We arrived in Lima not expecting much. People that we had met on the way said Lima was a dirty, dangerous and boring city. I was thinking that it was likely we'd be mugged, and worse stuck in the hotel room all day, but we were pleasantly surprised when our tour guide took us on our short orientation walk of the historical centre. Lima has done a lot of work in the past couple of years to maintain and restore the historical buildings in the centre. Therefore ...

We arrived in Pisco in the afternoon, and the devastation from the earthquake in November 2007 was still very evident. Our guide took us for a walk around the city, and there are still a lot of temporary buildings around the city that locals are living in. Some tents are still up and people are living in those. I'm not sure where the bathroom facilities were as the temporary building were just one room prefabs. Not many restaurants are open, and luckily the ...

Our big old car (Tony called it a piece of junk) picked us up at our hotel at 8am from our two hour drive to the largest sand dune in the world. No seatbelts in the back seat and I'm not sure if the windows rolled down but the seat was comfy and as the scenery was generally desert with a few orange trees every now and again I read my book most of the drive. We arrived at the XXX township and we immediately hoped into the dune buggies for our drive up to the top...

Nasca is a small town of approx 30,000 which is known for the unusual lines that were drawn into the desert floor in pre Inca times. There are many theories of what the lines were for and why the were created. One of which is that they line up with the stars (but only 30% do), the other that they were made as running tracks and the final and most credible is that they were made for worship of the gods and they made the shapes so that they could be seen by the g...

We flew from Cusco to Arequipa which saved us an 15 hour drive in the bus (which I was very thankful for). We arrived in the evening with just enough time to see the Convent before it closed at 8 in the evening. The old convent was built in the 1500 and lived in by the mostly Spanish nuns right up until the late 60s. The area enclosed within the convent was hugh and right in the middle of the city of Arequipa. Each nun had their own little living area with be...