We have spent the last 3 days at high altitude surrounded by Inca history, and Madeleine, at least, has made the most of it. Cuzco sits at 3250m high, and we certainly felt it on the journey up here from Arequipa. Just walking up a flight of stairs or slight incline takes our breath away. The city is beautiful - cobbled streets and colonial building (yes, more colonial buildings) surround a main plaza, and the Andes surround all of it. After a day of chilling o...

We have spent the last three days in La Ciudad Blanca - or the White City - of Arequipa, relaxing, soaking up the atmosphere and hurling ourselves down a mountain on bikes. The city itself is absolutely beautiful. The official line is that it is named the white city because all of the buildings are made from white Sillar, or volcanic rock. This gives a dramatic effect in the city centre, especially with the snow-capped peaks of El Misti and Chachani towering a...

We arrived, bleary eyed into Nazca at 4am this morning with one thing on our minds - lines. We were lucky enough to find a tour company that offered flights over the lines but was also connected to a hostel - so we went back there to wake up, wash, have breakfast etc before taking an 8am flight over the Nazca lines. For anyone who doesn´t know, the Nasca lines are a series of lines and giant pictures drawn in the sands of the desert near Nazca. They are only ...

So we have made it to the captial of Peru - Lima - and we are pleased to report that the buses have got considerably better (we´ve just got off of one where we were actually laid flat), wine actually exists again and we recognise some of the food. We arrived on Thursday morning to a foggy Lima. A friend of Madeleine´s Mum had offered to put us up so first thing on the agenda was getting to her apartment - no mean feat as the taxi driver appeared to be looking...

So, we have made it into Peru. The bus across the border was not too bad - apart from having to get up at about 4am to sort out border formalities and physically walk across the border we actually got some sleep and arrived on Monday morning. First stop was Piura, but we literally stayed there for breakfast before catching another bus to Chiclayo on the North coast. The bus took us through several miles of desert - nothing to be seen but sand for miles around ...