After a horrendous 13 hour drive, we finally arrived in the beach 'resort' of Huanchaco via the smelliest place on this planet - Chimbote, which is Peru's largest fishing port. It was 100 times worse than the smell that emanates from the dried fish shops in Honkers. Anyway, basically Huanchaco used to be a fishing village and has now tried to transform itself into somewhere that people might like to spend their holidays. Unfortunately the beach isn't that clean a...

And then there were 7. Our little group looked quite sad rattling around the truck. There's now only 2 of us from the original Ushuaia crew plus 5 who joined us in Santiago. Having been down at sea level for a few days (yet still couldn't keep my eyes open - think I'm still low on oxygen!), we set off uphill again on Saturday to over 4,000m towards Huaraz. The drive was boring, not only because it was long and there are now only 7 of us but the scenery was pretty...

Arrived in Lima early afternoon. We never get places that early so we all twiddled our thumbs wondering what to do with ourselves. It’s not a particularly nice city and it didn’t seem the kind of place I would be disappointed about not really seeing which was good as it meant it could be 2 days of relaxing and catching up on bits and pieces. Anyway, we went for lunch and had a potter and then got ready for our farewell group dinner. I borrowed Vee’s hair st...

Arrived in Lima early afternoon. We never get places that early so we all twiddled our thumbs wondering what to do with ourselves. It’s not a particularly nice city and it didn’t seem the kind of place I would be disappointed about not really seeing which was good as it meant it could be 2 days of relaxing and catching up on bits and pieces. Anyway, we went for lunch and had a potter and then got ready for our farewell group dinner. I borrowed Vee’s hair st...

The last 2 days have been hilarious and great fun. We got to Huacachina which is an oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes (all in the middle of nowhere which is odd?!). We had lunch and then got into dune buggies. Oh my God, how much fun? There were 8 of us plus a driver and we went speeding across the dunes, stopping on the crest of huge vertical drops and then speeding down them. Not a good activity if you've got a bad back but hilarious fun. In between tearing a...