A.W.O.L. (Andes, Where Oxygen's Low)

Well there's a pretty good reason for my lack of blogging in the last few weeks.

The wedding went swimmingly although by the end we were pretty knackered...everyone else seemed to enjoy the excellent food (provided by Tony Bonner a chap involved with Waterloo) and drink (that went without saying really). The speeches all went really well. My new Father-in-law's one was really nice and had a very good story about Anne (you'd have to know her for it to make sense)...my bestest Bro did me proud too. It was a bit soppy for a while be we muddled through.

The next day a few people dropped round then we met up with a few people in The Vic and got the marriage off to a nice smiley start. Jack got me us a special best wishes message from none other than David Moyes and some of the Hospitaliers got me a match worn Lourdes footy shirt. People were far too generous to us in general, loads of money and gifts and Auckland rugby tops and stands of oak trees planted in our honour,

After that we had to turn our attention to our honeymoon....Peru! Two days in which to get everything ready for it. Dusted off the old travelling backpack and set off for Lima, as it happens it was just on the crest of the wave of extra security in the wake of the latest terrorism alert. We were quite lucky there.

We were due to meet up with a Tucan Travel tour of the country, this allowed us to squeeze everything into the available time. Not only that but the people on the tour were all great, great people.

Thanks to Andreas, Ashley, Ashley, Bruce, Darren, Chris, Marty, Dave, Leigh, Brian, Claire, Reima, Nain, Steve, Yuko and Bjorg for helping make our honeymoon absolutely superb...sorry we weren't able to keep pace with the Cristal, Arequipana & Cusquena intake.



The two highlights were the flight over the mind bogglingly interesting Nazca lines





and the trek to Machu Pichu.



Both of these were brilliant. Getting up to Dead Woman's Pass was a pretty big struggle.



The last 200 metres were slow going but eventually we reached the top at 4215 metres above sea-level. It was still a struggle after that but our porters, guide and chef kept us stocked with silly amounts of food and drink. We had a really great trek.

The morning we got to Machu Pichu was rainy and misty but it didn't dampen spirits for long...it was fantastic just to be there at this Inca city on top of an Andean mountain.

Whilst we were away we kept up with Everton's progress and were chuffed to see AJ net twice and help the team off to a really strong start. Next up : Those who's name we don't mention. COYB!