From Argentina to Peru

Hello
hope all is well in the UK!

my first week has shot by!! I spent my first few days in Buenos Aires with Andy (the traveller from the plane) it was nice to have a fellow tourist to gawk at all the sights with!!

I saw the cemetary where Evita was burried, the main plazas the obelisk and a zoo with some animals i had never seen before, one looked like a cross between an enormous rabbit and a small kangaroo (will send photos soon!!!)

we also visited an area called 'La Boca' which has a caminito full of houses painted with very bright colours because when imigrants arrived they couldn't afford to buy paints for their houses so they used what they could find!!

I also went to a tango class!! i loved it!! its a very intimate dance which beyond the first 7 steps seemed very complicated, although great fun because you change partners loads and move all over the place bumping into other pairs!!

Buenos Aires felt quite european and was (even for me...) pretty easy to find your way around!

I am now in Lima (Peru) staying with a lovely and very intelligent couple (Fernando and Margot) who have taken me all round the city and to some pre-inca ruins that are a short drive from Lima!

there is a lot of history in Lima and lots of fantastic museums, i went to a church which had catacumbs underneath, which meant loads and loads of bones of people who had been part of the church!! amazingly Fernando's dad used to play with his friends in the graves before they became organised for tourists!!

The centre of Lima is one of the poorer zones and as you get further out the zones are nicer. The poorer and richer zones are seperated by literally a street and the difference between rich and poor is large

Funnily enough there is a large chinese community here, on saturday night we went out to eat at a 'chifa' which much to my suprise was a chinese restaurant!!!
on saturday night we went out and partied in a bar where everyone was dancing salsa, they looked amazing i also got to drink pisco which is a peruvian alcohol and a pisco sour which is pisco with lemon and egg white on top!!

On sunday they took me to a local fruit market!! there was so many amazing weird and wonderful fruits and any i did recognise were about 10 times bigger than any we have in the UK! we ate an amazing lunch of local fruits!!!

today i an going to meet up with Fernando's sister and find and find my hostel where my journey to lake titicaca and then cusco begins!!

sorry for yabbering on i have tried to summarise... :o)

is it still snowy at home?

lots and lots of love

Emz x x x x