As cheap and straightforward as travel is here in South America, one thing I'll never quite get used to are the early morning starts. Today we travelled from Puno in Peru to La Paz, capital city of Bolivia and we were up at 5.30am to make it to the terminal in time for our 7.00am Panamericana bus departure. Despite the early start, I certainly can't knock the price of just 25 Soles per person (about £4) for the 7-hour cross-border journey. The Panamericana service is aimed solely at tourists and it was helpful having someone on board who spoke enough [View Full Entry]

---

---

The reason most travellers (and tourists) come to Puno is to experience the wonders of Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world. Our tour began at 6.40am with neither of us having had a shower in the hostel because the hot water had inconveniently been switched off! We drove down to the little harbour and boarded a 25-seater boat before slowly sailing away along the reeded and mirrored surface of this tranquil lake. Today we had an excellent guide who not only threw plenty of facts and figures at us but he also explained a lot about the way [View Full Entry]

---

---

So here we are in the very cold but pretty town of Puno on the shores of Lake Titicaca. The day didn't get off to the best of starts for me as once again I managed to fall in the shower and bash myself up a bit. I was concentrating so hard on not slipping on the wet floor of the bathroom (the shower curtain doesn't do its job properly) that I forgot about the mat just outside the bathroom. The moment I stepped on it, my feet came sailing out from under me and I landed with a heavy [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our last day in Cusco was spent ambling around the city once again, simply enjoying the beautiful setting and trying our best not to get collared by the many irritating touts and salespeople. We spent a few happy hours again in the souvenir markets, picking up presents for friends and family back home but mindful of the fact we were going to have to carry everything for another 2 months! We rounded off our stay in Cusco with a slap-up meal in our favourite vegetarian restaurant, the El Encuentro. We have eaten there every single night since we arrived in [View Full Entry]

---

---

When I was about 8 years old, I remember seeing a programme on the telly about Peru and thinking how much I would like to visit this beautiful country for myself. Seeing those images of Machu Picchu, a ruined city in the sky, was ultimately what inspired me to always want to travel and see the world. Who would have thought that today, the dream that began almost 25 years ago, would finally come true? The day began at the ungodly hour of 5.30am when our taxi arrived to take us to San Pedro station to catch the 6.15 am [View Full Entry]

---

---

Yesterday was a relatively quiet day for us as we have decided to extend our stay in lovely Cusco. A brief visit to the Lan Airlines office told us that we wouldn't be able to get a flight from La Paz to Buenos Aires with the one remaining flight we have left for South America on our One World ticket, which we were mightily disappointed about. The day didn't improve when we went to the post office to see about sending a parcel home. The post here in Peru is pretty damn expensive: a stamp for a postcard to Europe [View Full Entry]

---

---

Having a decent guide book is an absolute necessity for any traveller visiting a strange and far away land. The only problem is that every other traveller also has a copy and so those useful hints and tips for escaping the crowds often backfire because of the amount of people who read it. Today we took the advice of the Lonely Planet and for once it paid dividends. We started our day with a brief trip into town to pick up our Boleto Touristico (Tourist Ticket) which is a collective entrance ticket to many of the chruches, museums and ruins [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, when they say that no news is good news, in our case it's certainly true. I'm sorry I've not blogged for over a week but we've simply been having too much fun here in Cusco! We arrived last Friday really early in the morning - in fact the bus got us in at 4.45am instead of 6am as expected. Luckily we found an honest taxi driver to take us to the hostel and we had to ring the doorbell for a while to get someone to let us in. Thankfully they had a room ready for us so we [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, here we are in Arequipa and things haven´t quite been going the way we planned. We´ve been staying in the Casa D'Avila hostel which is part of a language school and as we've been meeting so many lovely Peruvians lately, we thought we´d take a Spanish class to try and improve our conversational skills while we were there. The course we began was for 20 hours over 5-7 days and we wasted no time in getting started.Despite being tired from our long overnight journey from Nasca, we had our first session on our first afternoon in Arequipa and we [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our final day in Nasca was mostly spent in transit as we were booked on the night bus to Arequipa and had to check out of our comfy room at midday. The hotel looked after our packs for us while we wandered around town again and chatted to some of the many new friends we´ve made in the short time we´ve been here. Most tourists come and go after just one day in Nasca but if you stick around a bit longer, the locals really open their arms to you. Alas, we only managed to see Jordan briefly as he was [View Full Entry]

---

---