On a website, a link refers to anything you can click on that takes you to another page or another website. In this article, we explore the reasons to link to other websites, and the benefits of having other websites link to you.

Links between websites form the foundation of the web. Without links, the utility of the web would be reduced to a mere collection of discrete websites, instead of the interactive, interconnected resource for sharing information that we all expect.

By embracing the concept of website linking you are not only doing your bit to make the web a more useful tool for everyone, but also gaining some additional market penetration for the online arm of your business.

Why should you link to other websites?

Linking to another website is when a visitor on your website can click a link and be taken to somebody else’s website. In the industry, this is called an outbound link.

If a particular website contains helpful information that would supplement information on your website, consider linking to that website to help your visitors learn more about the topic. For example, if your website sells camera equipment, you might link to sections of the manufacturers’ websites that include specifications of the products you are selling.

Where you feel another website has adequately described a topic, and you do not have the inclination to write similar information for your own website, consider linking to that website. For example, if your website books accommodation in the Cairns region, you might want to describe the local weather for your international visitors. Instead of spending the time to write this information yourself, you could link to a more authoritative website in the matter and save yourself some trouble.

If you wish to express your alliance with another business or organisation, linking to that website will allow your visitors to see the affiliation and learn more about the other business or organisation, thereby boosting your reputation. Where you are a member of an industry organisation, using their logo (with permission) will serve to further reinforce this connection.

In all cases, your web developer should arrange for the link to open the other website in a new browser window so that your own website remains open even after your visitor has finished reading the other website.

Keep in mind that original, up-to-date and helpful content on your website is better than simply linking to another website. By having more content on your website, you will have greater opportunity to be listed in search engines for keyword phrases that you include in that content, and visitors will also feel you are a more knowledgeable and helpful business when they see you have written the information yourself.

How do links from other websites help you?

Having a link from another website is when a visitor on somebody else’s website can click a link and be taken to your website. In the industry, this is called an inbound link.

Having other websites link to you will bring you more visitors and broaden the number of ways in which you can reach your target market.

Visitors who come from other websites can often be more valuable than visitors who come from search engines, particularly of the other website has given you a glowing commendation together with the link.

Having a link on a well-respected website will add trustworthiness to your business, as visitors will assume that a website they respect will only link to reputable businesses and worthwhile websites. When another business links to you from their website, it creates the perception of that business recommending or endorsing you.

Search engines consider that if another website links to yours, then your website must contain some valuable information, and will therefore list you higher in the search results for keyword phrases you have included in your content.

The quality of a link from another website matters greatly to the search engines. If the website linking to yours is itself linked from many other websites, the search engines will deem its endorsement of your website to be more reliable, and will thereby further increase the position of your website’s listing in the search results. For example, a link from a university’s website will be more valuable than a link from a friend’s personal home page.

Search engines will not place as much importance on a link from another website if your website also links to theirs — known in the industry as a reciprocal link. This is because the search engines assume the links were arranged for mutual benefit, rather than a genuine endorsement by one website to another.

How can you encourage other websites to link to yours?

Over time, you will find other websites linking to yours for various reasons: somebody bought something from you and posted their experience to their personal blog; somebody reviewed your product; or a local organisation listed you as a member.

To accelerate this natural process of acquiring links from other websites, try some of the ideas below.

Others will be more likely to link to your website if you have unique, informative and well-written content. Therefore, consider what information your visitors might be interested in that cannot easily be found on other websites, and add this content to your website in a logical, well-organised manner. As owners of other websites seek out useful information to supplement their own, your original content will be of interest, and they will consider linking to your website as a result.

Write a series of articles about a topic relevant to your industry and about which you have extensive knowledge. Add a note to the bottom of each article that you grant permission for other websites to reproduce your articles, provided they acknowledge you as the writer and link to your website.

Search for online directories — organised collections of websites, such as www.dmoz.org — and suggest your website for inclusion. Directories that are specific to your industry, location or target audience will result in more relevant traffic. Perform a web search for travel directory as an example of how to find industry-specific online directories.

Write testimonials for companies with whom you do business, including suppliers, clients and associates. Give permission for your testimonial to be used in that company’s marketing literature, which could include their website and result in a link to yours.

Understanding the importance of links — both to and from other websites — and how to use them to increase the effectiveness and visibility of your website is an important part of the process of developing and promoting your online presence.

This article was originally published in the February 2008 edition of In Touch In Business magazine. You may also download The Right Connections article as it was printed.

