Somehow Gerard and I had both managed to have never visited New York before so we arranged our flight home to include a 5 day stopover in the big apple. Our first impression was a stunner, seeing the sun rising behind the skyscrapers of Manhattan from the window of the plane. We stayed in an apartment in the Meatpacking district which was a perfect place to explore from. First things first, we secured some oversized food which came in the form of a giant burrito....

I left off in Cusco and from there we took our last overnight bus journey to a place called Huacachina, literally a little oasis in the middle of the desert. On first arriving and covering the whole "town" on foot in less than 10 minutes, I was wondering what all the fuss was about but that evening we found out: sandboarding. Huacachina's main attraction is the opportunity to take a twilight trip into the enormous sand dunes in a dune buggy (appropriate), strap a...

As has become our custom, we kicked off our time in Cusco with a free walking tour. Unfortunately this time it was in the pouring rain but nonetheless it was still very enjoyable and interesting; we discovered that the name Cusco is derived from the Quechua word q'osqo which means belly button (because it was considered to be the centre of the world), had probably the best pisco sour to date (sorry Chile, Peru wins), and learned to play a tune on a tiny guitar ca...

After a few weeks of indulgence, we decided to get our legs moving again and took a ferry from Copacabana across to Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca. It's a beautiful little island with no roads or vehicles so the only way to get around is to walk - which we did, from one end to the other. We started in Yumani where we were tested with a steep hike up some Inca stairs before we could find a hostel and eat; doesn't sound like much but at 4,000m, everything is hard. T...

Cartagena is a lovely little walled city with cobbled streets full of multi-coloured colonial houses, great restaurants and designer shops. Of course this all comes at a price so we joined the other backpackers in a more affordable area called Getsemani which was easy walking distance to the upmarket bit and the only downside (perhaps not considered as such by all) seemed to be the higher concentration of prostitutes. The main activity in Cartagena is wandering s...