Cairo, Egypt

We just arrived back in Edinburgh after a cool week with Stephanie in Cairo.
We stayed at the Marriott in Cairo, which turned out to be a great idea as, although the city has numerous amazing touristic sites, you can certainly tell that 18m people live there as it smoggy, dirty and busy.
We arranged a guide to take us around the Pyramids in Giza, which was nice, however, she was not particularly informative or lively. That said; wow! the Pyramids certainly are a wonder of the world and a magnificent feat for the Egyptians.
We didn't arrange a guide for the museum or the citadel and had good trips at a fraction of the expense and organized a friendly taxi driver we met to take us to Alexandria for the day, which was a great day out.
Generally we found the Egyptians to be quite pushy and one taxi driver ripped us off, however, we did find one or two freindly faces and some very good food in the Nile river boat restaurants.
It was great to spend a week with Steph in the sun and we arrived back to a sunny Edinburgh - would you believe it!?!

Santiago

We have been in Santiago for 3 days now and have had a great time. It has a similar feel to Buenos Aires, with many great restaurants and leafy suburbs. We think this be what to expect from Brisbane or other Australian cities and we are looking forward to that.
It's been good to be on our own again doing our own thing and the food has been sensational accompanied by great Chilean red wine and even a bottle of bubbly.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is considered one of the new 7 wonders of the world and I firmly agree with that - it's beauty is stunning.
We arrived at Aguas Calientes the night before and started the trek of the 1610 steps up to Machu Picchu at 4am in the morning. It was a tough trek that took us an hour and a half but the satisfaction was great, especially seeing the many people who took the bus up. We picked up our tickets to climb Wanipicchu before having a 3 hour guided tour of the site. The Incas were an extremely talented race and their engineering feat here is fantastic.
We climbed Wanipicchu shortly after 10am then trekked to the Sun Gate to the East before taking the bus back down to town to catch our train back to Olyantambo.
What a wonderful day - one we will never forget!

Andean Community Trek

We just finished our 34k trek across the Andeas as we build up to visiting Machu Picchu tomorrow.
We started our trek in the community of Quishuarani where we camped overnight before visiting the local primary school. The programme, which we donate to as part of our trip, pays for many local projects such as the kids health check, which we oversaw. The kids were all fantastic and the doctors on our trip also chipped in with any complaints. It was great to spend time with the kids and the teachers - all of whom were pretty excited about seeing a big bunch of gringos.
We trekked on to Cuncani, passing a peak at 4000m. The treks were less taxing than we had originally expected so we both really enjoyed the experience. The 3rd day trek see us reach 4800m and the highest point of the trek. The images of the Andeans will stay with us for a long time.
The crew we had were utmostly professional, ensuring our tents were up when we arrived for camp. However, the biggest plaudits have to go to the cook team who woke us up with coca tea in the mornings, provided 3 magnificent meals a day as well as snack packs that kept us going.
Hats off to Andina Travel for making the experience so wonderful.
Tomorrow we trek up to Machu Picchu - something we have been looking forward to for over a year...