I spent my birthday in Paris, which was wet, miserable and cold. But, I’m used to the crazy weather now. In fact, I’ve concluded the weather is Paris is why French ladies always look great.

First of all, there’s something just perfect about the humidity. Every day was a perfect hair day, even without my GHD. Make up stays in place, and lasts longer somehow. Since it’s really cold a spring in your step is necessary to keep warm.

We stayed in a hotel near the Louvre, which was great because we walked all over. The taxi to get to our hotel was 55 euro though, so about $70! It seems the airport is far out of town.

It’s weird to see that the Parisian equivalent of our Holdens and Fords are Mercedez. Both taxis we caught were seriously plush and luxurious vehicles with all sorts of great gadgetry like headlight washers and ipod docks.

The shopping in Paris is obviously a great drawcards, and there was soldes everywhere. Just about every second shop is a shoe shop. Control was therefore difficult, and I was pleased for the first time that my bags were already full because I could have fulled an entire suitcase with adorable boots. However, not that practical at home.

During the day the streets are abuzz with local folk buying food and going about their business. There are lots of people walking around with breadsticks, so the movies are all true. The food is amazing though, all the stuff I crave at French restaurants was readily available everywhere.

We ate fois gras first night at a cute little restaurant, and I thought it’d be a midget little portion like at home, but now, we got two huge slabs of the stuff! While we were slowly making way through our entree, I didn’t care how they brought up the bird because the result was spectacular. We should all try force feeding more geese. So at the airport I bought some to bring home, since it’s canned quarantine shouldn’t take issue. I hope. It costs a fortune.

Things generally are fairly pricey, perhaps people here earn more. I’m not really sure. The exchange rate was ordinary too. Weirdly, champagne was cheaper at BevMo in the USA, so I should have stocked up there. Even the vintage champas was cheaper at BevMo. Jill… we need a BevMo in Cairns.

Nicky at Napoleon’s House

The Louvre was great, just like it is in the Da Vinci movie. We saw loads of paintings and got really sore feet walking around all day. The building itself was really spectacular as well, and that surprised me as I wasn’t expecting it to be an attraction in itself. I loved the Napoleonic Apartments the best, which are a recreation of how Napoleon lived in the same rooms that he originally slept in. They were opulent and in some places garish.

I’ve enjoyed Paris because it seems glamourous, but it has a lonely and grumpy feel to the place.

There are so many weird things about the USA. They mostly seem weird because I came from a Spanish speaking nation where you expect things to be different, but when everyone around you speaks English you sort of expect things to be the same.

First thing that’s different is Americans know the meaning of customer service. They’re seriously good brown-nosers! They’re chatty, friendly, full of personality and absolutely ready to give you ketchup with anything you please. Of course, it’s because they get paid like shit and they’re hoping you’ll tip them during the translation, so they put on a good show. We have much to learn by their vibrancy and enthusiasm for service. My glass was never empty, coffee is always flowing, they’re intuitive about cutlery and napkins and I never once had to ask for the dessert menu. But then, I didn’t eat one dessert in the US and this brings me to my second weird thing.

Portion size. It seems American restaurants believe they should not only be serving you dinner but also plenty for breakfast and lunch the next day. The serving sizes are ridiculous. I never finished a single meal, and I learnt quickly not to order entrees. Of course they also give you mounds of free bread, and often you’ll get free soup and salads as well. It seemed absolutely crazy to me!

Bacon is a different breed here. I always buy shortcut bacon, which has that big round bit with no grease on it. Well.. It seems the Americans have bred that bit out of the pig, because I’ve looked in 3 supermarkets for shortcut bacon and I can find is the evil fatty bit that I usually throw away. I am desperately looking forward to bacon and eggs at home.

While here I stayed with friends in Sacramento, Jillian and Brad, who very kindly put up with my curiosity and constant badgering about odd food and customs. They were both great sports and very fun to be around. They even laughed at most of my jokes, but perhaps they were just being polite. They’re a unique pair because Jill is a fiercely independent girl who is almost completely blind and Brad is a tall lanky black geek who is remarkably similar to Kaj in an absent-minded professor and metrosexual kind of way. According to Jill, Brad is the whitest black man alive, and I tend to agree.

Brad gave me a driving lesson in his car so I could drive to the Napa Valley and go wine tasting in a rental car the next day. He was a great sport because I almost scraped the passenger side of his car against another car twice as I had troubles with the wrong side of the road thing. Our Napa adventure largely went without incident, just on the way back I missed the exit and ended up in downtown Sacramento on the way to Reno.

