Our first day back in Cusco was spent relaxing and recovering from the inca trail. After a long lie in (8am was a late wake up compared to the last week!) we spent the morning relaxing and checking into a hostel before heading to an english pub with 2 of our trail friends to continue our recouperation with pies, tea and other english delights that had been sorely missed, and a 4 hour game of monopoly! The next day we decided to go quad biking in the afternoon acr...

On the Friday we flew to Cusco and met the remainder of our Inca trail group for another briefing session. We spent the day admiring Cusco's incredible Inca architecture and acclimitising to the high altitude (3300m). The next day we had our "practice trek" through an Inca site in the Sacred Valley, finding the altitude no problem until there was a sharp climb up steps which left most of the group exhausted! We also visited a small community where we sa...

After our long and relatively comfortable bus journey we arrived in the Peruvian capital Lima at 8am. Lima is massive with a population of around 8m people and some of the most congested roads we have seen. The first day was spent exploring the upmarket district of Miraflores where we walked around the centre, visited the seafront and its parks and went for a look around the shopping centre (for a phrasebook, not just window shopping). Miraflores was very reminis...

We arrived in Trujillo just after midday both feeling shattered and a little unwell and decided to take a tour to some local Pre-Inca sites that we were offered by our hostel. The tour started with a visit to The Temple of the Rainbow, a small Chimu (a pre-incan culture) site just outside of the city that had many engravings on the walls of rainbows, people and dragons. We then headed to Chan Chan, one of the largest archielogical sites in Peru which had a total ...

After lazing about on the beach for a few days we travelled to Chiclayo, a small city 7 hours down the coast. As we were checking into our hostel we bumped into two of our friends (small world) who had been in the city for a few days and got some tips on what to do in the area. On the evening of our arrival we ate at a chifa (chinese restaurant), where we were sat in a small curtained booth. We didnt understand anything on the menu so blindly opted for the com...