On approaching Arequipa we were disheartened as it looked like a sprawling dirty city. However when we arrived to the centre we walked into the most spectacular huge colonial plaza. The surrounding 5 or 6 blocks all around it were equally stunning with spanish architecture. This was the jewel of Peru. That night exploring the streets of sophisticated restaurants we found Don and Soph and ate a delicious pizza. It felt like we could have been in a sophisticated hi...

We´d heard that the floating islands on the peruvian side of lake Titikaka were very touristy, but we still wanted to see for ourselves. So we booked a tour and decided the only way to get a real feel was to stay the night on one. The floating islands are made from dried grass and are constantly topped up with new grass as the old decomposes underneath. There are over 40 small islands each with a few families living on each of them. As we had expected the island...

We arrived early evening after a fairly poor bus ride with a lake crossing thrown in and headed to our hostal, a pretty good but old hostal with cable tele and a roof terrace. We headed out for our first trucha (trout, kinda) experience in a lovely candlelit restaurant very SE Asian in decor. The meal was great but stupidly we asked for a caraff of tap water thinking, there is a nice big fresh water lake right there, the water will be fine to drink. The next mor...

Arriving in La Paz at the crack of dawn is a sight that will never be forgotten. It is set at 4,000m in a huge bowl like valley fringed with snow capped mountains and compacted with habitations verging on the vertical rim of the canyon. In the valley this city is bonkers, between the high risers the roads are filled with 1960´s US school style multi-coloured buses that struggle up the hills spluttering out toxic fumes. There are thousands of taxis and the traffi...

Potosi, the highest city of it´s size in the world (4,070m). It´s a charming place filled with colonial churches & narrow streets and was once famed for its silver mining; the majority of it owned by the Spanish and shipped back to Europe. Nevertheless they still mine there for scraps of silver today. We wondered the streets, still struggling with the altitude, checking out the markets where we came across a stall selling all sorts of puppies(ah soooo cut...