Jill and Brad took me to the Jelly Belly factory which is near their house and we were able to tour the factory and see all the beans being made. It was really awesome, and at the end you could taste them all! You could even taste the new Harry Potter series with flavours like vomit, dirt, grass, soap, earwax and sardines. I almost chucked my lunch on the earwax one, it was awful. I found a great gem there though; belly flops. These are the not-so-perfect beans, so I bought a few huge packets for our not-so-perfect office!

I especially loved the time in the USA, and will really miss it. Out of all the places I’ve visited in the last 7 weeks this is the only one where I actually thought I could enjoy living. There is an amazing variety of product for sale, and producers, service providers and store owners seem to try that little bit harder than at home. It was incredibly helpful to be staying with some great locals who could teach me the way of the land too.

Milk

There’s no fresh milk here. Or at least if there is, I haven’t seen it. Everyone uses evaporated milk, and although it’s hard to believe it actually froths to make good foam for a cappucino. Tastes like crap though.

Domesticated Animals

… are everywhere. Pigs, dogs, cows, llamas, cats, chickens and ducks line the streets of villages eerywhere. They’re often roped to something near the road, but it’s not uncommon to see a few cows leisurely crossing the street. We saw two large pigs roaming a service station last week. In Cusco, a city of 800,000 people, I saw a llama in the middle of a roundabout chomping on grass.

Hawkers

Frequently people approach you in the street to sell you stuf, which is usually crap. Sometimes it’s children doing the selling, and they’re a bit more forward. They poke your arms and tug at your clothes. Coral yelled at one once here in Cusco. In the last two days I’ve been asked to buy yellow confetti, massages, restaurant meals, finger puppets and lollies. Kaj was asked to buy marijuana and cocaine. He get’s all the luck.

Dot Matrix Printers

Evidently Peru is where all our old dot matrix printers have ended up. Just about every business has one, and very few have inkjet or laser printers. I hear that song in my head everytime a printer goes… you know, the dot matrix song?

Independant Thought

Peru excepts its citizens of independant thought. The only helpful people we’ve encountered are non-Peruvians. This includes staff at hotels, airlines and shops. Maybe some of this are issues lost in translation, but it’s been particularly noticable in dealing with the staff at Lan. Problems get fixed if I call Lan in Miami, and people just give me blank looks here. There have been countless occasions of dealing with local people and they just can’t string together concepts.

Seat Belts

Nobody needs to wear them, and most cars are not fitted with seat belts in the back. Drivers sometimes wear them, but it’s definitely a seat belt optional country. Which is an interesting concept because there also seems to be few speed limits. Luckily the roads are often so bad you can’t go fast on them anyhow.

Breakfast

Unfortunately the breakfasts are really ordinary. You usually get a couple of flat and tasteless bread rolls with butter (again, made from evaporated milk) and memolada, usually strawberry flavoured. You’re often served orange juice which is freshly squeezed from green oranges, so it tastes more like lemon juice. I am so looking forward to bacon and eggs, scrambled eggs with truffle oil, tomato tartlets, omelettes, pancakes and all the other breakfast goodies I make at home. Someone needs to revolutionise Peruvian breakfast.

Bread

In general, the bread is bad. Maybe they don’t have yeast here, but there’s no bread like we would know bread, so toast isn’t an option. You only ever get flat round rolls, or occasionally a good bread at a posh restaurant. I’m looking forward to a vegemite on toast - or anything on toast.

Toilet Habits

Erick, skip this bit. You don’t flush your toilet paper, apparently the system can’t handle it. So, there’s always a bin next to the toilet which hopefully the housekeepers empty every day. Otherwise it gets a bit whiffy.

Kaj and I are still in Cusco but are happily not suffering from altitude issues any longer. Last night was New Years Eve, and it´s interesting how people celebrate when they don´t have so many regulations like we do.

In the morning Kaj and I walked around the city and discovered a very strange looking market. Mostly local people were at this market, and we soon figured the things being sold were for the New Years celebrations in the evening.

Yellow is a good luck colour here and Cusco has this really odd tradition where people don yellow underpants on the outside of their clothing and run around the main square. So, one of the commonly sold items at the markets were yellow underpants. In Australia I´m not sure you´d see too many pairs of yellow knickers, but here there must be a lot of manufacturers that prepare specially for this day. There were little bitty lacy ones, man sized ones and even children´s editions. I have never seen so many yellow underwear!

Just about everything for the celebrations was yellow. There were plastic flower necklaces, streamers, bags of confetti, clickers and crazy flouro yellow glasses that had ´2008´written on them. Kaj noted they´ll have difficulty in 2010 as to 00 is for your eyes to see through. We didn´t buy any of these crazy things, but they were funny to look at.

