Monday 22 December - Travelling to Cusco

The journey to Cusco passed quickly. Our drivers Luis and Jesus lived in Cusco and were pleased to be going home - Luis was wearing a smart white shirt, but still spent most of the journey dozing as Jesus drove.

We left before 7, and drove through Puno and Juliaca again. Fairly soon the houses fell away and we drove for an hour or so in desert before coming to the village of Bukará, a very small place dwarfed, like many other villages in Peru, by its church in the main square.  The draw in Bukará was the museum showing the history of the pre-Inca civilisation of that name. We had a quick whizz round, looking at the weapons and stone sculptures.

Pressing on, we were driving alongside the railway that takes the same route from Puno to Cusco. Trains now only run three times a week, catering only for tourists, but I still looked enviously at the tracks and planned my forthcoming South American rail tour. We came to the watershed, marked by a mountain still with a few patches of snow (this was the day after the summer solstice): from here all rivers flow ultimately into the Amazon. From here we saw the landscape become greener and more cultivated in the narrow valley.

Our lunch stop was at the spectacular Inca site at Naqchi, which had two roles. The first was as a nunnery, the second as a point on one of the key land routes where people could stock up on their supplies as they travelled. There were the remains of 162 conical storehouses, and in the best-preserved ones we could see how they were designed to keep out light and rain. After looking round the site, we sat on a patch of grass nearby and had a delicious picnic, of which the star attraction was a huge avocado, which between the eight of us we weren't able to finish. Also some delicious fruits: grenadilla (a sweeter and larger version of passion fruit), and pepino, tasting like juicy melon. We gave the remains of the avocado to a rather nonplussed boy carrying firewood up the hill, and drove on into Cusco.

After the last few days in smaller towns, Cusco came as a change. Our hotel was in the old town, which felt European with its narrow cobbled streets. Around the hotel (Siete Ventanas), which was, I thought, the best yet, it seemed to be almost exclusively for tourists. Certainly there were many backpackers walking around town as we went for a stroll before dusk. In the large main square there were police standing in front of the cathedral and church, and tourist police walked around. We were going to spend three full days in Cusco after the Inca Trail, so we took it gently and went to bed after a meal of quinoa soup (delicious) and chicken leg (ok), washed down with a good Peruvian wine which we had bought and started a couple of days earlier.

Sunday 21 December - exploring Lake Titicaca

Our first stop in the morning was to look at the rural market in the village of Acora, just south of Puno. It was known as a place where people barter their produce, and we saw a cheerful lady who obviously ruled the roost, accepting wheat from different ladies and tossing them bags of vegetables in exchange. (She also accepted two mini panettone from someone! Panettone were everywhere as we travelled...)

The market was a lot less frenetic than ones we had seen in Asia, and it was fun to walk around to look at the people and produce - heaps of potatoes, wool, sheep meat jerky, fish from the lake, corn with leaves peeled back to display the large husks... Ladies were dressed in their traditional clothing with coloured skirts, attachments to their hair (to make it grow); and a smaller number of gentlemen with formal dark suits. They were distinctly wary of us as we walked around, and we resorted to taking distant shots to be discreet.

We drove to a nearby village to take a walk up to a viewpoint of the lake, accompanied by a little puppy that had obviously done this before. Here, as at the market, people spoke more Aymara or Quechua than Spanish - our guide said that he only started speaking Spanish at age 14. A very friendly old lady who was out walking with her cow greeted us and shook our hands and talked to us, as we nodded uncomprehendingly.

Lake Titicaca, which, if you look upside down and perhaps if you've had a couple of beers, looks like a cat catching a rabbit. It's the highest navigable lake in the world, and the new thing I learned about it is that it is very cold - average temperature of only 9 degrees. We dipped our fingers into the Lake and took a short stroll, before heading back into Puno.

For the afternoon we were taking a boat trip out to the Uros Islands - but first we stopped at one of a line of identical restaurants and ate some delicious lake trout with garlic sauce, with another huge portion of chips and rice (I was lying the night before when I said I wouldn't have any more chips).

The Uros Islands are man made and famous for being built on reeds, and have developed as a tourist destination in the last 20 years. We stopped at one island where we saw a demonstration of how the islands and houses are built and took the opportunity to dress up ridiculously in local clothes, before being offered standard-issue merchandise which we declined politely (and gave a contribution for letting us dress up). We'd been warned that the islands were touristy, but the brief visit was interesting and we weren't overly hassled.

