So we did it! After 45km of trekking, thousands of metres of climbing and descent, rain, storms, cloud and sunshine, sore legs and wobbly knees, we made it to Machu Picchu (first) yesterday morning at 6.30am...to find it completely shrouded in cloud. Well it is the rainy season after all but it was quite the anticlimax, although the trek itself was fantastic - very, very hard work at times but a brilliant experience. You can see from the photos that the main at...

Everytime I look at a map of our travels I feel amazed and a bit smug. We are currently in Cusco in Peru having left Quito by bus on the 23rd of November. We´ve covered a lot of miles. Our final day in Ecuador was spent climbing up to the snow line of the mighty Cotopaxi volcano. The snow line lies at 16000ft, about the height of Mt Blanc in Europe, and we hauled ourselves all the way to that mark. To go further we would require special training on the g...

Hi there - Laura here. We`re at Lima airport at the moment Having flown in from Iquitos early this morning, we arrived in the capital, shivered, put our fleeces on, took one look at the fog and decided to head north for some more sun and beach time on our way to Ecuador. Iquitos was fantastic. It`s the largest city in the world not reachable by road. As a result cars are a rarity and the streets are filled with three wheeled mototaxis, like Indian tuc tucs, zoomi...

After yesterdays marathon blog I am still not up to date with our travels. I left it as were just heading off to the Uacari Lodge in the Miramaua reserve of the flooded forest. The lodge is a cluster of several floating buildings in the crook of a tributary to the River Amazon. Its a Lodge that is majorativley staffed and run by the local community for the benefit of themselves and the maintenance of the forest. It is ecotourism at its best and has won a number...