We had tickets to an exclusive club here, Fallen Angel, which is famous for it´s New Years parties. We had dinner at the club, and then at about 10pm the staff moved all the tables out. The dinner had 150 people, and 600 folk had tickets for after dinner. I had no idea where 600 people would fit in this establishment, as in Australia they´d probably have approval for 100 people at the most. Needless to say, it was a dramatic fire hazard and we were sardines by 11pm.

Upon arrival at the party we were given a plastic bag filled with yellow goodies we´d seen at the markets earlier in the day, and a pair of silver wings and a halo. Since everyone was wearing white to the party, the whole place looked like a bunch of crazy angels with wings and halos.

At about 11:30pm, the owner of the club, who is an overtly gay man, got onto the microphone and started blurting gayness in Spanish. Then, he proceeded to throw yellow underpants into the crowd. The people cheered and scrambled for the yellow pants, which prompted him to tell everyone he had a pair for every person. Unfortunately for me the pair I recieved had a stain on the crotch, but I believe it was a passing smoker who came in contact with my yellow knickers. They were also branded with Fallen Angel 2008.

So then just before midnight everyone has their knickers, yellow goodies and halos and wings, and we´re ordered to clear out of the club and head to the main square which is about one block away. As everyone is leaving the club there are a collection of Fallen Angel staff at the front door handing everyone a bottle of bubbly.

There is a little mini square outside the club, and most partygoers had collected there with their bottles of bubbly. Then, at about 5 mins to midnight everybody started shaking their bottles and spraying their friends. It´s 4C and I´m breathing fog and I am so damn grateful the only friend we had at this party was Gonzalo our tour guide, as I had absolutely no intention of getting bubbly drenched in the freezing cold! It was bad enough I couldn´t feel any of my fingers.

Suddenly some major fireworks exploded above our little square, and they´re the closest I´ve ever been to exploding fireworks! Gonzalo knows the owner of this club quite well, and discovered that these fireworks were organised especially for the Fallen Angel party people. These were the only fireworks of the evening, as here they don´t have a big public display like we do at home.

Kaj and I still had full bottles of bubbly and collectively decidied we should dump them on Gonzalo since he was in the party mood. After we sprayed him I threw yellow confetti all over him, which stuck beautifully.

The whole party then marched together into the main square, and the street parted to let us through as if we were celebrities. Everyone was looking and gawking to see where we´d come from! We had drummers at the front of our procession, and a whole bunch of men scattered through the crowd letting off firecrackers above our heads.

Once inside the square we caught up with Gonzalo´s friends, many of whom we´d already met through our gourmet food travels. People were very celebratory and happy. The square was filled with a couple thousand people, and at least a couple hundred were letting off their own firecrackers. Loud booms often went off near us, and every couple of seconds there would be screaming fireworks shot into the sky.

Every now and then a hawker would approach Kaj and I to buy things. So I´d throw confetti on them and say ´Happy New Years´, and they´d soon go away.

At about 2am a whole bunch of riot police entered the main square, and that´s when Kaj and I decided it was time to head to bed. Seeing riot police in person are actually a bit scary.

Today is the last day of our gourmet food tour, and we´re looking forward to the finale dinner at the MAP restaurant inside the museum here. After that we take a train to Puno which is on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the highest navigatable lake in the world. Bolivia, a completely landlocked country, run their navy on the lake. This seems like a dramatic waste of money to me. We´re here for 2 days then head to the USA on 5th January.

At Erick´s request I´m not going to write any more details about my gastro issues, but you´ll all be pleased to know that for New Years Eve I may actually be well enough to consume alcohol. It´s now 2008 in Australia, we´ve got another 13 hours before our spectacular event.

For all those who rolled their eyes and groaned when I said we were taking a gourmet food tour, I can now confidently say the food here is spectacular when you know where to look.

Our tour started with a cooking lesson at a little restaurant in Ollantaytambo called Mayupata with Chef Oscar Morello. It had a lovely big pizza oven like at Rattle & Hum, which also doubled as a heater for keeping the restaurant warm! We donned aprons - yes! Kaj wore an apron! - and set about cooking 2 entrees, 2 mains and a dessert.

Something I love about the cuisine here is that it follows a routine I´ve always dreamed Australian restaurants would. That is, to only cook with seasonal local ingredients. Here it´s the distance and infrastructure issues that prevent otherwise, but the results are tasty food using ingredients in their prime.

