I´m here! Set off from Leicester at 3 p.m. Friday, and went to bed in Paracas 35 hours later. The flight from London to Sao Paulo wasn´t as bad as I expected in terms of claustrophobia, but there was some turbulence that caused the man next to me to scream! The next leg of the journey, to Lima, was really exciting once the mountain tops started to appear through the clouds. By the time we flew over Lake Titicaca (which took a good half hour to cross, it´s so big) it was completely clear and I must have spent 4 of the 5 and a half hours staring out at a huge crumpled, crinkly landscape until we flew into cloud again at Lima. Apparently the cloud there won´t lift until September.

Had a bit of a panic at Lima because my lift wasn´t there, but he turned up eventually and got me to the bus station despite the scariest driving I´ve ever seen. Drivers completely disregard lanes, lights and pedestrians, and a lot of commercial vehicles are in a dreadful state. Didn´t get to see much of Lima part from the traffic and lots of roadside vendors with tricycle stalls selling bananas, vegetables, huge pineapples, and hard-boiled quails´eggs (!)

Managed to stay awake for the 3 and a half hour bus ride through the coastal desert - I don`t want to miss anything! The whole area was affected by a major earthquake in 2007, and most of the surviving buildings have lost their upper storey. A lot are being rebuilt but others are still inhabited in a makeshift fashion. When the bus turned off the main road towards the sea at Paracas we headed into a vivid red sunset with a huge fiery sun. This time my contact, Silvio, was waiting for me and took me for a bowl of fish soup overlooking the harbour before I HAD to go to sleep. Unfortunately it wasn`t a peaceful night - there was lioud music until 4 a.m., and when that stopped people were clomping in to the hostel, cockerels started crowing and dogs barking, there was even a dawn chorus. And I was up again at 7 ready to go for my boat trip to the Islas Ballestas - got to the harbour far too early and entertained myself watching pelicans´and a couple of Peruvian dogs, strange hairless creatures that were first bred I think a thousand years ago.

That was wonderful, even better than I hoped. The sea was calm and I didn´t resort to Rescue Remedy even though I´d been getting worked up about being on a speedboat. We got close in to the rocks and saw sealions, some perched on little jagged rocks that looked very uncomfortable, about 500 on the "maternity beach" (the young are born around November and some have already grown up and left), one in a safe little baby pool, and lots of young ones frolicking in a cave. Also saw Humboldt penguins, elegant little red-footed cormorants, Peruvian boobies, graceful Inca terns and literally masses of black cormorants that I thought Silvio said were one-eyed cormorants. I puzzled over this for a while, thinking how strange it was that such a genetic trait had survived, then I decided he was joking. I eventually discovered that what he had actually said was "Guanay cormorants" - they produced most of the guano that provided the area with a lucrative trade about a hundred years ago.

Then I was off on a 4 hour trip round the Paracas National Reserve, desert and beaches. Got close to several red-headed vultures riding the thermals and looking out for dead sealions , and saw a few flamingoes in the distance. The only 4-legged creatures that live there are lizards and desert foxes. We weren´t lucky enough to see any of those, but there were a lot of fresh fox tracks.

After that it was time for another bus ride, a 2 and a half hour wait, and then an overnight bus to Arequipa. This was the most comfortable bus ride ever, with big soft seats that recline almost flat, very swish. But I was awake at 6 again and watching the scenery in the early sunshine, while the bus zigzgged its way up into the mountains. Sadly there was a lot of rubbish along the roads. Arequipa is the second or third city in Peru, with a lot of traffic, nearly as chaotic as Lima´s, but it has some lovely Colonial buildings and I spent the afternoon in a huge convent. What I liked about that were all the nooks and crannies and courtyards, and the intense colours that the walls are painted. I wish I knew the artists´names for them - there was a rich deep orange-red and a stunning blue, emphasised by the cloudless sky and strong sunshine. I used up a set of batteries taking photos. Unfortunately I can´t upload them because I had them saved on to a memory stick that I can´t use on this computer.

I´m writing this at the hostel where I´m spending the next 4 nights. It´a colonial building, beautifully proportioned, but it has seen better times! But - my room opens on to a flowery courtyard, I will have breakfast on a roof terrace overlooking the neighbouring volcanoes, and there´s a rather nice resident cat.