Going back in time again. Kathmandu.

 Those famous Buddha eyes.

 This was a temple on Durbar Square, a Unesco protected site. In this temple resides a living goddess. We were permitted a brief glimpse of her. Sorry no photos allowed.

 One of many mask shops.



 Durbar Square

 Yipee! Momos! A Tibetan speciality filled with Buffalo meat. A nice relief after a week of curry.

The view from our hostel

The real lifesavers of this journey. Our 1 dollar face masks. Useful for air-con, pollution, high altitude, excessive heating, and so on.... and don't we look cute? The colours match our passport covers too.

Down from Puno to Lima.

We took a night bus, with very comfy seats down from Puno to Lima. A marathon 24 hour journey.

We woke up at dawn to the alien landscape that the pan-american highway runs through, with desert and mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. Unsettling and beautiful at the same time.

Later we passed through Nascar, although we didn't have the opportunity to see the famous lines.

Next time.

Now we are settled in a lovely hostel near to Lima airport recovering from high places and getting ready for our flight tomorrow morning to Mexico.

It's amazing how precious a peaceful place and a hot shower can become.

Kiyomi played her first game of Pool tonight, and did really well, and we knocked around a ping-pong ball for a while and hung out in some hammocks. Nice place, with the usual Peruvian hospitality, friendliness and warmth.

Altitude sickness and a very big lake.

Kiyomi is a superstar!!

She suffered really bad Soroche, or Altitude Sickness during our time at Lake Titicaca. Some 3800 metres above sea level. It was really scary and hard going for her at times. But by taking it slow and with a little bit of help from local herbal remedies, she made the trip to the floating islands and to two solid islands on the lake.

We had a lovely homestay on one island, and lived with a local farming family, and enjoyed local food. In the evening we went to the village hall and tried some local dancing, Michael wearing a poncho. Very Clint Eastwood.

Michael also had some symptoms of soroche when trying to sleep. A series of short breaths and then his breathing stopping before suddenly gulping down a lungful of air. But that was very light compared to what Kiyomi went through. Well done her!

Titicaca is truly enormous. It disappears off the edge of the horizon in every direction. The distant mountains look like they are floating there.

We tried the local speciality of Alpaca, very yummy. They don't just make great sweaters.

But glad to be down at sea level now.

Titicaca.

Safely arrived in Puno on a very comfortable bus from Cuzco.

Suffering the effects of altitude sickness at the moment. Kiyomi is sleeping it out.

Puno is higher than mount Fuji in Japan at 3800 metres above sea level.

Tomorrow we we depart on a 2 day island tour into the lake, staying with local residents tomorrow night.

Off to get some sleep now.

Padlocks stolen...

more details soon.

We're okay and probably all our things too, but finding it quite bizarre that our security system for protecting against theft, was itself stolen.

It's a funny old world.

La la la!

Machu Picchu

WOW!

We arrived safely in Cuzco, after a brief stop in La Paz in Bolivia. It looks beautiful in the morning as the sun is rising, we took a taxi ride to the airport that winds round and up the edge of the bowl of the valley.

Then after a terrifyingly late bus to Ollantaytambo we managed to catch our train to Machu Picchu Pueblo.

The landscape during the bus journey was like a mixture of Tuscany, the Scottish highlands and the Norwegian mountains. Peru is very beautiful.

 Very nice train full of friendly Americans, and cute airline style food served in baskets. Michael is developing a taste for Inca Cola.

We woke up before sunrise this morning and headed up to Machu Picchu.

It truly is an amazing, breathtaking (in many senses of the word) place.

We spent many hours wandering around there marvelling at the gorgeous views. Then we decided to brave the climb of Wayna Picchu. Truly a challenging and precarious climb. The views from the top were astounding.

After we went to the hot springs here to soak our tired bones.

Taking the evening train back to Ollantayambo tonight.

Very tired.....again. Zzzzzzzzz......

The curse of the backpackers.

Well, one day after we went to Iguazu, 2 tourists died there. And we heard from our tour guide yesterday here in Buenos Aires that the whole airport here broke down, all communication systems kaputt.

So we are beginning to get a complex that we are cursing things.

Anyway we will go to the airport today and try to get our flight to La Paz and then onto Cuzco in Peru. We are a bit worried about altitude sickness, we bought some medication here, let's see what happens.

We had a nice time yesterday in Buenos Aires, visiting La Boca (there's a guy there who really looks like Maradonna) and San Telmo. We found a wonderful locals restaurant and tucked into some steak and pasta. Later we visited the bizarrely grandiose Recoleta Cemetary, with some of the tombs bigger than Japanese houses. Then we tried an amazing caramel (dulche de leche) ice cream.