At the moment corn is being harvested, and it´s not corn like we have at home. We were using this giant corn, which is only pale yellow, and isn´t as sweet as our corn, so it has more practical uses in savoury food. Still tastes divine with lots of salt though.

Chef Oscar guided us through our first dish which was using a grainy yellow potato and serving it with a delicious yellow sauce. Potatoes are actually natively Peruvian, and were originally poisionous. Many civilisations cross-bred them with other things to produce their edible form we have today, but amazingly Peru still grows 3000 different types of potatoes!

The dish was delicious, and although the chance of us finding the Peruvian yellow potato at home is slim, I´m sure a different potato will substitude just fine. A kifler might actually do a better job!

In the sauce, and in many other things we made, we used a small capsicum/chilli creature called a rocoto. It has a beautiful orange colour, and is used for both the slight spicy flavour, and the divine colour.

The most exciting thing we made in the class was the roasted trout. Gonzalo our tour guide and Oscar had visited the trout farm that morning and picked us a beautiful trout to cook with. It´s a rainbow trout which is farmed in clear and fresh mountainous water, and the flavour is just spectacular. Some Tetusya junkies might realise this is the same fish Tets uses as his signature dish, the Ocean Trout Confit. Just in Tets case the fish are caught in Tasmanian freshwater streams where the water starts to meet the ocean. Hence the name, Ocean Trout.

The trout had already been gutted, which was great because I don´t think Kaj had the stomach to do it. The rainbow trout is also an awesome fish because it has no scales! We put some rosemary where his gizzards used to be, and then covered him with salt mined in the mountains nearby. The salt had a mineral in it which gave it a slight pink hue, much like our Murray River salt at home. Then a little sprinkle of water and into the pizza oven for 30 minutes.

When it emerged we needed to tap the salt away as it had developed a hard outer crust. The trout underneath was beautifully cooked, and we ate it with a little Peruvian lemon. I must try this one at home.

Tonight we´re off to a famous New Years Eve party held by one of the first gay men un Peru to come out. Gay folk are still largely in the closet here as this is a strong Catholic nation with little acceptance of things they don´t understand. We´re looking forward to the party, we need to wear all white so I´ll be donning my melted snowman costume again. Kaj bought white jeans and is afraid of being molested at the party as he believes they make him look too gay.

See you all in 2008!

There’s a lot of chatter among businesses about the cost of IT services and their affordability, and because of the increasing dependence upon websites, this is begrudgingly becoming a cost centre. The good news is that as well as costing more, websites are also delivering more profit. More people and businesses rely on websites to research product information, and to make vital purchasing decisions.

Lots of businesses make poor decisions relating to their website because they’ve never taken the time to learn about the medium, and instead, try to cut corners that end up being expensive to fix. Here’s how to avoid some of these mistakes and save money on your website bill.

Have Clear Goals

Most websites are built for two reasons; credibility or profit.

Most service-based businesses need a website to prove their credibility to potential and existing clients. Service-based businesses include lawyers, accountants, public relations firms, graphic designers, advertising agencies and web developers. Their websites should provide extensive information about the services they provide, why a client should choose them, an up-to-date portfolio and an easy method of contact. These websites tend to be smaller, but require cleaver dynamic content to be effective.

Retail and event organisation businesses must turn a profit from their websites. Their focus should be on product information and strong photography to encourage purchasing. Retail websites are naturally large because of the number of products most shops carry. They also tend to be more expensive due to the need for businesses to frequently update their prices and product range. Most retail websites therefore have a database and easy management interface.

Clarify your website goals before engaging a web developer. If you expect to make money from your website, you should treat it like any other business expansion and write a plan.

Research Online Competition

You can save a lot of money by checking out the mistakes your competitors have made online and avoid them. Don’t just check the local competition, either; research similar companies in other regions of Australia and around the world to gauge your opinion.

Watch your own habits when researching products; pay attention to what grabs your eye, where you click on the page, what you searched for and how easy it is to find essential information like contact details and prices.

Keep a list of the things you think work well and the parts of websites you dislike. Be especially careful of gimmicks which might catch your attention but distract you from the message or purpose of the website.

Seasoned web developer Greg Slapp from Port Douglas Internet Services says, “If you want to play the game, you need to know the rules.” Take the internet seriously and get to know the players.

Get Organised

The major reason budgets blow out in the web design industry is because businesses are not organised. You can be several thousand out of pocket if you do not get this right.

Be aware that most web development companies charge by the hour, which means if you are disorganised, you’ll be paying by the hour for someone to get your materials in order.

