Colca Lodge and a proper PC

First proper post from Peru at a PC in the lodge I'm staying in. s/5.00 for one hour, which is about $1.75 US. Can't complain!

The mountains around here are amazing. Taken some great photos along a 150km road trip leaving Arequipa at 08:30am and getting to Colca Valley at about 2pm. Most of it is long winding roads on the inside of inactive volcanoes (Colca Valley I think is slap bang in the middle of a giant crator). We'll be visiting Colca Canyon in the morning hopefully to see Condors as well as an active volcano. Colca Canyon is more then twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, but the walls are not as vertical. You can read about it and see some photos here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colca_Canyon

We're at about 5,000 metres which is 16,404 feet above see level. Air is THIN but we're taking Coca plant to help counter altitude sickness. It can get quite cold this high up so you don't realise how easy it is to get sunburn. I have slight redness on my face.

The lodge itself is quite quaint and recently built but has an authentic Peruvian feel to the architecture. The room I'm staying in looks a bit like a Hobbit house, and it has a fantastic view of the valley and surrounding mountains and volcanos. There's no easy way to get photos off my camera and onto this basic internet PC unfortunately.

Seen plenty of llamas, vultures, and lots of other animals I can't honestly remember the name of. Have been told there are Pumas in the region but whether we'll get to see any is anyone's guess.

Both of us have stuck to a vegetarian diet for health reasons, as well as sticking to bottled water (although we are using our water purification bottles which has various filters that protect agaisnt bacteria, cysts and pathogenic viruses).

That's it for now, hope everything is well in England.