I'm back in Cusco after my month in the jungle and with a new-found appreciation for hot water, refridgeration, electricity and dry, clean clothes. I took an enormous amount of photos, the most interesting of which I'll upload when I get back to the UK next week.For me the highlights were seeing jaguar and puma tracks (and other less savoury evidence), plus all the crazy plants and bugs they have there, and starting a medicinal plants guide which involved testin...

I've just finished my first week at Manu Learning Centre. It's a private property of 646 hectares in Manu National Park on the Madre de Dios river. It took 11 hours on the bus (with breaks) to cover about 250km (90km as the crow flies) of unsurfaced roads which winded up and down two mountains before reaching the river. We then took a half hour boat ride to MLC in the dark as we hadn't been able to make it there before sunset.The MLC was set up to monitor the ret...

Cuzco is fantastic!  I arrived the weekend of the Winter Solstice when there is a big Sun Festival (Inti Raymi in Quechua, the Inca language).  They lasoo the Sun with rope so that it comes back for another year, pretty much the same theory behind Yule, before Christmas eclipsed it.  I had altitude sickness (I'm 3,300m above sea level so it's hard to breathe and I felt dizzy for the first couple of days) so I didn't stay long.All last w...

I'm in Disneyworld! Was flying through Atlanta on my way to Lima so arranged to meet my Japanese friend Keisuke there, but he couldn't get time off so I ended up flying over to see him. He's working in the Japanese Pavilion at Epcot, which I'm going to visit today. It's been 25 years since I was here and at that time Epcot was built but not open so it'll be the first time for me to visit it, but not see it!

I'm in Manchester, staying with Claire and Chris, friends from university. It's been wonderful seeing them again. It's my first time in this city and I love it!On Thursday we saw INXS at the Manchester Apollo, which was enormous fun and was especially meaningful for me because I'd had tickets to see them 16 years ago but wasn't able to go. We were right at the front to the side, so got some great photos.Yesterday we went window shopping (for b...