First stop after Cusco was a small town called Chivay, passing through our highest point of the trip at 4910m. From here we had an early start to visit Colca Canyon which is twice as deep as the Grand Canyon at 3500m. This is the place to see the largest flying birds in the world; condors. We waited all morning and just as we were about to give up, one appeared and flew along the ridge in front of us. What was more eventful, was the journey up to the canyon. Due to a mix up on the booking, 11 of us had to squeeze into a people carrier for the journey, on the return part we had to get out to enable the vehicle to go up a hill.

Arequipa, our next destination is known as the white city as most of the buildings are made from the local rock formed from the ash from the still active local volcano. Here we visited a convent that housed up to 450 nuns at one time. It was like a city within the city, allowing the nuns to lead a totally isolated life and keep their vow of silence. There are still about 30 nuns currently living there. Another resident of Arequipa, Juanita lives in a glass box kept at a constant -20C by Japanese technology, she is a mummy of a 14 year old girl sacrificed to the God of the mountain in 15th century. She still has her own teeth, skin, clothes and precious artifacts.

We braved a very small plane for our flight over the Nazca lines; curious giant strange pictures in the desert, it will be interesting to see how the photos come out as we did a lot of ´point and clicking´.

Huacachina is a small desert oasis complete with lagoon, palm trees and giant sand dunes. The morning of our stay we decided to climb one of the dunes in bare feet, not a good idea once the sun had heated the sand. Our trip down consisted of 10 quick steps followed by sitting on our bums with our feet in the air shouting OUCH!This was followed by a trip out onto the dunes in a sand buggy and some sand boarding which was fun if a little hair-raising at times. Then that evening we went to a salsa club and danced with lots of locals as well as our fellow passengers.

Enroute to Lima we visited the Ballestra Islands known as the poor mans Galapagos. Lots of brown pelicans, peruvian boobies, seals, inca terns, cormorants and some humboldt penguins. It ponged a bit with all the bird poo everywhere!. Back on the truck we passed a huge house built in the style of a castle, so we took an impromptu lunch stop in its grounds and lots of local children shared our leftovers. Dan our drivers flambe bananas were particularly popular. They invited us to tour the castle which is in a poor state of repair and was last inhabited in 1969. It was built by slave traders in 1843 (slavery they told us was only abolished in Peru in 1963!). In 1933 the son murdered his father to gain his inheritance, all together a blighted folly.

The rest of our travelling companions leave us in Lima, meaning that we have the strange situation of having the entire 24 seater truck, two guides and a driver to ourselves for the journey to the Ecuadorian border. Our new guide Robby is a surf dude from Mancora in Peru, and he will take us all the way to Quito.