Back on land, we popped into the rather austere Puno cathedral as we walked around town, and finally enjoyed another traditional meal - rocotto relleno, peppers stuffed with spicy beef mince, before heading back for an early night.

Saturday 20 December - first sight of Lake Titicaca

A lot of time spent on the bus today, but some more spectacular scenery as we travelled towards Puno. We quickly climbed out of the Colca Valley, and returned to our 4900 metre viewpoint. This was as high as we would go on this trip so we made the most of it, taking pictures of each other in the bright sunshine and adding to the piles of stones other travellers had left. As we returned to the treeline and saw more vegetation, we enjoyed sighting now-familiar alpaca and vicuña herds.

After a restorative cup of mate (coca leaf) tea mixed with mint - no, the coca leaves aren't illegal, or addictive unless you chew 50 kg of them - we headed east towards Lake Titicaca. We stopped for a picnic at a lake where hundreds of coots and a few flamingoes were resting, and enjoyed cheese and ham sandwiches as we admired the view. We pressed on, dozing as the bus drove through the plains, and going through the town of Juliaca - rather ambitiously described as the "jewel of the altiplano", where various fiestas were in full swing as we went through the narrow streets.

The cultural activity for the day was the burial tower complex at Sillustani, just north of Puno. Our guide Elisio met us at the entrance and we learned how important people from pre-Inca and Inca times were buried in foetal position to await rebirth, and how the temples had evolved through the ages. They had been built robustly to withstand earthquakes, but had been looted during the Spanish conquests. Even so, they looked impressive and strangely modern and it was easy to see the impact they must have made when they were built.

Our hotel was some distance out of Puno, on the lake shore, and on the way out there we were treated to a spectacular lightning show over the lake, with forks of lightning every two or three seconds, and our first rainfall since arriving in Peru.

We asked to be brought back into Puno for dinner after a couple of nights of hotel restaurant food. We went into a local chicken shop where we were allowed to avoid the queue of people paying in advance, and sat at tables with a loud movie on screens. For 40 soles (about £9) we got a huge barbecued chicken and the largest plate of chips I've seen in my life. (also a salad but we avoided that, for health reasons, you understand...) Another of the top ten Peruvian foods ticked off - but more of that later...

Thursday 18 and Friday 19 December - climbing up to Colca Canyon

A more relaxed couple of days as we adjusted to the altitude - we were at 3600 metres for most of the time, at which point we all felt the effects - shallow breath, headaches, feeling tired and having interrupted sleep. We travelled up from Arequipa to Chivay in the Colca Canyon area, about four hours drive, seeing some spectacular landscape. The road took us up to just over 4900 metres,  and the Five Volcanoes Viewpoint, where just walking around to take a photo made me feel out of breath. The most spectacular of the volcanoes, Sabancaya, constantly emitted a plume of steam, visible from around the airport and from our hotel room.

The town of Chivay was a lovely relaxed place, with a small market where we walked round inspecting the fruit, olives and cheese that we bought for picnic lunches. We went into an alpaca wool shop and one of the group bought a couple of woolen hats, helped by the shopkeeper's 3 year old daughter who modelled them for him. When we went into the shop she was the only one there and was showing us her pet rabbit before her mother arrived.

On the first afternoon we took a stroll from our hotel down to a hot springs, which consisted of three pools, one enclosed and the other two shaded against the sun. The water was pleasantly warm, not boiling, and we enjoyed resting in the sunshine and cool breeze, with a few Peruvian children splashing around and a group of bemused Brits - until a camera crew arrived with a herd of schoolchildren (for moral education, the lady said) at which point we made our excuses... As we trudged up the hill greeting the villagers and farmers we were overtaken by an old lady bringing her donkey and cattle home, which brought home how much altitude training we still had to do.

On the next morning we went to explore the Colca Canyon. Its depth goes to over 4 km, but where we went was "only" 1 km. Even more impressive than the actual canyon were the traces of human civilisation - steep winding paths along the edge of the canyon, and an amazing network of terraces which had been cultivated over the centuries.

