¡Buenas! So we headed to Paracas for just a day and a night to do a trip to the Islas Ballestas, often coined 'the poor man's Galapagos' - they weren't joking.We did a morning trip around the islands in a boat for about 15 bucks, and in two hours we probably saw more birds than we saw during an entire week in the Galapagos (which cost about 2000 bucks :).Of course the tour 'experience' was nothing like as amazing as the latter, and we didn't get to leave the bo...

¡Buenas! We stayed in Lima for three days, but there's not too much to write about really since Maccers unfortunately spent most of the time there in bed with food poisoning (all better now though :).Our first morning in Lima was very pleasant though; we started the daywith a great breakfast in a cool cafe, followed by a stroll down to the beach and a wander around the very upmarket Larco Mar mall perched on the side of the cliffs, above which dozens of paragli...

¡Buenas! Our next stop in Peru was Huaraz and the awesome Cordillera Blanca, the world's second tallest mountain range in the world after the Himalayas, with over thirty peaks above 5500m.There are loads of treks you can do through this national park, including a popular four-day hike called Santa Cruz; but we just opted to do a one-day trek up to a beautiful crater lake, called Laguna 69, at 4600m.This was higher than either of us had ever climbed before and, ...

¡Hola! We stayed two days in Trujillo and slept the one night at a brand new hostal called 'hospedaje backpackers', which I feel I should mention as it was lovely but had only been open a week and could do with a few customers!It had two big dorm rooms with eight beds, all adorned in the most gorgeous blankets in all different colours.Everything was brand new, and we had the whole place to ourselves.They had constructed a sort of chill out area out the back wit...

¡Hola! Our first stop off in Peru was the town of Chiclayo, a dusty crossroads in the middle of the Sechura Desert.We hadn't originally intended to stay there, planning instead just to push on to Trujillo, but we got such a nice vibe from the place when we stopped to grab some breakfast that we decided to stay a night.What we hadn't realised was that when we first arrived I'd walked away from the cashpoint leaving my card behind in the machine, only noticing la...