God I feel rough.

well well, it´s been an eventful week. I´ve been travelling in high speed mode for the last few weeks, and now it´s finally all over. I fly to lima tomorrow morning and then fly to london the following day, arriving on friday. So this is the end of an era. I´ll still be writing my blog but I can´t see it being as interesting... at least I´ll have more to moan about!! Anyway, there´s still a day in lima which I´ve heard is pretty crazy....

So what have i been up to? I´ll tell you....

I caught a bus from La Paz to Copacabana, a small touristy town on lake titikaka. On the bus with me was a very large family of what i assume were rich bolivians. It´s funny, but looking at them emphasised the gap between rich and poor here much more than comparing myself to the locals. I think maybe it´s because everything they wore seemed to say "Look at me, I have all thengs that you want". At first I was quite disgusted by them, and then I thought about it and realised that everything I own may not look expensive, but it probably cost more than all the tacky goods they were touting combined. The mother had a big white puffer jacket and a fancy hairdo, the kids all had immaculately clean clothes, digital watches, mobile phones, trendy hair cuts etc... but then my watch, which looks like it´s seen better days, actually cost S$250, and my fleece cost 35 quid etc etc... It was when the poor kids got on the bus seeling ice creams that the contrast became most apparant. To see to groups of children, the same age, and yet so infinitely different, really hit home how clearly unfair a world this is....

Anyway, the bus journey was pretty uneventful except for having nice chat with a peruvian lady who was sat next to me. She told me how to see muchu pichu on the cheap, so I wrote down the details for later....

When we arrived in Copacobana, I dumped my big backpack and headed straight for the Isla Del Sol, which I´d heard was really great. A few hours later I was chilling on a balcony looking out over the sea with my new found friend George the australian. We went for a walk around the island before the sun set. The people who live on the island live a very simple life, eeking out a living from farming and tourism. The kids are all adorable, and they know it, asking you to take their pictures and then commanding "Pay me!".

The next morning I walked 8 km´s up to the north of the island to see some inca ruins. It was just a load of old rocks! I couldn´t believe it! Then i got the boat back to copacobana and found a hotel. Inside my room it was like a meat freezer. I was so cold that i couldn´t do anything, so i decided to take a hot shower. big mistake. As I stood in the bathroom naked, my hand turning blue as I checked and rechecked the temperature of the ice cold water, i noticed that the top of the electric shower was missing and it was just a mass of tangled wires. Protruding from there wires was a switch. Now I don´t normally consider myself a stupid person, but I have to admit, sticking my wet hand in amongst those wires whilst standing naked on a wet bathroom floor wasn´t the brightest thing I´ve ever done. As the 240 Volts surged through my body and sent me reeling back out of the room, I decided enough was enough, and, shivering like a wet dog, i pulled my clothes on and headed out to the reception. The woman at reception called the handyman over and he came back to my room to try and get the shower working. 30 mins later he had only managed to get it luke warm, and I said quite frankly it´s not good enough, and demanded a different shower to use. So, eventually i managed to have a shower next door, which was alternately scalding and freezing, and after getting out and drying myself, I headed back to my room flicking off the light as I left. Or at least I tried to. The moment my finger touched the light switch another 240 Volts of electricity sent all my muscles into spasm, drastically reducing my already depleted number of braincells in the process. This second shock was much more powerful than the first, and left me stunned for a good few minutes before i could walk out of the room. I think these shocks may have seriously damaged my... you know... that thing in my head with all the wiggly tubes and stuff.

After my shower I was so cold that I headed out to find a restaurant to warm uip in, but somehow ended up in a restaurant with no heating and an open door, eating pizza with my wooly hat and gloves on! Eventually I climbed in to bed and finally warmed up my numb body....

The next day I got a bus to Cuzco, stopping at Puno on the way to visit the floating islands on lake titikaka. On this trip I met 2 sexy swedish girls who turned out to be on my bus. In Cusco, I set about trying to organise the cheap machu pichu plan given to me by the peruvian woman on the bus. Sarah and Louise, the swedes, decided to join me. Everyone we spoke to told us that we´d be very lucky to get tickets on the cheap train, as this is the latin american holidays, and 100´s of argentinians are in town, all taking the cheap train. We were told that we´d have to get there an hour before the ticket office opened at 2pm, to buy tickets for the 7:30pm train. So, believing all, we panicked, and ruhed back to hostel, threw a few things in a bag, and jumped in a taxi to get to Ollantaytambo where the train left from. An hour later we arived, only to find a completely deserted train station. No queues of argentinians. No anything really. Just us. We waited 1.5 hours, during which time a few more people arrived and pushed in front of us anyway.....

So we got out tickets in the end, and arrived in Aquas Calientes, the closest town to machu pichu, at about 9:30pm....

to be continued.......