Andrea: The Inca Trail to magnificent Machu Picchu was awesome. This is camping the way it should be: your tent is set up for you by the time you arrive, 3 meals a day are cooked for you plus you get snack-packs for the walk and you can pay extra to hire another porter to carry your stuff! So, one of the porters carried our sleeping bags and our warm clothes that we only needed for night time and we just carried our little backpacks. We didn´t even use ...

Vern: We arrived at Cuzco (Peru´s colonial jewel) at a reasonable time in the morning and made our way to the hostel. We were to start the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in 3 days, and the plan was to acclimatise to the altitude and see a few sights before heading off. We started with Qoricancha, a nearby site where an Inca Palace once stood which housed a Sun temple - a room lined in gold and designed to illuminate completely when hit by the sun on the two solstice...

Vern: The overnight bus dropped us in Lima just before 6am and a taxi took us to our hostel shortly after that. Luckily the night-receptionist heard the door bell and checked us in at the crack of dawn. We crept into the dorm and went to sleep. The hostel, strangely named HQ Villa, is a converted mansion built in the 80s with an out of fashion exterior but classic finishings, large reception rooms and mosaic courtyard give the house a grand manor feel. We liked ...

Andrea: Six inch heels are not a good idea on a bus. I´m not talking about me, of course, I didn´t pack any heels, let alone those of the 6-inch variety. I´m talking about the woman whose job it is to walk up and down the aisles of a moving bus. After 7 hours of just falling asleep and waking up to the the sight of woman-in-red-polyester-outfit almost in my lap, we had arrived in Huaraz at 5:30 am. We reluctantly followed a guy (after many minutes of ...

Vern: A five hour bus took us from Chiclayo to Trujillo from where we caught a sunset coloured local bus to Huanchaco. Previously a sleepy fishing village, surfers have since taken over Huanchaco. In front of a wide, dusty beach large waves were curling into aggressive tubes out at sea, but no surfers were out to entertain us as we drove in. We were dropped off in front of the budget hostel we'd planned to stay at but this was was closed so we checked into the mu...