I've had a busy few weeks since I got back from the trip. Last weekend I went down to Ararat with Mark and the guys, and played at a fundraising event at the town hall there:

It was a good night, there were lots of people there and they raised over $30,000 for various charities.

Unfortunately the news wasn't so good for my van. It overheated, and the next day we couldn't drive it more than about 5 minutes before it overheated again (even after filling up the radiator). It's still in Ararat, and now I'm looking for a (cheap) new (used) car.

On Sunday night I went to see Stevie Wonder at the tennis centre. It was a great concert. The guy is nearly 60, but he is in a league of his own - he knows how to funk. I have uploaded a few short clips to youtube: 1 2 3.

Friday night I went to see Blue King Brown at the Palace (formerly the Metro). These guys have a cool blues/funk/reggae/roots sound which is very easy to get into. I had seen them live a few years ago at the Chill Island festival, and was looking forward to seeing them again. Unfortunately they were really let down by some very poor sound techs. Basically everything was twice as loud as it should have been, and you could barely hear the music over the distortion and feedback. Half the time the backing singers were drowning out the lead, there were high-pitched squeals coming from the keyboards, the bass was so loud and muddy you couldn't work out what he was doing. I won't be going back there in a hurry.

I finally got home on Thursday night. The plane trip wasn't awesome, although the selection of movies etc on the Qantas flight was pretty good. They lost my bag though, which is annoying. It was mostly just clothes, but it will be a pain if I have to go through the process of getting it all replaced.

So I got to Rhodes, met up with my parents and went to Adele and Alan's wedding. It was a beautiful day, and they were having the wedding outdoors, so it turned out great. The ceremony and reception were both held at the resort they were staying at, which was very nice.

We spent a couple more days on Rhodes, in Lindos town, which is a small touristy village on the east coast of the island. We visited the acropolis that sits on the hill in the middle of the town.

We then flew to Athens. We had four days there, and spent most of it looking around the different monuments and museums. It was very interesting looking at the ruins of buildings built 2500 years ago. We also had a couple of fantastic Greek feasts courtesy of a family who used to live near us in Camberwell but moved back to Athens over 20 years ago.

I have put up more photos from the trip, including the wedding and Athens. Also here are some panorama shots I took (click for the big versions - but be warned they are quite big).

Salkantay (6990x1476, 1.8mb):

Arequipa (8224x1476, 1.9mb):

Huaraz (8823x1465, 2.5mb):

Santa Cruz (6765x1425, 1.9mb):

Athens, taken from the Areopagus (6138x1544, 2.4mb):

I haven't had a chance to post anything for a few days, and I don't have a lot of time now. I am flying home tomorrow morning, so will post a full update soon. Greece has been great, and I'm looking forward to getting back to oz.

Will post some photos soon...

I've made it to Greece, though not quite to Rhodes yet. I'm in the Athens airport, and it's 4:30am. I've been waiting since I got here about 11pm last night. There's not much to do here.

Backtracking a little, we went to Trujillo in northern Peru, and went to a pyramid (that wasn't actually a pyramid) from pre-Incan times (100-800 AD I think). That was interesting. Then I said goodbye to the other guys as they headed north to Ecuador and the Galapogas Islands. I went back and spent a few fairly boring days in Lima, then got on the plane yesterday (I think it was yesterday.. the time zones are all too confusing). Adele's wedding is ... today? So I'm going to meet up with my parents and hopefully get a few hours sleep before that.

More soon...

Dave and I went mountain biking, in the true sense:

The next morning we left for the Santa Cruz trek, which goes through some of the Cordillera Blanca range. We were driven in to the start of the hike, and even before we got there we saw some great views:

The first day of walking was fairly easy, through a few small villages and mostly grassland.

The second day was much tougher, as we climbed about 800m in altitude in four hours. We finally reached the mountain pass around lunch time. We were pretty tired, and it was very cold, but the views were amazing.

From there we walked down to the second campsite, in the valley below. There were horses, donkeys and cows roaming free, and they didn't seem at all concerned about us.

There were two more days of easy walking down the valley to the end of the hike, but we decided to do it in one day, which ended up being a good option, since it only took us about 6 hours to get to the end.

We got back to our hostel in Huaraz last night. Tonight we are heading north to Trujillo, then I will head back to Lima while the other guys go to Ecuador.

We got into Nazca early Wednesday morning. We had already booked a flight over the Nazca Lines, so we just had to wait around at a hostel until it was time. We ended up getting on board the plane around midday:

The flight lasted for about 30 minutes, and I spent about 25 minutes with my head in a bag throwing up. It was great.

We caught a bus out of Nazca that night (which I managed ok) and arrived at Lima in the morning. After a visit to the San Francisco Monastery and Catacombs, and two visits to McDonalds, we caught another bus to Huaraz.

Huaraz is a small town (pop. 100,000) amongst some of the most beautiful mountains in the world (according to who??). We will be here for about a week, and four of the guys left this morning on an 6-day hike around Huayhuash (which is normally an 8-day hike, but they're awesome). Dave and I decided to take it easy, and are staying behind to do some mountain biking, visit the hot springs, and will probably take in an easier 4-day hike around Santa Cruz.

After Huaraz we are heading up to Trujillo, then I will be heading back to Lima and on to the Greek Islands.

Things I won't miss about Peru:

• Cold showers
• The taxi drivers
• Night buses
• General hygiene levels
• Toilet paper bins
• The altitude