We have spent a few nights in Cusco as departure points for the Inca Trail and the Amazon Rainforest, and we finally had a full day in Cusco to relax and spend time seeing the city. The city has approx 100,000 inhabitants and its economy is mainly run off the tourists. City has a very affluent feel to it compared to some of the other cities that we have visited in South America. Shows are very Western looking and prices are more expensive for the local handicraf...

We´ve spent three great days hiking the Inca Trail and on the fourth day visiting Machu Pichu. We staying in Olytambo on Wednesday night which is closer to the start of the Inca Trail (82 kms) than Cusco. Our first day we had our passport stamped into the Inca Trail and set off with out group of 7 hikers, 2 guides, 1 cook and 9 porters. The Porters are amazing. They each carry 20 kgs plus 5 kgs of their own equipment for three days. The gear is carried in m...

We spent a day exploring the Sacred Valley departing fromCusco at 9 AM. Our first stop was Sacsayhuaman (pronounced sexywoman), which is just at the top of Cusco. The site was an Incan site destroyed by the Spainards when the arrived. It was originally a temple to the Sun and the Incas built shapes of animals into the walls which luckily the spainards didn't see so didn't try to destroy. One of the animals a LLama was huge and the back was twice the height of...

We flew out from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado on a quick 25 minute flight which saved us about 16 hours on a bus. The heat upon arrival at the airport was intense at approx 30 degrees which was a lot higher than the approx 12 degrees that we've had for the past two weeks. Upon arrival we were collected by the tour company (Eco Amazonia) large tour trucks with open windows. We were then taken to the office of Eco Amazonia where the rest of the group were able to r...

We had an interesting border crossing from Bolivia into Peru. When we stamped into Bolivia the immigration police marked our stamp ST which means slip not required. However when we reached the border with Peru the immigration police insisted that we had a slip and we must pay 20 Bolivianos (1.50 GBP) before we could leave the country. We kept pointing to the words ST and insisted we didn't have to pay but they wouldn't have any of it. Unfortunately our guide ...