About an hour or so from La Paz, in Bolivia, there is a road which has been dubbed 'The World's Most Dangerous' by the world bank as it has the most deaths per person travelling down it. The reason for this is pretty simple - the road makes its way down the mountain, is very narrow in places, people drive down it too fast and there is a HUGE drop down the mountain if you make a mistake. Despite (or perhaps because) of this, the road has become a tourist attraction, especially for mountain bike enthusiasts looking for the ultimate downhill thrill. You decend over 3,600 metres in around 4 hours or so. This was something that we just HAD to try! Now, I haven't mountain biked in a loooooong time, but this was addictive, dangerous fun. I did manage to fall off once and have a couple of war wounds, but kept myself well away from the side. However, people do go over.....

We took a couple of days out to trek to, and around the Isla del Sol. Fantastic place. Beautiful scenery, friendly locals (especially if you buy your Fanta and trucha from them) and almost impossible to get lost. To get across from the mainland, we walked for a few hours from Copacabana and then hired a ´man with boat´who proceded to row like a madman for around 90 minutes to get us across the lake. And for this feat he asked just 15 Bolivianos. That´s just over a pound! - In the end we gave him twice what he asked. I was feeling fit after our short walk in the sun so I offered to help using the other set of oars, but could´t keep up with him and had to stop for long rests at stragegic intervals. To top that, I ended up with huge blisters on my hands from the oars and mild sunstroke as I forgot to wear my hat (they don´t call it Isla del Sol for nothing). Don´t think I´d make it as a boatman.....

Borders are funny things. I suppose coming from the UK they seem especially strange, as all that happens when you travel up to Scotland is you get a pretty sign welcoming you, and people start to talk a bit strangely. Elsewhere in the world, languages and whole ways of life change. The crossing from Cambodia to Thailand was one that will always stick in the memory - we left a country with a road infrastructure so bad that we did almost all our travel by river (see piccie on the right for an example), and the road to the border was a dirt track. Beyond the border, the same road was covered in tarmac and even had street lights and cats eyes. (It´s the little things that you notice!) When you cross the border from Peru to Bolivia by simply going round a lake, which we did a few days ago, within a few kilometres the price of everything has almost halved. Water was around 1$ US before, and is now 50 cents. A decent room for the night with bao privado has come down from about $15 to $7-8.

Like everyone nowadays, I get a fair amount of spam - and that´s why you won´t be able to find my email address on my web site, I just have a contact form which friends use from time to time. But now I´ve had my first piece of spam where someone has actually taken the trouble to fill in the contact form manually, and WTF?? Someone wants to buy my shirts off me for some reason. I wonder if it´s the hawaian one that I wore for Mark´s stag do in Brussels? Dear Sir/ ma, I am interested in your shirts which i intend to purchase and despatch to different country. Measurements for the shirts would be provided to you once you get back to me. I like you to provide me with the cost of making 20 custom shirts. I would be making payments with my credit card before shipment so you have no problem. I look forward to hear from you. Regards Mosh Bocaj Mosh xxxxxxxx@yahoo.com

Our excercions on El Misti must have ´broken us in´ because we finished the Inca Trail yesterday, and neither of us found nearly as hard as we had feared. For me, the four-day trek was definately one of the highlights of our trip, after the amazing temples of Angkor Wat and the ´Team 646´ Christmas dinner. Incredible scenery, and when we got to Maccu Piccu on the fourth day we had just enough energy left to climb the mountain which is alongside it. Now we are back in Cusco and looking for new challenges! Tommorow we´re going to try white-water rafting for the first time, and then we´ll look at getting around the sacred valley, before heading back to Puno and then Bolivia.

We took a bus to Puno, on the shore of Lake Titicaca. Taking a guided tour onto the lake, we taken to the floating islands for just an hour or so. Here, the people build and live on their own islands, from the reeds, which are constantly rotting underneath them and have to to be constantly replenished. We were then taken out to Isla Amatani, an island in the middle of the lake. The people here speak only a little Spanish, but invite tourists to come and stay with them to see what their life is like and bring money into the island. In the evening we were dressed up in traditional clothes and taken out ´on the town´to do some dancing, which was actually a lot more fun than it sounds. :)

Got round to uploading some of the better pictures since we left Auckland - There is an album of our post-work travels through Kiwiland, as well as one of Peru and some pics from the Inca Trail.