7 days to go!!

  Barnstaple, United Kingdom
Friday, August 3, 2007

Hello and welcome to my lovely travel blog! For the uninitiated a travel blog is kind of like a diary where I will tell you all the exciting things I am doing so you can be terribly jealous! (conversely I will post the ransom demands from the Columbian drug barons holding me hostage so please check back regularly...)

For claritys sake I will explain briefly what I am doing. As you know I am a Medical Student at Peninsula Medical School in Devon + Cornwall and as part of my 5th Years training I have to do an elective period of study, in whatever subject I want, wherever I want! So to be daring I decided to go to Cusco, Peru (I had to look on a map to don't worry). I am going with a company called MedicsAway who are orgainising most of it so I can concentrate on learning to salsa and eating guinea pig (cuy) which is often served with chips (patatas fritas - see you will even learn some spanish while you are here!) I am going with my friend Richard, also a medical student but he is skiving for a year to intercalate and so is just coming for a little holiday. There will also be at least 4 other PMS students there, we tend to congregate in roaming packs...

I am not going until next friday (10th August) so this is just to welcome you to my blog, and also I collected ym travel money today and I find it trerribly exciting so I wanted some pictures! I mostly got US dollars as they are easier to get hold of than Nueve Soles (new Soles, derived from the spanish for Sun coz the Peruvians used to be Mayans and worship the sun) and most places in Peru accept them. Ive put some pics up, sadly they only gave me 10 soles notes but when I get some others I will put them up to. Oh and the Note has a llama on it look!!

The 10 Nueve Sol llama!!

Well that's about it so far, I am pretty much ready to go I think. I have been stabbed many times with various tropical disease, supposedly for my own protection...Anyway some of the tings you can expect to read on this blog:

My trek in the Andes to the sacred valley and Machu Pichu (naturally)
What guniea pig and chips and coca leaf tea (yes as in cocaine) tastes like
How my spanish and salsa is coming along
How many llamas I have seen (I estimate 6000)
What altitude sickness is like on top of severe jet lag (cusco is 3500m up a bloody mountain)
Maybe a bit about the medical stuff I do...

So I hope you enjoy it!!

Love Clare xx