I watched enviously as a fitter couple from our group went on a hike into the canyon for the day, and settled into the main activity that bus loads of tourists come to Colca for - to catch a glimpse of the condor. As the land warms up and the thermals start, they can normally be seen gliding in and above the canyon. December isn't a great time - it's mating season for them - but after an hour, and then when we went we were rewarded by a glimpse of one, then two of them. A good sighting, but of course better to be experiencing them in a less contrived setting.

Wednesday 17 December - Arequipa

Before breakfast we went out for a walk as the city was waking up. The main square was a couple of blocks away from the hotel and looked very attractive with little shops under an arched walkway. The city is overlooked by three volcanoes and the altitude (2400 metres) gave a feeling of fresh air and clear light.

We visited the cathedral, which was on the main square but had a very understated look to it. Light and airy inside, it was almost deserted with a few small groups being taken around. Upstairs there was an interesting exhibition of old church items, such as the bishop's black robe just worn on Good Friday, and some crowns weighing over 3kg, like the other regalia decorated fulsomely with gold, silver, precious stones and diamonds.

As we walked around the town we enjoyed a "queso helado" - iced cheese, actually coconut flavour ice cream shaped like a cheese. And saw a demonstration in the main square, which we thought would be exciting, but was actually just asking for the mountain trout species to be protected.

The highlight of the day's sightseeing was a tour of the old nunnery - actually called a monastery, but had only ever housed nuns. It was a large city within a city, based on, and with streets named after, Spanish cities. The site was almost deserted, and we strolled around with our guide Carmen. Apart from an area where a small number of nuns now live, we had access to pretty much the whole site and were free to walk around and take photos.

Before heading back for a rest in the afternoon we had a coffee and sandwich in the nunnery cafe - leisurely service but a lovely peaceful atmosphere.

In the evening we popped into a mini supermarket on the main square, and marvelled at the collections of herbal tea and the exotic fruit. At the fruit counter an enthusiastic local came up to us to tell us how tasty it all was and how Peru has everything. There are four climate zones! he cried, but ran out of steam when naming them (costa, sierra and selva, we got...) and he scurried off with three fruits in a bag. Finally we located the laundry where we had left 4.4 kg of washing in the morning, retrieved it and headed back to the hotel.

Dinner was at the ZigZag Restaurant, one of the best in Arequipa, for a blow out. I had a fantastic filet of alpaca steak, cooked on a hot stone which was brought out to me (and they gave me a paper bib to wear to stop the sizzling from damaging my shirt). It was delicious, tasting like lean beef, and served with creamed cheesy quinoa. Lovely service too. Sion had tagliatelle with alpaca, as you do, and we both finished off with mousse. A very pleasant ending to a great day.

Tuesday 16 December - a long drive

First this morning was a special treat, a short flight to view the Nazca lines from the air.

A number of different companies operate flying tours to see the famous glyphs - lines drawn in the sand. They all charge the same and have stringent safety regimes in place, so our five seater plane had two pilots and four of us in the back, arranged by our weight. We were given headphones to wear so that we could listen to the co-pilot commenting and it was cool to hear them talking to the control tower - sounded more like a space flight though.
I guess the flight took about half an hour and we flew over around a dozen of the glyphs - for each of them we banked at 45 degrees so that we could get a good view and take photos, and then we turned and banked again for the other side. So my stomach started feeling queasy and I had to abandon the attempts to take photos...

The humming bird was probably the most impressive - about 100 metres wide and with a series of lines representing the wings and tail. We saw the other famous ones too - the astronaut (probably a priest rather than an astronaut...) and the condor. It was also great to see the landscape - very arid and crisscrossed by lines in the sand. A week or so before, Greenpeace had caused massive controversy by unfurling a banner near one of the glyphs, but it all looked normal this time.

The Nazca Lines have a reputation for mystery - how could a prehistoric civilisation be able to know what they would look like from the air, and what they had been created for. It was interesting to compare with contemporary construction we knew from home - Stonehenge, Callanish - and to appreciate the effort that had gone into creating them.

Back to earth, we took a quick shopping trip to buy some provisions (toasted sweetcorn was the big hit) and headed out for the long journey south - 10 hours.

