When you leave the little town of Aguas Calientes at the base of Machu Picchu and head back out of the Sacred Valley, you feel as if you have slipped the out of the fierce, piercing, penetrating, undeterminable stare of the emerald cloaked Emperor's Royal Guards. So severe are the slopes and terrain here, it is almost as if the mountains are those Royal Guards guarding a very precious and valuable treasure, which MP is. Darth Vader's Emperor would happily have these guards rather than what he has on the Death Star!

As you get further away from MP and start retracing your steps up and out of the Sacred Valley back to Cusco, you notice how the mountains and vegetation change. At MP, it is hot and humid and just like being in the jungle, while at Ollantaytambo and even Urubamba, it becomes much drier and warmer (even the Incas couldn't make salt from natural processes in jungle-like conditions!). Here it feels far more like a semi-arid desert and the mountains are lower and covered in scrub! Truly amazing to behold (if that sort of thing is your sort of thing!) how much has changed in a sort train ride back from MP and Aguas Caliente to where we catch our transport back to Cusco.

A couple of days ago the world was running normal and on track. But coming back out, things have changed irrevocably. One small question, a few jewels and a promise of a ring and everything has changed! One day we were one thing, today, as we leave, we are engaged to be married! Wow!

After a night in Cusco and it was another bus and heading towards to another nightstop and the end of our trip is in sight. And we had big news to tell our world!

Arequipa sits in the shadow of many volcanoes, the most famous being Misti. Since we are here in the rainy season, we didn't see it behind its mantle of clouds and rain. In the neighbourhood of Arequipa is the world's deepest canyon at 3200m; deeper than even the Grand Canyon in the USA or the Fish River Canyon in Namibia. There is a viewpoint on the very edge of this canyon, called Cruz de Condor or the Cross of the Condor, where you can watch the mightiest of soaring birds pass just above you in all their glory.

There are buildings here, that have survived the numerous destructive earthquakes that shake this city from time to time, that house fabulous museums, monasteries and covenants that hark back to the glory days of the free spending Spanish noble families. Built from the white volcanic stone, curved into intricate designs and which seem light, spacious and airy.

The Incas believed that the mountains in general, and volcanoes particularly, where violent and destructive places that brought nothing but the wrath of the gods upon themselves. They believed further that these same gods could be appeased by human sacrifices. Not long ago, three child mummies were discovered from a time long ago. They were perfectly preserved from the extreme high altitude Andean climate - extreme heat and cold and very little moisture - and now they are housed in a tasteful exhibit in a museum here.

But we saw nothing of these because we spent most of our days here letting our world know of our news! News was delivered around the world, across different time zones and conversations with started with whoops of delight and ended with tears of happiness. Emails were whooshed through the ether of cyber-space and delivered into inboxes awaiting an unsuspecting reader! All this takes time and since our time in Arequipa was short anyway, all we could enjoy was the ever present traffic and rain that seemed to accompany each other!

Asyou move from the altiplano and the High Andes toward the coast, you move away from the cold and wet to the dry and very warm. Peru's coast line is a desert that receives very little rain because of the Pacific current that runs just offshore. Very little rain has fallen here since these climatic patterns were established eons ago. Hence, the desert stretches almost the entire length of Peru.

Since the Spaniards were more of a seagoing nation than that of landlubbers, they had no real use for the Inca capital of Cusco and so Lima became the de facto capital of what would eventually become the nation of Peru. Lima is found smack bang in this coastal desert. So we were very pleasantly surprised to feel the sun on our face and the sweat on our back as we navigated to a highly recommended seafood restaurant in the seaside suburbs of Lima (just because we are travelling, it doesn't mean we have to travel-slum it ALL the time!). Besides we had yet to have any sort of celebration of our own (we didn't count the Arequipa speciality of locally own restos with grilled chicken, chips and Inca Kola, delicious as it was, as completely appropriate!)

La Mar Cerviche (www.lamarcebicheria.com) is now one of many that are starting to spring up all over South and Central America. According to Gaston Acurio, Peru's foremost celebrity chef and owner of this newly expanding empire, Peruvians love to eat and that the most important thing to them is eating! I think we might like this place!

Peru, and particularly Lima, is a gastronomic delight for the palette. The country is so vast that there are so many regions with their own specialities. Add to that cultural mix the introduction of Spanish cuisine, which in itself was heavily Moorish influenced, and throw in a little African ingenuity of their own herbs and spices, and you have some very exciting cuisine to enjoy!

Our own celebration meal was everything our travel had been so far. Spicy, exciting, different and a varietable smorgasbord of flavours, colours, styles and textures! It cost us many day's budget, but like a very good friend said, "In these last days, blow the daily budget because you will remember these experiences rather than the fact that you kept to the budget!" So if you are ever in a place that has one of these places, look it up, get yourself there and surrender to the sublime experience you will have there. Backpacker or not, you will remember your time there for a long time to come!

Recession? What recession? So, what was the budget again? Because it is bread and water from here on out!