Damn it. Having had half my masculinity demolished by porters on the Inca trail, last night I lost the other half. No, it wasn´t too chilly out on the Bolivian salt flats, rather I was beaten by a cow. Well, most of a cow. Literally. Muggins here ordered a grande´ steak on his first night in Argentina... you can perhaps see where this is going. Overhanging all sides of my 12 inch dinner plate and well over 2 inches thick, it was always going to be a challenging...

I´m a mere half man. I´d reached that conclusion well before I wound up operation mega beard, watching Inca Trail porters tie half their bodyweight to their backs before jogging past us at 4000m above sea level, but the lack of fuzz to hide my shame behind is a concern. Hi All, we´re back from the truly phenomenal experience of walking the Inca Trail up to Machu Picchu. Will try to keep superlatives to a minimum but it was brilliant. You can take the tra...

Peruvian taxi drivers have much nicer vehicles than their Panamanian cousins, but you´d never know it. Clearly the horn should be used more than the steering wheel, unless on a three lane carriageway in which case random acts of wheel turning are derigeur, but my they have some extra tricks up their sleeves. And they are wearing sleeves, because gosh we´ve found a bit of a temperature change - this blog is being typed in a wooly hat no less.Before anyone jump...