Our planned trip to our next location of Arequipa was brought forward a day when we told that there would be no transport between Puno and Arequipa for 3 days due to transport strikes over an ongoing mining dispute. Therefore we tiredly caught a bus at 10.30pm from Puno and arrived in Arequipa at 4.30am, which was followed by yet another argument with a taxi driver over not actually knowing where the hostel we wanted was and trying to drop us off any old place. E...

The time had come to take our one chosen luxury train journey of our trip; from Cusco to Puno aboard the 'Andean Explorer', a journey which would take us through the Andean mountains and up to a height of 4300m. Boarding the train, we were directed to our seats; at a table decorated with fresh red roses and a welcome note and menu for the day. The 8 hour journey begun in the dusty outskirts of Cusco but soon chugged along through the snow capped Andean mountains,...

11th May and we were off on the Inca Trail, the only thing we had actually planned on our round the world trip about a year ago! The four day walk to the lost city of Machu Picchu is known to wind through the zone where the snowcapped Andes Mountains meet the lush Amazon jungle; a 27 mile route that many experts believe the Incas blazed five centuries ago as a holy pilgrimage that prepared visitors to enter Machu Picchu. So after little sleep again, we were picke...

Our next couple of weeks were filled with Spanish lessons; 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, followed by homework and practise. Staying at Gloria's was lovely, where she provided us with yummy flatbreads with butter, jam and cheese for breakfast, freshly made fruit juice each morning and tea, and even fried eggs on a Sunday! We also had lunch with her and her family (grown up son and daughter and sometimes a couple of her grandchildren), where we were fed very well, ...

Our LAN airways flight from Auckland to Santiago went pretty smoothly, despite consisting of 11 hours mainly over the Pacific Ocean! It was the final flight for the aircraft, which meant all the crew had carnival style accessories attached to their outfits and there was a very cheery atmosphere between them all...not sure you would get away with that on British Airways. Once in Santiago it was just a short wait before catching our second flight up to Lima, althou...