I woke up in Nazca feeling pretty average. My right ear had not cleared during the previous day's descent, and I'd been feeling increasingly average since then. This morning it felt as if someone had replaced my inner ear with a cochlear-sized paddling pool, sloshing back and forth. I was concerned. We were due to fly over the Lines today. Luckily, we had two ex-pilots, in our group: John (&Marion) - owner of a van-bound BMW, ex-BA pilot, & pensioner -...

The next day we continued our descent towards Nasca, and the famous aerial lines. The road the next day was no less challenging than the previous night, twisting along the bottom of a river canyon initially, before rising up sharply another 1000m to a cold, barren plateau located some 3000m above sea-level. As always, as passed through a number of small communities that were somehow scratching out a very basic existence with little visible means of support. Lla...

Darkest Peru Saturday 12th may. We left the belly button of the inca world, and headed off towards Nazca over 500 miles away. We were due to split the journey at a roadside lodge after 285 miles. Our route passed through the valley of the incas, taking in many of cusco's attractions on the way. This was to mark the beginning of the end of the high Andes as we dropped from over 3800m to a negligible 500m at Nazca. We left Cusco by winding up over the top of it...

John had smoked his clutch in fairly spectacular fashion while negotiating the traffic hell of El Alto, but we weren't sure if this it was completely finished. Leaving La Paz two days later we had our answer thanks to an encore of El Alto traffic on Sunday morning. The bike was dead. Under normal tour rules this would have meant the end of the trip for John & Marion, but generously Kevin and Julia proposed that they could travel in the van, with Alan and th...