. They each carried around 20kg on their backs. We had about 3kg. We were walking and stopping. They ran. They were absolute machines. We had fairly low expectations for the food on the trail. I mean everything we were going to eat had to be carried in and then cooked on a little gas cooker. However our expectations were completely exceeded. This would be an example of our daily eating:

5.30am. Wake up call to the tent. Two porters bring us coca tea and let us know they have water outside our tent to wash our hands. They will be waiting with paper towels when we are ready to be dried!

6am. Breakfast. Porridge, toast and jam, pancakes. More coca tea.

11am. Lunch. Starts with an entree, something small and intricately prepared like chicken crepes. Followed by amazing soup. Followed by the main course, often a selection of vegetables, potatoes, chicken, rice or pasta. Then some more coca tea before we walk again.

4.30pm. Post walking afternoon tea. Hot chocolate, popcorn and biscuits. Hit the spot every day.

7pm. Dinner. Another three courses. The last night consisted of an entree of roast chicken stuffed with herbs, soup, fried rice, potatoes, beef and (amazingly) cake.

You can see that any hopes of weight loss on the Inca Trail were rapidly lost! The second day of the Inca Trail is what most people find the most challenging. It involves lots of stair climbing and hill work, but we managed well and really enjoyed it. Day three was the most challenging for us because there was torrential rain for about 6 hours. We had to get to the next campsite, so we just had to keep walking. We were so wet and so cold, it seemed to be a battle as to whether pneumonia or hypothermia would occur first. But we slogged it out, made it safely and then had the most richly deserved Kit Kat chunky in the history of the world.

Machu Picchu

After finishing the trail we arrived in Machu Picchu. Just amazing- best to check out the photos, but what an incredible place that totally lived up to its reputation. After here we were treated to a double blessing- riding on a bus listening to the Beegees on panpipes, followed by a great Bledisloe Cup game.

We've just been out for dinner here in Puno tonight and we were feeling regrettably adventorous. One of the local specialites here is fried guinea pig. If it's not bad enough that you're eating what we would call a common pet, they put the entire animal on the plate. You see eyes, teeth, little claws... very hard to eat. Safe to say our guinea pig quota has been filled for the remainder of our lives.

Anyone hungry?

South America - fresh juices and cow heart

We do apologise for our blog absence! We have had a fantastic start to our time in South America. It feels like we were on holiday in the USA, but in South America we are really travelling. We are experiencing the challenges of learning a new language, tap water we can't drink and surroundings that are foreign. But we've already had the rewards of meeting some really great people, trying wonderful new foods and getting a second wind for travelling. Some highlights of South America so far:

1. Jugo de Naturales - Fresh, cheap freshly squeezed fruit juices. There are fruits we know and fruits we have never heard of. It's been a lot of fun just pointing to an unknown word on the juice menu and seeing what comes back.

Cheap fruit juice is the bestest!

2. Family life in Lima, Peru - We have just had three days staying with the family of our friend in New Zealand, Oliver. Four generations living under one roof. We spoke very little Español, whilst their English varied from completely non-existent to quite good. As a result our Spanish improved a lot, as did our sign language. On a side note, we will be taking some formal Spanish classes in Quito, Ecuador. After researching online, we have decided not to go for the company whose tag line was "Enrol today and start your curse tomorrow".

The wonderful family we stayed with in Peru

3. Progressive Colombia - Bogota was such a fun city, with so many cool things going on. Every Sunday, they closed the majority of the roads off to cars, and every car has a day of the week where they are not allowed to drive. This gave us the perfect opportunity to go on a bike tour! The government also has a philosophy that every citizen should have access to culture and the arts. As a result there a lots of very cool free things to do, and very cheap museums and art performances.

Bike tour!

Colombia has lots of great colour

Street art is everywhere, and it's all awesome

4. The cost of living - Jess got a really good haircut today for the equivalent of $2.90. Enough said.

5. Water fountains - We had a hilarious and wonderful night at a water fountain park in Lima. Our highlight was one particular water fountain which spurts up from the ground, with a dry spot in the middle for people to stand in. With its random sequence, it would occasionally stop entirely for a few moments, allowing people to run to the centre. We thought it looked fun, so dashed during the long pause to get to the middle - completely dry. Unfortunately on the way out, we mistook a rather short pause for a long pause and got stuck. We had to wait out a very long, and very wet 50 seconds, as we got drenched. The solution? Laugh, and pose for photos.

Crossing the fountain, trying to anticipate the water sequence

Water fountain fail!