After that, and all the excitement of the last two weeks, we fell asleep at 2100 and didn't wake up until 800. We guess we were very tired.

One of those 3 countries in one day kind of day. Paraguay to Argentina.

We moved on by bus early yesterday from Paraguay, through Brazil and onto Iguazu falls in Argentina.

Wow! What a wonderful beautiful place. It was a clear sunny day so there were swarms of beautiful friendly butterflies everywhere. The falls themselves where breathtaking, awesome, amazing. A real highlight.

We then took a night bus on a 17 hour journey to Buenos Aires, in probably the most gorgeous bus either of us have ever taken. Super wide seats, fully reclineable, with meal service and movies. Looked like first class on an airplane. We slept quite well.

Today we went to a famous cafe and had a very indulgent flan with what looked like half a litre of thick dulce de leche caramel poured on top. Very yummy, and Kiyomi had a Argentine Cappucino that was strong and bitter enough to keep us awake for a week.

For dinner we had a lomito, steak sandwich, and a choripan, a sandwich with fresh grilled chorizo sausage on it.

At 22:00 we went out to an atmospheric old Milonga and had a nice evening watching the locals - Portenos, dancing the night away.

Time for some sleep now.

Lovely atmosphere, Buenos Aires.

Safely arrived in Paraguay.

After our marathon journey from Japan to Paraguay, we have arrived safely.

We are staying with wonderful friends of Kiyomi's at the moment, and they are taking very good care of us. We could finally catch up with some sleep and adjust to Americas time.

We have a little one-and-a-half year old keeping us busy at the moment and cheering us up a lot.

Tomorrow we hope to move on to Iguazu falls in Argentina....

The Taj Mahal at dawn.

Nice red pixie shoes.

 The view from our lovely guest house window. (Indicentally this rickshaw driver also couldn't find the address).

 A squirrel.

The Taj Mahal viewed from the Red Fort through the morning smog. It's there really, you just have to look really hard.

Our guest house, where the Singh family took really good care of us. Very lovely gentle people.

Forget meditation, German bread is the answer!

Varanasi.

We learnt an important lesson upon arriving at Varanasi station. The overly friendly taxi drivers who can speak really good English are the ones we shouldn't really trust too much.

Our taxi driver said there was a festival so he couldn't take us near to our guest house. So he stopped at the edge of the old town and found us a little old guy to guide us through the winding back streets.

The old guy was really fast but didn't lose us out of his sight because we were going to give him some rupees. But suddenly at one point he stopped at a junction for over 5 minutes, looking confusedly from left to right. After a while I went up to him and told him where we were going. He looked relieved, and continued. I think he had forgotten where he was taking us. Bless him.

It turned out that there was no festival on that day. So we are not quite sure what the taxi driver was talking about or what his motives were.

 Cow falls in love with motorbike.

 Our very kind and colourful guest house.

 Kiyomi's favourite Varanasi game - dodge the cow.

 Unfortunately, one night we were heading back to our guest house and a cow that Kiyomi was passing suddenly decided to go to the toilet. It was like a sudden waterfall. Poor Kiyomi got her feet a bit wet.

 The famous ghats.

 Sadhus - Holy men.

 Sometimes Varanasi is like a very smelly open air zoo.

 How to turn s**t into gold. Drying dung for making burning fuel.

 A varanasi miracle, a cow with no head an two bodies.

 Varanasi sunrise.

Kiyomi was very courageous on this morning. She had seen the dog chewing the human foot the night before and was terrified that some bodies would go floating past our boat, or we would fall into the delicious ganges water. But we were okay, and we marvelled at the people bathing and our boatman swallowing down his medication with ganges water.

We can't show with photos, but the smells of Varanasi are at times overwhelming, varying from very foul to gorgeous insence. The presence of death is very prominent. It is not a place for the faint hearted, and not somewhere you could understand with your reasoning mind.

Night train to Gaya.

An Indian railway toilet, upper class, before it gets scary. We won't show you the "later" photo.

Sleepy night train person.

Indian railway Cha! Good stuff, and only 5 rupees each.

At Bodhgaya, where the Buddha first found enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.

This rickshaw driver had great music.

Cow eating trash. A common sight in India. They are afraid of vitamins. I wonder if their milk tastes like plastic.

 Kiyomi and her new train friend. She was very kind and helpful.

 The main temple at Bodhgaya.