I have fallen in love with Cusco - it is such a beautiful historical city. Most of the buildings in the city are built on the remains of Inca ruins after the Spanish invaded. For someone who dislikes shopping as much as I do, I have just spent an entire afternoon buying a whole bunch of handicrafts - will need to visit the Post Office to ship them home. I do not have any more room in my backpack, and my back is past the point of complaining! Inca trail begi...

What an amazing place! The Uros islands are a group of some 40 artificial floating islands on Lake Titicaca, made entirely of totora reeds. It takes a year to build an island: the Uros would seek out large blocks of totora reed roots (which is up to 2m deep), and string them together, and anchor them into the ground (some 20ms down) with eucalyptus trunks. Then they would layer them with totora reeds, criss-crossing each intermittent layer. A fresh layer of r...

After the visit to Taquile island, we took an hour's boat ride to Liquina peninsula, where we stayed a night with a local family at their home - 2 of us to each home. Our hostess, Ullaila (who we address as 'mama' as a sign of respect) is a 65-yr old grandmother, who lives with 2 of her grandchildren, Romelo (6) and Lady (11). Their other 3 siblings live with their parents in the same village. Their native tongue is Aymara, but they speak some Spanish as well ...

We spent the next 2 days exploring a few of the islands around Puno, with our guide Percy. He briefed us on our trip the night before, explaining that we will be picked up from our hotel and transferred down to the pier in their ecological limos, and we were delighted to find a row of trishaws waiting for us that morning. The 36km / 22 mile ferry ride to Taquile Island took 3 hrs, the first 20 minutes crossing through a channel of torora reeds. Taquile Islan...

It was only about half an hour from La Paz before our first sighting of Lake Titicaca (meaning 'grey puma'). The beauty of overland travelling is you get to see so much more of the country, and I loved the views of the lakes and mountains, and the farming life around them. We had to cross Titicaca on a motorboat (our bus was on a separate ferry), to continue on to Copacabana where we had a short lunch stop before catching our bus to cross the Peruvian border. ...