Day 9 - Flight over the Peruvian landscape to the ancient Inca city of Cuzco! Taking valium at 5am was not what I would call a fun start to the day, neither was the flight we had ahead which stopped on route in Juliaca just to prolong the pain for me. Ads was his usual star and helped me through the many tears, plus the flight attendant let me stand outside for a while on our first landing so that was good plus she gave a hot drink of Cocoa leaves to help with the altitude! The scenery through my bad valium haze was breath taking though, thousands of miles of rocky desert mountains, some snow capped and deep blue lakes with not a single village in sight..... this country is so vast and underpopulated and again reflected the landscape we had expected to see. Arriving finally in Cusco at an altitude of 3326m this time we all didn't feel too bad and mum too was looking better, the advertisement for 'oxygen in a can' at the airport though was quite tempting!!! Cusco was once, in the 12th century, the powerful capital of the Inca Empire until the Spanish invaded and wanted their capital by the sea, hence Lima was born. Set in the heart of the Andes it had a beautiful backdrop of mountains and along with the many narrow cobbled streets, colonial buildings, churches and temples was already another charming place within Peru which we could see why other friends had raved about it. to be continued....................