Here for Hogmanay staying with Rosemary who is surrounded by her rescued dogs and cats. She immediately made us feel very much at home and we were soon settled in to our comfortable room - with our own private terrace. Colan is a small sleepy village (well, normally anyway) on the coast with a lovely long beach, a perfect setting in which to relax for a few days over New Year. We'd heard about Colan from niece Gillian who'd gone to stay with Rosemary last July ...

Another long bus journey again through the vast coastal desert landscapes punctured by verdant areas watered by rivers (what will happen when these dry up once the mountain snows and glaciers vanish ....?). In the Trujillo area sugar cane is the dominant agriculture whereas further north it is rice, paddy field after paddy field of rice. We pulled into Piura after dark scanning the streets for bus companies that go to Ecuador. We had found a cheap deal on Expedia...

Our Cruz del Sur Cruzero service bus north took us through Lima and the extensive suburbs that certainly reflected the other side of the city - poor slum areas where locals were scratching a living (and possibly many were not even managing that). It took well over an hour before we were well clear of the city, heading through the barren desert landscape and along the dramatic cliff top road. The scenery was stunning in parts and every so often we emerged from the...

It was a long haul from Ushuaia to Lima involving two flights and three take-off and landings.We were only in the air for forty minutes before our first landing at Punta Arenas but this was the most scenic part of the journey with mountains, fiords and sea beneath us. We were unaware that the flight involved this stop let alone that we had to get off and reboard the plane. But it made sense because the immigration formalities were much easier here than in Santiag...

We were only due to have one more day in Cusco before taking the bus to Puno on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca.But first we'd arranged to meet up with Ilan and Jordi to exchange photos over a cup of coffee and it was then we learned that there was a problem.Apparently while we'd been in the jungle and totally out of contact with the real world Peru was again encountering one of its 'civil uprisings' in the form of road blocks around the country.No buses were ...