Some other things that have happened recently

Righty-ho. Hello again! This update is coming to you from the town of Trujillo, somewhere towards the northerny middly coasty bit of Peru. Most of what I have to say however will not concern Trujillo, because we´ve only just arrived, and all we have to report so far is that their banana pancakes are very big and that almost everything is closed on Sundays. Last night was spent on another extremely comfortable bus which took us all the way from Huaraz, using the medium of Forrest Gump to pass the time. This excellent film was marred only slightly by the Spanish dubbing which made the protaganist sound less stupid than he really is and by the fact that the subtitles (strangely also in Spanish) appeared to be telling a completely different story to the dialogue. Enjoyable none the less.
Speaking of enjoyment, Huaraz was really extremely good. I can´t emphasize this enough - it was VERY NICE INDEED. What made it so good were the mountains. There are lots of them, they´re very high and covered in snow and best of all we went and camped in them for a week. Totally brilliant. Some of them, for example, look like this:

Upon arriving in Huaraz, we stumbled a lot and felt dreadful, on account of the way in which we had spent the preceeding two days (see Steph´s post below). Afterwards, we found a friendly Peruvian women with whom we conversed in Spanish (something which we are increasingly finding to be possible, which is nice). She took us to her hotel and rented us a tent, some sleeping bags, a big canister of gas and some spoons. Then we got on a bus which went up some PROPER MENTAL little roads through the mountains. Miraculously it didn´t fall off (although we did have to change a tyre twice) and took us here instead. Then we headed off into the hills, like the intrepid explorers that we are. I say hills - actually they´re REAL MOUNTAINS - we started walking at 3,200 m, and our highest point was a 4,800 m pass. It´s actually quite difficult to breathe at that sort of height, especially with a big rucsac on your back, but we managed to survive none the less. It being the middle of the rainy season, it rained a lot, but that was OK, and made the cozy snugness of our tent and the warming goodness of our noodle soup all the more welcome at the end of a day´s walking. We saw some absolutely spectacular scenery - huge snow-capped peaks, lush green valleys and the most amazing blue-green, crystal clear glacial lakes. The advantage of the rainy season is that hardly anyone else is stupid enough to attempt trekking, which meant that we pretty much had the whole moutain range to ourselves - really superb. Highly recommended to anyone of a mountainy disposition. Also of note was Steph´s new found skill of bull scarer-offing, which was absolutely priceless to watch of a morning - youtube evidence to follow shortly. Having covered over 50 miles of Andean mountain and climbed a total of over 2 km, we eventually arrived exhausted back in Huaraz, via an equally spine-tinglingly terrifying bus ride. Since we´re now in a bit of a mad rush to make it back to Caracas in time for our flight home, we barely had time to scrape the mud, dead skin and blood off our feet before having to head for the station to take the aforementioned bus here to Trujillo (although we just about managed to find time to fill ourselves with cheese before leaving.)
After extracting ourselves from this intenet cafe, we´re going to head off to the beach for a few hours (assuming this is not also closed), and then it´s more bussy magic tonight - this time up to Tumbez, near the Equadorian border. The crossing into Equador is apparently billed as ´worst border crossing in South America´, so that should be a laugh. Assuming all goes well there, it´s on to Quito, and then up to the border with Colombia to try to negotiate our way back to Venezuela.
Much love to all, and we look forward to seeing you all again soon!
xxx