We finally arrived into North Peru and made a beeline for the coast only to find that as its winter it was all mist and not much sun. Still its nice to see the ocean again and watch the waves breaking against the shore. Lots of brave surfers out in their wet suits and also lots of the local fishermen trying to catch dinner from the pier and from their reed canoe type boats. Another benefit of being by the coast was the amazing seafood and we made the most of it, ...

Lima was never on our itinerary but an 18 hour bus which turned into a mammoth 21 hours meant that we found ourselves stranded here for a day before our next 8 hour bus north! Not much to say about Lima, we spent the day wandering around, shopping and eating. Plaza de Armas was pretty and totally traffic free but lots of armed vehicles around, we later found out that all of the Latin American Presidents were meeting in the Presidential Palace on the square that w...

Machu Picchu was one of the must dos on our travel list when we left home and it did not disappoint. Machu Picchu (which means old mountain) was built by the Incas in the 15th century and its located in the most amazing place with cloud forest covered mountains on all sides. It remained undiscovered until 1911 when an American researcher and historian was brought to the site by a local farmers son and discovered the ruins with 2 families living among them in orde...

We arrived to Cusco feeling a little jaded with the constant movement of travelling, packing our backpacks and moving in every few days and decided to make Cusco home for 2 weeks while we explored Choquequirao, Machu Picchu and many other Incan sites. Cusco is gringo central, gringo being the fond name that Latin American have for us tourists, and so there is an abundance of Irish and English pubs and every type of food imaginable to cure the homesickness of trav...

What an amazing 5 days! The trek into one of the last Incan strongholds has to be one the biggest highlights on our trip so far. It is a tough 33km steep mountain walk in and 33km back out again - but it was worth every step. Day 1 we headed from Cusco to Cachora where we started the trek. We had a guide, a cook, two horsemen, 3 donkeys and a horse with us! The donkeys ensured all we had to carry was a day pack each day - very happy about that. Although the boys...