Tom Newby's Blog

Its been a while since I have written this so it may be very long and a bit briefer in terms of details as I have forgotten some things.

To pick up where I left off it was our last night in Lima before the tour stared and our last night in the hostel. we decided it would be a good idea to get on the piss before we left everyone. We got the manager Christian to make us his Peru famous Pisco sours (which happened to be Vics first try of them. They were awesome and only cost us about 5 Soles each so really good value. We went out to the pubs in Miraflores the suburb we were in and had a ball trying to salsa dance.

22/12 The next day we got up earlish and went round to our new hostel for the night in a different suburb Barranco where we would finally get to meet our new tour friends. We met our tour leader Bruno who was from Lima and had been doing gap tours for 7 months. He was a good chap and warned us about everything to look out for. Our tour group consited of 2 brits 1 german 1 scot us 2 kiwi´s and then 9 aussies. Was a bit crazy how many there were but they are all good sorts so will forgive their nationality. That night after dinner we decided to get on the piss to get to know each other. We went down to the first club that would give us free drinks. It was awesome in there apart from being very very hot and me and this aussie howar had a good time playing wingman for each other with little success. vicki also hooked up with a guy from the tour on the first night...well done

23/12 after geting to know the other a bit better we heading to the bus station to catch our bus to the next destination. this was a little beach front town called Piscana. the bus ride was good as we had to sit next to other people so I got to talk to an aussie girl Alishja. she was cool and was travlling to just after carnial where she was spending it in Rio as well. When we arrived at piscana we went straight out for dinner as it was pretty late by then. We all had seafood as it was what the town was well known for. we did want to drnk by the beach but the owners wouldnt let us as they thought we would be to loud so we just ended up playing cards in one of the boys room.

24/12 Christmas eve!!!! (though pretty much christmas in NZ) This was easily the best day on the tour so far as so much was done. We started the day with an optional tour to the ballesta islands where uyou could see sealions and seals and penguins. Vic and I didnt do it as you can see that stuff in NZ also all the pictures looked exactly like nz. after that we got on the bus for our next destination Pisco. We stopped off at a winery and got a tour of how the pisco was made and also a tasting session after. I think we had about 4 standard drinks in 30 minutes and a few of us were a bit pissed. They were srving up mutliple shots of 40% pisco. We all got about 2 bottle of either pisco wine or spirits each after the tasting. This had all happened before lunch and ended up being a very long day. Our next stop was an oasis called Ica. Which was seriously an oasis. There were massive sand dunes surrounding a small lake. It was so beautiful and lunch was awesome too. We then all got on some sand buggies and raced around the dunes. The drivers were doing crazy things with the cars and it was more like a rollercoaster than a drive. They stopped at the top of a series of 3 increasing larger slopes and we al got a turn sandboarding. This was mint apart from you could nly lie down on it so it was more like sledding. The funniest bit was when one of the Aussies Lauren, who is about 5 feet tall and tiny, had her last go and raced right past the rest of us and started going down the nxt slope. Vicki also sucked at it and almos flipped out evertime she did it. Our last stop for the night would be nazca but we had a four or five hour bus trip ahad of us before that. The first hour or two went ahead with no incident but eventually someone decided to crack open one of the bottles of pisco to make the trip shorter (it was vic). What happened next can only be called crazyiness. two or three bottles of pisco would be drained at the same time of different strenghts and music was cranked thru he buses stereo. Eventually everyone was up dancing and being merry. Even the tour leaders got involved. When we arrived at nazca a couple of people (matt and sarah, both aussies surprise suprise) had drunk to much and started vomiting everywhere. This didnt seem to deter anyone else and once we had them cleaned up and in bed we continued to party. We went up to the pool and a diving competition occured but the brit pushed himself to hard and ended up smacking his head on the pool and getting a nasty cut. This still didnt stop us with a bit of shenaggins on facebook and some drunken skype to the family. We then went back to min and vics room and had a few more dinks. This was hilarious as our tour leader got smashed and started getting really angry but he was more funny than anything. He kept yelling fuck you guys and you guys suck. He also told me I was myis hero and then called me a pussy haha. we eventually got him to bed tho it took three goes and he broke a bottle of my pisco but it all worked out.

Thats it for me right now as it took ages to do. Ill talk about the massive hangover and stuff that happened later!!! Boom

Love you guys

Hola we are now in a second country of the trip...Peru it is very beautiful but I will first finish off Argentina.

So we headed to the tango show with one our room mates Natalia. The show started with a tango lesson which was really good fun had the funniest teacher, he was hard to understand as he talks very fast in Spanish and English. The actual show was great except I was feeling tired so struggled to keep awake. A couple of the dancers were very very beautiful. We then went back to the hostel were we started drinking for the second night running. We played a lethal game of connection with a 500 deck and then went out to a night club. The queues were outrageous but we finally got in one. It was completely packed and they played old school music but it was fun. We left the club as it was closing about 8 and then went out for breakfast. I also had my first experience on a subway...good times.

The next day we woke up a little worse for wear after a hard night out.. We both decided early on not to drnk that night.. Best laid plans aye. We decided to do a big walk to the main street in town to check out the sights around there. This included a monument that looked heaps like the Washington memorial. Also the congress building that was very cool. When we got home we went down to the bar to relax and have dinner. This turned out to be a poor choice as we soon had a few beers and were getting ready to go to town again. This time our Irish friend mikey took us to a house party which turned out to be awesome. There were heaps of people there and I ended up talking to a few Argentinian ladies in Spanish. This turned out to be relavitly successful az they seemed to like kiwis talking Spanglish.

The next day was very hard as the three days finally caught up with me and I also got home late. It also happened to be raining very heavily most of the day so it was hard to get out and do stuff. We ended up waiting most of the day for our plane to come and did not do much at all. We finally got to Lima at about midnight and went straight to bed.

Our new hostel was called the family backpackers house and was much more relaxed than our buenos aires hostel. We started our first day in Lima by talking to Christian the man who runs it. He was very helpful and told us where to go in miraflores the suburb we are staying in. We did a bit of shopping and had a look at the beach, which had a mall built into the Clift that was awesome. We also explore some ruins in the heart of the suburb which were very cool. We had a relatively relaxing night and didn't get up to much.

The following day (monday) we decided to go to downtown Lima. This was very interesting as it was packed there but it had some pretty cool sights and shops... Other than that we haven't done much other than I got a travel guitar

Chao till next time :)