Collect all your branding and marketing materials. This should include your logo, corporate colour scheme, business cards, brochures, letterheads and print advertisements recently in circulation. Ensure you have vector copies from your graphic designer of at least your logo, but preferably all these materials. These materials are more essential to the web design process than anything else and leaving it up to your developer to recreate digital files from business cards or printed material can incur hours of unnecessary extra work.

Consider providing a written brief. A clear and articulate design brief is crucial to the design process and if you don’t write one, your web developer will need to spend extra time putting one together. A good design brief will include extensive details about your company, the aims of your website, your target audiences, your budget and time frame, and examples of designs you like.

Be clear about how you wish your business to be portrayed. This doesn’t mean providing a layout for how you want your website to look — that’s what you’re hiring a web designer for — but be confident about what your business does, its target market and the image you wish you project. Are you looking for something professional and clean or modern and funky? Do not leave the guess work to your web designer; otherwise you may be up for extra design costs when the visuals don’t match your expectations.

Deliver the final version of your text, not drafts. Many web developers will not start work on any part of your website without having the final text, and any changes to this text require manual changes by your developer and will incur an extra charge. Deliver the text digitally (for example, as Microsoft Word documents,) rather than as physical printouts to avoid the need for retyping.

Hiring a Professional

Consider at which point you need to engage a professional and carefully consider the type of web development company you are looking for.

If you have just an idea or a concept, you will need to pay a web developer in a consulting capacity to transform this into a realistic project. This requires planning, experience and industry research.

Working with a local company in Far North Queensland will be considerably cheaper than hiring a capital city firm — you’re likely to be paying less than half by keeping your business here. You’ll also have the added advantage of working with someone who is familiar with your industry and readily available for face-to-face meetings.

Many businesses try to save money by hiring a whiz-kid or “friend of a friend”. Sometimes this can be an effective way of saving money, but ensure you have seen examples of their work before committing. You should be proud to show off your website.

Cutting corners here will be expensive later.

How Much Should it Cost?

Websites are custom built, so the costs here will provide you a ballpark figure of how much you should be prepared to invest.

Service-based businesses: $2500 – $3500 for a new website, and allow $500 per year if you make minor changes once a month.

Online shop: $5000 – $7000 for a new website.

(Please note, these figures are based on current pricing for professional website development in Cairns, Australia.)

Top Tips

• Have clear and realistic goals
• Check out the competition
• Collect your branding
• Write a design brief
• Be clear about your expectations
• Deliver final text, not drafts
• Hire a professional

As with all goods and services, you get what you pay for in web development; but careful consideration of your business goals and expectations coupled with thorough planning and preparation will ensure every dollar is well-spent.

This article was originally published in the January 2008 edition of In Touch In Business magazine. You may also download New Technology Saves Time and Money article as it was printed.

Kaj made it to South America with all his luggage and flights intact. How do I get all the bad luck? We met on a plane in Cusco on our way to the jungle from Puerto Maldonado which is almost on the Bolivian border of Peru. Kaj didn´t recognise me at first, his excuse was that he was watching all the people get on the plane. I was however the 3rd person on the plane, so it was a crap excuse. He was instead taking delight watching a little bitty airline hostess struggling to put a large suitcase in the overhead lockers. No, he didn´t get up and offer to help.

On arrival in Puerto Maldonado we were taken to the office of our lodge company, and asked to remove anything from our luggage that we wouldn´t need. So, out came all our cold weather gear, since it was about 30C and extremely humid.

I was glad to be at sea level and breathing in a good amount of oxygen and my Cuscian altitude headache was slowly fading. Kaj however was really under the weather after being in the air for 27h, and hadn´t slept a wink. He was dreading the 45min bus trip to the river, and the successive 4h boat ride to the lodge.

The bus trip was an interesting experience. The road can´t really be called a road by our standards. It was a dirt track, barely wide enough for our bus with dodgy bridges and potholes big enough to swallow Mum´s new Hyundai Getz. It was muddy as it´s wet season here too, and I was worried at any moment the bus would get bogged and all the American tourists in their clean adventure gear were going to get real muddy while we all pushed the bus out of a former pothole - now a small lake.

But no, we make it intact to the boat departure, and it was a pleasant journey along the river. Kaj was even able to keep all his lunch intact, and the further upstream we went, the more bird life we saw.

