Aaaah, just relax...

TT was feeling a little better when she woke up this morning. The sleep helps. We went for a walk around the grounds of the oasis hotel and took picures of peacocks, llamas, ponies an other animals grazing in the grounds.

Before getting on the tour bus I had to settle my bar bill from last night. I drank horrendous amounts, mainly smirnoff rather than local alcohol. Because it´s imported it´s rather expensive. I think I consumed most of a litre bottle by either drinking it myself or buying ¨Cuba Libres¨ (local talk for vodka and coke) for new friends. The total damage was about $20US. Really can´t complain can I?!

We went to a cemetary that contains the exposes mummies of peoples buried 2000 years ago. It´s eerie because you can still see skin and hair on most of them. They are exposed because grave robbers dug them up about hundred years ago to steal the buried loot.

We then went to a working goldmine. Health and safety doesn´t exist there. The workers reguarly plunge axes into one anothers heads because they are so pissed with the alcohol given to them to make them forget the pain and misery. After smashing axes into solid rock for about 2 or 3 days they´ve gathered enough rubble to walk it on their backs 3km to the ¨refinery¨. There they grind it by using hand and foot powered machines. The foot powered ones are like sea-saws and the guys literally dance to music in the open air crunching up the rocks on their sea-saws.

Once it´s crumbled they mix it with mercury (we had a live demo of this) and that captures the gold bits in the bottom of the water so that the mercury can then be burned off leaving pure gold. I nearly shat myself when the guy started splashing mercury around us. Honestly, no healh and safety here!

After that we went to a pottery where a dude that spoke no english entertained us by demonstrating how the incas made pots. He was very funny because he done lots of acting to make up for his lack of English. We bought much pot.

Then we got back on the bus and headed for porto inca. The original inca fishing port. There´s nothing there now but some more exposed graves, a small bar complex and some huts. We stayed in the huts and lit a fire on the beach. We had a sangria party and much fun was had by all.

The group
TT & I
Our friends, T & S
The tour leader is called Blokey and he´s gay.
The driver is called Paul and he´s a really fun English guy.
My fave group member apart from TT is a canadian girl called Nat
There are two french swiss girlies, mother and daughter. They are good but very shy because they don´t speak much english.
Aussie woman called Janet who can be a bit annoying and moan lots.

That´s us. Just 8 at the moment.