Vikki's Peruvian Adventure: Saturday 3rd April - ADVENTURE PART 2

Just a brief up-date to let you know that the adventure did not stop in Ayacucho but continued into Brazil. I arrived about midnight after flying all day from Peru to find Rob fast asleep in our lovely hotel! Great welcome! However, as he had also been flying for the past 10 hours from the UK, all was forgiven.

Rob and I - Day 1 on Ipanema Beach [Just before the rain started]

Sorry about the blue - got my camera settings a bit wrong!

Ipanema - clouds gathering but it all looked so promising for a while

We have just endured three days of torrential rain and storms - the worst for 40 years. We have had no electricity, water, mobile phone connection, public transport or any open shops or restaurants. We were virtually marooned in our hotel as there was absolutely no point in venturing outside. No Corcovado, no Sugar Loaf mountain, nada. The resulting devastation has left the city in a state of emergency with up to 104 people dead through mud slides and flash floods. [since writing this, the number had increased to over 200] . Rob and I visited the Botanical gardens on the second day wrapped up in our pak-a-macs and with umbrellas and enjoyed a lovely couple of hours wandering around the beautiful gardens in the rain but, if we had stayed another couple of hours, we would have been rescued by boat! Yesterday was very depressing just sitting in the hotel watching the rain - there was an ''almost-curfew'' all over town preventing people from leaving their houses and only a few hundred yards from our hotel, an enormous tree had fallen across the road completely blocking any traffic. Today, Wednesday, is much better although more rain is expected but I am typing from a computer in the HSBC lounge [nice cup of coffee, comfortable chairs and dry!] in Rio airport so we are out of here in an hour or so. Shame we never got to see Sugar Loaf or the Corcovado or the sun.