La Paz is not the capital of Bolivia (that's Sucre) but it is the legislative capital and home to President Evo Morales and Parliament. La Paz has a large Aymara community, the indigenous people of the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. It's also possibly the most chaotic and busy city I've ever visited. It reminded me a bit of Naples in Italy. In much of South America, people use taxis or micros (minibuses which plough a particular route through town) to get around. T...

It took my legs about 2 days to recover from the Inca Trail so after that I caught a bus to Puno, on the banks of the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. It straddles the border of Peru and Bolivia. The Peruvians say they own 60% of the lake and the Bolivians 40% and the Bolivians say the exact opposite although this doesn't seem to cause too much squabbling. It's an enormous lake and the world's largest high altitude body of water at 3870 metres above sea level. ...

I found this on the BBC News website today. 'Peru offers Obama hairless dog'. Click here for the story

After a 14 hour bus journey from Lima with very little sleep I arrived slightly disorientated in Cusco at lunchtime on Thursday 30th October. I found an English pub showing the Spurs v Arsenal match, ate an unusual take on a full Englisah breakfast and felt a bit surreal.I felt human again by Friday and over the next few days I did some serious sightseeing. I visited the Catedral in the main square - Plaza de Armas, and saw a painting of the last supper with roa...

I arrived in Nazca on Monday night and on Tuesday morning I had a flight booked over the Nazca Lines from the small Maria Reich airport nearby. The Nazca Lines are a series of symbols and geometric shapes etched into 500sq kms of the desert pampa by the Nazca people between 200 and 700 AD. They range from complicated animal shapes like condors, spiders, hands, trees, hummingbirds and monkeys, etc to simple lines and triangles. They were created by brushing awa...