Our lodge, Refugio Amazonas was a 16 room log cabin structure with a thatched roof. Our room had two beds (note to self: when in South America, don´t ask for a double room if you want to sleep with your partner. You require a matrimonial room) and one wall was completely open to the jungle. We were warned to keep our important documentation and any lollies in the safety deposit box as creatures sometimes enter the rooms while we sleep.

The only creatures we could tell that came in were the mosquitos. Not nearly as many as in Iquitos, but it did require us to sleep under mosquito nets. They´re not nearly as romantic as they look!

First night in both Kaj and I came down with gastro problems, and that had me totally out of action for the first day. The second day wasn´t much better. Kaj´s condition improved enough for him to take a jungle walk to a canopy tower 36m high where he sat watching macaws fly past.

3rd night we were transferred to the second lodge, the Tambopata Research Centre, which is a further 5h upstream. Although the boat ride was gruelling, upon arrival a family of 6 red howler monkeys greeted us as we hopped off the boat.

We observed the monkeys for about 2 minutes, when the big one came down from higher in the tree and stood above us and started to pee. He didn´t get me, but an American researcher was more lucky! Then, all the monkeys started to pee. It was raining monkey pee! We assumed they didn´t want us at the base of their tree, so we carried on to the lodge.

Every time we entered the jungle at this lodge we saw something spectacular. We saw so many monkey species, but the real highlight was visiting the macaw clay lick.

We needed to rise at 3:30am to get to the location before the birds did, and suddenly about 300 parrots and macaws descended on the location. They was so noisy, but their colours were amazing.

Not many ate clay that morning, most of them just sat in the trees like a bunch of women gossiping.

We´re now in Ollantaytambo again on our gourmet food tour, and will write more when we have a moment.

Thanks for all the comments - so nice to be loved!

If anyone is reading my posts, please send me a comment. I´m feeling unloved. You just click on the little comments link at the bottom of the article.

The last 3 days I´ve been in the area famous for Machu Picchu, which is as amazing as it´s described. It was the one area I wasn´t looking forward to visiting because it´s so touristy, but it was really worth the visit.

It´s up high in the mountains, and although Machu Picchu itself is a little lower in altitude, I´m in Cusco at the moment and it´s 3,000m above sea level, and I´ve had a nasty headache all night. I think it´s a touch of altitude sickness. I have some tablets from my doctor to combat this, and so now I´ve taken them. They´re diuretics and they´re making me pee more than I knew I could.

This morning I meet up with Kaj as he´s flying into Cusco from Lima, and we´re heading into the jungle for 7 days. More mosquitos, humidity and cold water showers. Yay. I´ve bought a silly Peruvian hat to meet him with, and some rainbow gay gloves too. It´s cold enough to wear these items in Cusco! See the hat on the right - well mine is a bit more colourful than this!

Our first day into the area was in a charming town hardly anyone goes to called Ollantaytambo. Coral and I both really loved this town. We walked into the Plaza de Armas for dinner and found a little restaurant run by a couple. After we´d ordered the man walked out of the restaurant with a small animal that looked like a baby wombat. It was a satoni. I can´t find any images of this on the web, so it´s great we took lots of pics. It was only two months old, and Coral and I cuddled it the whole time we were at the restaurant. It was cold, so loved cuddles!

We took a train from here 1.5h to the town of Aguas Calientés which is also known as Machu Picchu town. We stayed at a cute hostel there called Rupa Wasi which was fantastic with the exception of the massive steps to get up to the hostel. We only did the steps twice. This hostel only had 4 rooms, so we had a lot of personal attention. A nice boy from the hostel named Orlando picked us up at the train station and carried all our bags to the hostel, including up the stairs. This was great because Coral and I could barely make it up the stairs. He got a big tip when he also brought our luggage back to the train station next day for our departure!

From Aguas Calientés it´s a 30min bus ride to Machu Picchu, which I was really worried about because of the switchbacks. I was certain I was going to see my desayuno (breakfast) again. On the right is a pic of the road from the top of the mountain. Luckily the drivers go really slow around the corners and I didn´t have anything to worry about.

First day in Machu Picchu we explored the main ruins and marveled at the architecture. The Peruvian governement are doing a fair bit of restoration too, so there are a couple of buildings that have thatches roofs using the original stone structure.

There are sooo many llamas here. Heaps. I thought we´d be lucky to see them, but no, they´re all over the ruins. In fact, I believe it´s how the grass stays nicely trimmed as they´re great lawn mowers. We were lucky enough to watch a baby llama frolicking with it´s mum, it was only 2 days old and snowy white. The mum was trying to coax it up some steps, but the baby just wouldn´t go.

