Whew, I am so far behind on the blogging I don't know where to start, so I'll start where any real man would the excuse: altitude sickness is lame, especially lame is when you get it at lower altitude than anyone else and have it for five days. It makes your brain and your muscles all melty and weak. But the good news is that I not half an hour ago walked maybe a kilometre and a half with an 18 kilo pack at 3500 m up Cuzco's streets and felt no iller effects than if I'd done this at home. So I declare myself cured and once again able to disperse my anecdotal wit.

Rounding out our (awesome) time in Mexico City we went a little tour mad and did three in two days. The second (after Teotihuacan) was our trip to see the Monarch Butterfly reserve, I'm sure we stopped somewhere on the way (as you always stop somewhere on the way) but I have no idea where. It was a 3 hour drive through Mexico City traffic and the surrounding area before we saw the first sign of butterfly activity when on a main hill highway the speed limit was suddenly reduced to 10 km/h and there was suddenly a (heavily armed) police presence to enforce it. After a couple of turns in the road it was fairly obvious why; as the road was flooded with monarch butterflies and if you went faster than 10k they would smear all over your vehicle. I don't really know how to describe the density of butterflies flowing down the hill along the road and to their favourite watering spot, but if you were invisible, and somewhat permeable to the air and stood in the road with your arms wide you would probably expect to be struck by about 6 butterflies a second.

We quickly scooted down the hill and checked out the butterflies drinking, and trying to eat the brains of English tourists. But we then ascended the mountain on horseback for the main event. The nesting trees of the butterflies literally dripped with the pretty little fullas. They would swarm several 10m trees to the extent that you couldn't see the branches any more. And when you could stop the domestic tourists from talking about football and making cell phone calls you could hear the most amazing noise of a million butterflies flapping their wings, much like trees rustling in a strong wind but more demure and fluttery.

The night tour that same day was a different as, well, night and day. We went to the Lucha Libre. Its yankee faux-wrestling but older and down with style (and many more masks). It was mostly three on three tag team action with plenty of big rope dives and truly athletic throws to pad out the lame slapping and 'coffee break' holds. The best event of the night was the truly unexpected midget-wrestling (I believe that's the correct term when talking about little people wrestling). Two teams of three had two little guys and one big guy. The big guy on each team was there to act as a human pommel horse for the truly awesome little guys to pommel flip their way around their body, or to throw one of their little guy at the opposing bug guy. It was sports entertainment at its finest and they run it three nights a week, every week, in Mexico City.

That was the end for Mexico and we winged our way to (now not so) distant Lima, Peru. The flight went via Panama City which looked incredibly shiny and sophisticated from the air, but on rushing to the transfer desk with about 20 minutes to spare we were told our connecting flight hadn't quite left Lima yet. So baggageless, and exhausted we grazed on airline snacks and found a somewhat comfy couch to not fall asleep on. In the end we made it Lima at 4am, and perhaps unsurprisingly the hostel pickup guy was nowhere to be seen, so we caught a cab into town (told the driver of course we have a reservation) and begged our way into a dorm for the night/morning.

Wow that's only 3/5ths of the way through my last post oh well the hostel we are staying at has 5 free internet PCs so I think I should be able to catch up soon.