As beautiful as the country is, when looking back on our time in Bolivia our initial memories will be of the sickness we encountered along the way. And so it almost seems quite apt that we would both suffer one last bout of gastro problems on our final day.

Luckily, however, we were still able to make our early afternoon bus across the Peruvian border to the town of Puno, as we edged ever closer to what was now becoming an almost dreaded excursion: the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.

Crossing into Peru was easy enough and followed the standard practice for most borders: hop off the bus, get stamped out of one country, walk into the next and get stamped in, hop back on the bus. While we were waiting around for the rest of our bus' passengers, Anne befriended some fellow Finns, who were rather strange but friendly all-the-same. Standard, I suppose.

Once in Puno we had a bit of a wander around, booked our bus to Cusco for the next morning and then decided on the safe option of pizza for that evening's meal - so not to further disrupt our stomachs - before making it back to our hotel, which was in fact very comfy and the staff were excellent. They also introduced us to a triangular shaped flatbread that we nicknamed 'The Pirate Hat' and which became a bit of a favourite of ours.

We actually felt a bit gutted that we only stayed the one night, but our focus was on getting to Cusco and ensuring that we were fully prepared for this upcoming trek.

So, one more relatively painless bus ride later, we had arrived at the gateway to the Incas and decided to explore. Cusco itself was as you could imagine for a tourist trap of this magnitude: clean and safe, with the general harassing if westerners for tours, massages, restaurants etc.

As our biggest concern was having the s***s on the trek - this was what formed the basis of the aforementioned dread - and considering we only had two full days left until the start of it, we made the executive decision that all adventurous culinary sampling were to be postponed until we were back.

Therefore, our meals were limited to the hotel breakfast - simply just eggs and an abundance of toast - along with a couple of trips to a BBQ/burger joint named Fuego. We had also discovered that Victor, our German friend from the Argentinian and Bolivian chapters, was now also in town and so we arranged to meet up with him in Paddy's - apparently the highest Irish-owned bar in the world.

Other than that, the rest of our time was spent either buying provisions/accessories for the trek, or with me catching up on work while Anne planned our onward travels.

Over the two days, however, my diarrhoea concerns began to grow into an almost paranoiac state. So much so, that by the time the morning of our departure came, I actually did in fact start the day with some toilet issues and so spent the 3 hour bus journey to the start of the trail (via a short stop in Ollataytambo) fearing that my worst nightmares were about to come true.

Luckily though, I overcame my obvious psychological struggles and things subsided as we walked through the first passport control, over the bridge and into this mystic part of the Andes.

Despite being able to leave most of our belongings at the hotel - such is the norm - our packs were still relatively full as we now had to account for our sleeping bags, sleeping mats and a large supply of water. It didn't prove to be that much of a strain though as we ascended up to 3,000 metres for the night, stopping off a regular points to admire the view and even take in our first 'archaeological site', as Freddy, our head guide, referred to them as. Apparently, simply calling them 'ruins' is deemed disrespectful to the Quechuans - the locals in this region.

He continued to educate us about appropriate Quechan terminologies, with one being the 'Chaskis' - the rather heroic chaps that carry tents, food and everything else at rapid speed in order to set up before the tourists arrive at camp. Most will carry 25kg sacks and walk in just sandals, which is an unbelievable feat and even more so when you consider that some of them are over 60 and have done one trek a week for the past 45 years or so. Pedro, our second guide, also mentioned that only in the last 10 years or so have the treks become regulated in terms of the weight they carried - it used to be 50kg and above.

Anyway, back to the name: Chaski means warrior and so is complimentary; foreigners, however, will refer to them as 'porters' which is seen to be derogatory and therefore offensive.

As we made it to the first camp, our group of 13 hikers were surprisingly relaxed about the dreaded second day. Other than Anne and me, there was a top Melbournian guy named Rhys, whose father was Welsh and mother was from Burnley, with the rest of the group coming from various parts of the States: a couple of awesome young couples from Los Angeles and Chicago respectively; a great family from Nebraska; a lovely mother/daughter team from Arizona; and finally, a f***ing annoying fat cow from Florida that treated Pedro as her own personal slave.

So, as I was saying, we were relaxed. Very relaxed, actually. Relaxed to the point that a few of us lads even had a kickabout with some of the locals on a five-a-side pitch. It was probably for the best that the setting sun cut short the game, as trying to run at 3,000 metre altitude was proving extremely difficult and over-exerting ourselves on the day before we were to climb 1,200 metres and then descend a further 600 is probably not the wisest thing to do.

Click here for part two.