After being in Cusco for what felt like forever, we departed there for our last place in Peru, Puno. This involved a 7 hour day bus through lets say a not so pretty city until we reached the heights of our destination at 3870m. Fredy, our flamboyant guide, gave us an introductory tour of this small town. Unfortunately mine and Sara's tour got cut short when she threw up walking down the main street. Maybe it was due to being sick of seeing yet another Plaza de A...

So the time that everyone (bar me) had been looking forward to had finally arrived - the Inca Trail! Despite having months and months to prepare for it, I still didn't feel fit enough to do it and I was more nervous than excited about it. Some of the group split here to do a different trek so it was a sad moment saying goodbye to three of our friends even if it was only for three days. We caught a bus from Cusco to a town called Ollantaytambo where we stayed over...

We arrived in Cusco following another gruelling night bus however our tour leader, Fredy, gave us one of his great tours around the city. It's a very attractive city with the usual main plaza and cathedral plus lots of cobbled streets going off in different directions to cute artisan shops and little restaurants. Unfortunately it is very touristy which sort of spoils it because where there are tourists there are inevitably locals to take advantage of it. There's ...

Our gateway to Colca Canyon was via Chivay, which was only 3 hours from Arequipa but 300m closer to the gods (at an altitude of 3635m). The scenery on the way was quite spectacular, which is through a national park and includes views of ice-capped mountains, intensive ancient terracing and we also stopped off regularly to photograph llamas, alpacas and vicuña (the wild version of llamas said to have the softest wool). On arriving in Chivay we were subjected to ...

We were glad to get away from the middle of nowhere (even if that meant taking another night bus) to the town of Arequipa. We had picked up a new tour guide in Lima called Fredy and this was his hometown so he was in his element showing us around town. He gave us a little whirlwind walking tour of the city including the main plaza and the cathedral, along with the important things like laundry places! He also showed us the huge market where we got to try all sort...