The Peruvian gateway to Lake Titicaca is the town of Puno and we arrived while the local people were celebrating the town's birthday - 327 years old, apparently. South Americans love to party and it seems it's any excuse for a fiesta. Everyone had lined the streets to enjoy a procession of costume clad dancers accompanied by brass bands, each blasting their own Peruivan jive. There was plenty of street food around too, so we tucked into a chicken sandwich - bu...

Our trip to the Colca Canyon began at the ungodly hour of 3am. The canyon is remote and we had a long journey to get there. It's just not natural to get up this early so we grumpily got on the bus, closed our eyes and went back to sleep. 6 hours later we arrived at the canyon and what a sight ... it is massive! At over 4km deep it's more than twice the depth of the Grand Canyon in Arizona and we planned to trek down to the canyon floor and back up again - ma...

Following our 4 day walk along the Inca Trail, we arrived back in Cuzco totally shattered. We needed a rest to re-charge our batteries. After a day or two we had the strength to walk up to the local inca ruins of Sacsaywamán (or 'Sexy Woman' as we liked to call it) - in it's day is was a massive military fort perched on a hill overlooking Cuzco city. Today only about 20% of the original structure remains with some of the stones weighing hundreds of tonnes. W...

The most famous hike in South America, the 4 day Inca Trail was an unforgettable experience. The 43km path, high up in the Peruvian Andes, winds it's way up and down mountains with jaw dropping scenery. Walking along the trail and passing mysterious inca ruins, snowy mountain peaks and lush cloud forests was awe-inspiring. We climbed 3 mountain passes, the highest being "Dead Woman's Pass" at 4200m, only reached after a continuous uphill climb of 5 long hours....

It took us 15hrs to get from Nazca to Cuzco. We opted for the 'luxury' bus so the overnight journey was pretty comfortable. Our first choice of accommodation was full so we hunted around for an alternative, stumbling across hostel Resbalosa north of the main square. We were given a very warm welcome of Coca tea (to prevent altitude sickness) on the roof terrace. Drinking our Coca tea and overlooking the city below was a great start to the day after our long j...