Unfortunately Jess got a massive dose of homesickness when she first arrived in Colombia, while Chris felt it during the All Blacks v. Australia rugby match. But now that we've had some time to adjust, we are so glad that we've come to South America as it's brought a real sense of refreshment to our travelling. We were at risk of feeling a bit "over" our nomadic lifestyle, but the life and variety of this continent has gone far in reigniting our sense of wonder. Yay! Having adventures in other countries has made us appreciate the joys of home so much more, but we are still so excited for the next 3 months in South America. Tomorrow is our first day on a two week organised tour, where we get to walk the Inca Trail, visit Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, and spend a couple of nights in the Amazon. Coolest fortnight EVER. We'll let you know how it goes!

In the main square of Lima, Peru

Chris works his new alpaca jumper

Cow heart, anyone?

Goodbye to the Big Country!

This blog is brought to you by the transit lounge at Mexico City Airport, where we have spent most of our day. But if we're in transit, that can only mean one thing... we've left America! Indeed, we flew out of Texas this morning after 3 months travelling around, visiting old friends, making new friends, covering some serious distance and eating more burgers than we'd like to admit.

We have experienced so much in the last 90 days that it would be difficult to give it justice with anything less than an essay. So to save time we decided to share some signficant numbers and let the data speak for itself!

The Numbers:

29 - Different states visited
9,000 - Miles driven (that's 14,000 kilometres for our metric buddies)
0 - Times Jess had been called ma'am before coming to the America
5 - Pairs of (admittedly cheap) sunglasses bought and then accidentally broken by Jess
400 - Times people asked Jess to repeat her name
3 - Sleepless hours spent the first night in Yellowstone, worrying about the risk of a bear eating our faces off
1 - Actual bears seen in Yellowstone
200 - Metres from which above-mentioned bear was seen from...thank goodness!
7 - Times we opened our toiletry bags to find a bottle had popped open and spilt over all our stuff. Sigh.
1 - Bald eagles seen up close in the wild
100 - Percentage of how awesomely bad-ass Bald Eagles are
23 - Times we were told that New Zealanders had cool accents
1 - Times we were told that New Zealanders spoke good English

We've had huge highs and some exhausted lows, and truly loved staying with all the wonderful people who hosted us. There are places we'd love to visit again, like New York City and New Orleans, and there are places we would happily never see again (we're talking to you, Oklahoma City!). All in all, it has been an amazing time and we are bummed to be leaving!

Also, check out a few more photos (below) from the U.S. that we never had the opportunity to post. 

The next leg of our journey takes us to South America, where we have another three months to see Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile. It's going to be really daunting at times, cos we've undoubtedly taken the ease of communicating with everyone in English rather for granted! But you know what they say - a change is as good as a holiday ;)

We ate so many burgers that if you cut us, we'd bleed ketchup.

The Golden Gate Bridge - she's a beauty!

The attitude towards the military was different to anything we'd encountered before.

Making pumpkin pie! Overly excited.

Chris' eerily spot on interpretation of American fashion

Yusssss.

This guy...

Glad to see we aren't the only people who find squirrels constantly amusing!

Awkward moments abound when you try contra dancing for the first time.

A sunset in the Florida keys is nothing to scoff at!

Waiting with 200 others to watch some ducks waddle down a red carpet = a good day.

 Using graffiti'd roadside art to make a wedding gift for our friends

The Grand Canyon is super impressive

We're not in Kansas any more, Toto.

Today we drove all the way through the state of Kansas, from Colorado to Missouri. 10 hours on one very long and straight road. Unfortunately Kansas doesn't seem to have a whole lot going for it, post Dorothy and Toto. It’s not to say that it doesn't have tourist attractions, it’s just that the attractions are, hmmm…. unique? Signs that we have passed so far have included:

“World’s largest Prairie Dog”

“World’s largest Czech egg” (If you know what that is, please tell us)

“Come see the five legged cow”

Lesson learnt: don't eat whatever they're feeding the animals! We also stopped at a petrol station to overhear an incredible conversation:

Lady 1: Did I tell you I’m going on vacation?

Lady 2: No! Where?

Lady 3: Vietnam…. Oh sorry, I mean Jamaica. I always get those two mixed up.

So…the people of the Midwest seem to be an interesting bunch. When we weren’t passing billboards showing a huge picture of renaissance-era Jesus, we were driving alongside trucks with bumper stickers saying “Guns only have two enemies: rust and politicians”.

Next: back to Nashville!