Hello from the beautiful city of Cuzco, high up in the Peruvian Andes. You´ll notice I´m backdating my blogs just to break them up a bit, so they don´t look so long, and also so you can keep better track of where I´ve been. Annoyingly the places don´t always appear in the correct chronological order on the list but I´m sure you´ll get the jist. This blog will be about my time in Arequipa and Colca Canyon, and I´ll do another one about Cuzco immediately af...

This morning´s activity was a 45 minute flight over the famous Nasca Lines, which are ancient figures carved into the salt plains by the Nasca people between 100 and 600AD. The only way to see them is from the air, which entailed boarding a 6 seater light aircraft which I didn´t feel too comfortable about, but I was well prepared with my motion sickness pills and I coped OK. You realise how uneven the air is in a light aircraft, which feels very unstable. The p...

We arrived late into Paracas after finally escaping Lima, which seemed to sprawl for miles and miles. The scenery on the journey was terribly bland. Hilly but no trees and only the odd town and poverty hut to look at. Many people in Peru live in tiny shacks alongside cows and other cattle, and how they survive in the remote areas, where there isn´t a piece of arable land for miles, I don´t know. We had dinner on the sea front in scruffy Paracas, but the fresh s...

Hola from Peru´s capital city Lima. I have arrived safe and well. The 12 hour flight with Iberia and change in Madrid ran smoothly, though the lack of individual TV´s and appalling choice of films made the time go unbearably slowly. Peru is certainly a world away from anywhere I´ve ever been before. The 40 minute taxi journey from the airport to the hotel was an experience in itself and I can´t believe we made it without crashing. Peruvians turn 3 lane motorw...