Driving through the desert, we came to the Nazca Fault Line - showing the seismic activity along the coast of Peru. The fault line runs for several hundred km and gets wider all the time. In one of the oasis towns we stopped at an olive shop and tasted delicious large olives from a plantation nearby.

Most of the journey was along the coast and we were treated to an exhilarating and sometimes nerve-wracking ride along the coast road. The road was cut into rocks and even built on the side of a massive sand dune, with hairpin bends, few passing places and large oil tankers travelling both ways. The coast was almost absolutely deserted, and the contrast with the areas of green where a river flowed into the sea was spectacular. Occasionally we saw monuments for people who had died in accidents, including one from when the Paris-Dakar rally took place on this route, complete with model car. (The car and driver were never found.) Also a number of bleak one-horse towns where not much seemed to be happening.

The last two hours we turned inland and  drove in darkness up to Arequipa, the second city of Peru, which is 2400m above sea level, so quite a steep ascent. As we came into the city, the centre looked beautiful, with its main square and cathedral illuminated. After we checked in at the hotel, Sion went straight to sleep (the ceviche from two nights ago having been identified as Chief Suspect for his indisposition) and I went to the pizzeria at the end of the street and ate a meat pizza in about 10 seconds, before going straight to sleep.

Monday 15 December

Monday 15 December

Birds, and a bug

After breakfast, which included a fruit named tuna (juicy and tasty, with lots of seeds) we walked down to the harbour to take a boat trip. We enjoyed some Peruvian queue management techniques, which involved us standing in single file in different locations (we thought the operators were on work experience), and were led to the kind of boat that you would use if you operated a drug smuggling operation.

Surrounded by excitable Chinese girls, we headed out, first to view the Paracas candelabra, drawn into the side of a large sand dune. Similar to the chalk white horses in England and maybe from the same time - this was 2500 years old and, although obviously fragile, hadn't been damaged by wind.

The Ballestas Islands were small islands a couple of km from land, with impressive rock bridge formations. They were breeding grounds for various species of bird, especially the Inca tern, pelican, cormorants, boobies, Humboldt penguins and the Turkey Vulture - all making a spectacular show, especially the boobies, diving straight down into the water to fish in the same way as gannets. Some sea-lion families basked in the sun with their babies - I didn't quite get the difference between seals and sea lions, but these looked smaller and cuter. You could see the guano harvesting stations with wooden cranes that were used to lower the guano cargo on to boats.

We got back to land and headed south, to the town of Ica, where we stopped first at a Pisco winery. Pisco is Peruvian brandy, often drunk with lime as a sour cocktail. Our guide, Miguel, had the best job in the world, and gave us five or six varieties to taste after a tour of the Pisco making area, all made with traditional wooden tools and matured in old clay pots before distillation.

Reluctantly we dragged ourselves into town,and went into a small but fascinating archaeological museum. We saw the history of earlier civilisations, shown through archaeological finds such as mummies, buried with treasures such as pots,and covered with four or five layers of blankets. Some of the skulls showed how certain people would have their heads shaped deliberately to have different forms, stretched for example, if they were going to be priests. And we saw the traces of skull surgery, which was used to expunge evil spirits.

After that it was time to get some lunch and we popped into a large supermarket and admired the local produce, like ears of black sweetcorn. We picked up some salami and Andean cheese, with some huge grapes and apricots, all of which we snacked on in the bus as we headed south again.

South of Ica the landscape became even more barren and arid, broken up occasionally by a set of hairpin bends,  leading into a valley and a dusty town. It never rains around here.

Unfortunately Sion had eaten something that disagreed with him (oh no, it didn't!), and as he went to the front of the bus,he fainted. Luckily he was saved by Jesus (our second driver, not the son of God, but who knows...?) who caught him as he fell. We stopped in the shade in a little village where Wilfred, our group leader, administered some Peruvian tonic into his nose and brought some colour back to his face. The rest of the group waited patiently and chatted in the shade.

Our hotel was an old hacienda that had been converted into a hotel about ten years ago. It was beautiful, with fruit trees around the courtyard, two peacocks, and a pet vicuña and an alpaca, both of which looked lovely from the distance but turned out to have bad tempers. The vicuña would collect the saliva into its mouth before spitting, a fine spray which we saw - but mostly ducked - a few times. As we drank a beer before dusk, the vicuña came to join us, chewing cushions on the seats by the bar.