Coming to an end of our time in South America we headed back to Cartagena for our last few days. We had saved a couple of activities left for this time so we still had lots to look forward to even though we had already explored a great deal. Checking back into Hotel Marlin we was once again comfortable in our nice air-conditioned room and buying lots of alcohol from the supermarket we barricaded ourselves in for the rest of the night to savour the coldness. The f...

We began our tour of the Carribean coast with the first stop, a town called Santa Marta. There wasn't much information on this town in the guide book however we found a nice hostel with a swimming pool and decided to relax for a couple of days. Taking a day trip into Santa Marta we were done exploring the town within 45 minutes. A town of very little interest other than shopping, and because Jonathan has told me I cannot load him with one more rucksack filled w...

Cartagena Part 1: Cartagena has the whole Pirates of the Caribbean feel; A beautiful city dipped thoroughly in history which looks like it has been pulled out of a fairy tale with it's cobbled streets, plazas and flowery covered buildings with Rapunzal type balconies! The historic city is surrounded by a great stone wall with canons inset, which dates back to the 15 hundreds, a time when the city found wealth and became under threat from invading army's and pirat...

Lima: We stayed in part of the city called Miraflores which is modern and vibrant and a great place to relax, which is exactly what we needed to do after the Inka trail! Unfortunately I haven't much to say in this blog as we were both so exhausted we didn't do much but instead just ambled along stopping for occasional drinks in the fancy peer on the sea and sitting on the pebble beach watching the waves and surfers! Only a short stroll to the ocean from where we ...

Cusco and the Inka trail part 2: Awake at 6:45 for the first day hike we made our way by bus to the start of the trail. Our passports stamped with the Machu Picchu logo and date we set off for the first stage of our hike. Day 1, 12km: Not a bad day and a good way to start the trail as it introduced us to smaller mountains and gave us our first taster of the excellent views we would be experiencing. We also came across our first Inka ruin which made you more exc...