Second day at the ruins Coral and I took a long walk up to the solar gate which is a 2 hour uphill walk on rocky paths. We also happened to take this walk in the rain, so had to go slowly because the path was trecherous. Once we got to the top the views would have been gorgeous if it wasn´t for all the cloud cover. All we could see in all directions was white fluffy cloud, but the walk itself was lovely. It was hard though, we ascended 1000ft during the walk, and I even took a pic of the sign to prove I´d been there!

On the way back downhill the cloud began to lift and we enjoyed great glimpses of the whole of Machu Picchu. It looked spectacular from the height we were at. This pic is similar to the occasional views through cloud cover we recieved.

I got great joy in telling hikers on the way down how far they were, as there is no signage or information telling you where you are on the track. I told one couple they were about one sixteenth of the way, and the first part of the track are hideously steep steps. I referred to them as a ladder, not steps at all. I also met the first Australians I´d met in South America on this track, one from the Gold Coast and two from Canberra. The Canberran couple said that being from Cairns I should be able to handle this humidity… it was about 10C and I´m shivering. There was NO WAY I could feel any humidity!

The train trip back to Cusco is 5 hours, and was beautiful because you get a slow look through villages and ruins on the sides of mountains. The villages are particularly interesting because people are dressed funny, and they wear amazingly colourful clothes for farmers. The ladies have a big backpack rug thing that they carry everything in; maize, coca leaves, straw, children.

Well off to the airport now to fly out to Puerto Maldonado. Won´t be near a computer for a week.

Today, I believe it’s Sunday, is our last day in Northern Peru, which is sad because the last 3 days have been great. This is an area of Peru few turistas visit, which made it feel a little exclusive. The people have been much friendlier, they still gawk at us but don’t run after us poking our arms to buy their crappy souvenirs.

We’re currently in Trujillo, known as La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera, (The City of Eternal Spring), because of its very sunny and supposedly pleasant weather year-round. It’s 15C right now, and I’m not sure how any self-respecting tropical girl could considerthat pleasant. Amazingly, this is Latitide 8 and Cairns is Latitude 17, so 15C in summer is rather strange to me so much closer to the equator than Cairns.

Trujillo is the most important economic center of northern Peru and an inland commercial and transport centre for the surrounding farmland. In 1800, the city of Trujillo greatly expanded due to extensive irrigated agriculture, fueled primarily by the sugarcane industry. Today asparagus, rice and shoes are the area’s main products. Among the internationally known products of Trujillo, asparagus is exported to neighboring countries, Europe and the United States. The areas around Trujillo are among the largest exporters of white asparagus in the world.

This morning we went to the Moche ruins of Huaca del Sol y Huaca de la Luna (Temples of the Sun and the Moon). The Moche people are pre-Incan, and the two temples stand in front of a white hill. The Huaca de la Luna, though it is the smaller of the two huacas at the site, yields the most archaeological information. The Huaca del Sol was partially destroyed and looted by the Spanish in the 17th century, while the Huaca de la Luna was left relatively untouched.

We didn’t go into the Huaca del Sol, as it is not open for entry. The Huaca de la Luna was spectacular, especially all the vibrant wall murals. Coral and I really enjoyed this place.

We also visited a great ancient city today called Chan Chan. It’s been one of the great highlights of the trip so far. Chan Chan is the largest Pre-Columbian city in South America, and covers 20 km² of adobe brick mud city.

It was founded by the Chimor people in 850AD, who eventually left the city when they were conquered by the Incas in 1470AD. It is believed that 30,000 people lived in the city.

There are 10 separate sections to the city, which are refered to as citadels. They had all sorts of rooms for burial chambers, temples, plazas, water supplies and houses. Each of the 10 have huge walls on the exterior, and the construction is amazing.

They first used adobe brick, which seemed to be made of mud/clay, with small stones and sometimes feathers and straw. Then, the walls are all rendered to make them smooth. This rendering alone must have been a massive job - it costs a fortune to render a house today because of the time it takes! Little holes were also left in various parts of the wall to act as expansion joints in times of eathquakes, which are reasonably common here.

After the rendering lots of intricate designs were carved onto the walls. Because the city is just 1500m from the beach, the styles carved are predictable. Lots of fish and birds, particularly pelicans, and other small mammals. Many of the walls are covered with a fishing net design, which looks stunning.

The city is severely threatened by erosion rain and flooding. We visited just one of the citadels, the Tschudi Complex, as this is the only one significantly excavated.

We’re off to Lima, and then Cusco tomorrow. Exploring the Sacred Valley, and then Machu Picchu.