Busses, beaches and birthdays!

We have arrived in Peru! We´ve been here just over a week now and have started our training at the new school. The journey here was certainly an experience, but not something I´m in a rush to repeat. We left Cartagena around 5.30am Wednesday morning and headed to the airport to catch a flight to Bogota. In Bogota we were meant to havc a three hour wait for the next flight down to the south of the country, but the flight was delayed another four hours, so we had seven hours to kill. Considering Bogota is the capital of Colombia, there is NOTHING there apart from a few fast food places. So, in seven hours we managed to consume a McDonald´s breakfast, a Dunkin´doughnut, an ice cream from Crepes and Waffles, another Dunkin doughnut, some curly fries and....another doughnut. I´m sure we gained about two stone in those few hours!

Once we reached Popyan in the south, we stayed over night and had the looooong bus journeys through Ecuador to look forward to. It took about three busses and over 40 hours to reach Chiclayo - we arrived at 2am on the Saturday!

Chiclayo is a nice place, not as beautiful as Cartagena but I don´t think many places are. It´s a bit calmer and there are not as many hsssssssssss-ers. Although, as I was coming out of our apartment the other day a man was staring and hssssssssing so much that he tripped and fell over the curb right onto the floor. If it wasn´t for the fact that he was about seventy, I would have told him it served him right. We have made friends with a fellow teacher at the school who carries round eggs that she throws at people who annoy her too much with their hissing and what not - might have to start that ourselves if it gets too bad!

We found an apartment on the second day we were here, which is an improvement on Cartagena. It´s lovely, three big bedroom, two bathrooms, a nice kitchen and everything is nice and clean.

I had a lovely birthday here. We went out with some of the other teachers on the Saturday night to one of the bar/clubs here which was fun. On the Monday Candice and I spent the day at the beach, eating seafood and drinking sangria. I also got an assortment of gifts from her and our neighbour/lanlady also suprised me with a birthday cake in the evening - it had my name on it and everything!

We´re in the process of booking something for Christmas and New Year. I think we´re going to head up the coast to a nice beach town called Mancora which should be fun. It´s going to be very strange not being at home though! Can´t imagine what it feels like to be cold anymore!

xxx