B and L

We stayed in Lima for a few days before our flight back home. It is a big city! Many people say they like Lima, but most only actually explored one or two of the nicer areas of the city. We were no exception. We stayed in the rich area of Miraflores, which includes a beachfront with surfers and a super fancy mall. We also ate a lot of good food, including the Peruvian dish of ceviche (diced raw fish 'cooked' with lime) and cow's heart (well, one of us ate cow's heart. It was very good). We ended up not doing a lot in Lima, actually, which was a combination of the enjoyment of relaxing in one place for a while, and of getting bedbugs (actually again, only one of us got bedbugs - a most ... read more

The town of Nazca is near the famous Nazca lines, the mysterious shapes in the desert made by the Nazca civilization around 500BC. These shapes are of animals, plants, people and some 'abstract' designs, and were created simply by brushing off the black top layer of desert to reveal the white sand underneath. Due to the lack of rain and tiny windstorm that 'clean' the desert, the lines have remained almost perfectly intact save for the occasional car track (and the highway built by the government before the lines' discovery). We viewed several of the line shapes from a lookout tower and from a high hill. (You can do a fly-over in a small plane, but this was too expensive for us, and is also apparently nauseating.) We went to a local museum, and also attended ... read more

From Lake Titicaca in Peru, it is so easy to make a small detour into Bolivia - the lake straddles the border between Peru and Bolivia. Therefore, we took the bus to Copacabana, a small, pretty town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. However, we didn't end up doing much exciting there, and then went on to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. This bus ride was eventful, as the bus stops at a wide river and everyone is told to get off. You must buy a ticket (always the extra charge!) for a small river taxi, and meet the bus on the other side of the river. We were pretty nervous watching our bus sail away without us (but with our bags in the hold), but it turned out okay. La Paz has a ... read more

First thing in the morning, Renato (our guide from the trek) collected us from our hotel and hustled us to the bus station a block away. We queued with a huge number of people, got the eighth bus of the day despite being so early, and then queued outside the gate to Machu Picchu. Why the rush? Although several thousand people will visit the site, only 400 can climb Wayna Picchu, the mountain peak towering above the ruins that you see in all the postcards (and we wanted to climb it). Thus, as soon as we got in the gate, we ran (literally) along with many other tourists to the Wayna Picchu gate, queued again, and got our tickets to climb later in the day. After an introductory speech about Machu Picchu by our guide, he ... read more

Finally having arrived by plane in Cusco (from Tegucigalpa, Honduras) we reached our hostel and were shown to the room we booked with the cherubs (Simon and Lorenzo, who we met in Mexico). It was 7am, so they were still asleep - Simon was thrilled when we jumped onto his bed! Another English kid has been added to the group - Blaise, who went to school with the cherubs in London. Together, we all spent several days in Cusco acclimatizing, then did a hike up to Machu Picchu (separate entry). Cusco is a beautiful city, full of colonial architecture and twisting cobbled roads. There are so many great places to eat and drink that we couldn't go to all that we wanted to. We had some great local dishes (although the food is rather bland compared ... read more