There's not too much to tell about Cusco as we spent time there either side of the Inca trail so spent most of the time beforehand shopping for warm socks and gloves and relaxing when we got back. They do good massages there and they cost less than £4 an hour! We spent my birthday in Cusco and had a meal with our group that night and even had a birthday cake! One thing we did notice is that there were far more foreigners (or gringos as they call us!) there than ...

First we should make it clear that we didn´t do the Classic Inca Trail. About 500 people a day walk the classic trail and Dragoman, the company we are traveling with have decided that it is too busy and a better experience to do a different trek. So instead we did the Pumahuanca Trek in the Lares valley, it is slighty shorter than the classic trail but goes to higher altitude. On our trek we only met one other group trekking, the rest of the time our group was c...

Chivay is a small town that we stayed in so that we could visit the Colca Canyon. Most women seem to wear traditional dress and the children wander the streets with a small lamb, goat or Alpaca wanting money for you to take a photo of them. We visited the Colca Canyon which has some spectacular scenery and saw a few condors. There are also Thermal Baths in Chivay so we spent an hour or so lazing in the hot water. One night in a resturant we tried guinea-pig and l...

After leaving Nazca we stopped briefly at a Nazca Cemetary (Cementerio de Chauchilla). There are many tombs which have been opened and mummies are displayed. Unfortunatelly grave robbers got to most of them first so there are many bones scattered around but some mummies are intact. All were buried in the foetal position unlike the Egyptian mummies as they believed they needed to be like this to be born into the next life. If rigor mortis set in before they could ...

After the Ballestas Islands we continued our drive to Huacachina a tiny oasis town near Ica. The purpose of this was to go out into the desert. We piled into dune buggys which could take up to 10 passengers each and set off through the huge dunes. The drivers are well practiced at this and know the place like the backs of their hands. They took us over steep dunes and we hurtled down like we were on a rollercoaster, and all the time our driver kept looking in the...