So, here it was, the day we had all been dreading and very excited about simultaneously - trek time! We had been given some duffel bags to carry our stuff in and the aim was for them to be no heavier than 5kg - hard when you are taking sleeping bag, several inners, mats, change of clothes etc! We were picked up fairly early on 29th and the first stop was a ruin site called Saqsaywaman (pronounced sexy woman!) which means 'Satisfied Falcon'. It was damaged quite a...

Enroute to Cusco we stopped off at the Sillustani ruins - these are huge funerary 'chullpas' (basically funeral towers where they burn their dead!) that are made of massive blocks of stone of up to 12m high and wide. We then stopped for lunch at a one-horse town where we paid about 1 pound for a set menu of vegetable soup (that had chicken's feet and other random bits of chicken in it!) and then vegetable stew which was actually rice with one potato and a lump ...

On Monday we set off to Puno. I was in the front seat (yay!) so got a great bird's eye view of everything. We got to the Peruvian border where once again we had some severe muppetry happening. The 2 Americans had left their immigration forms from Bolivia in their big backpacks (which were buried somewhere in the depths of the truck under everyone else's bags). When I asked them why they hadn't left them in their passports they said that nobody had told them to do...

A couple of things I've forgotten to mention in previous entries. Our last leg of the trip as full of fools asking dumb questions. As most of you know, I don't suffer fools gladly and my patience can run very thin. At the border, we were handed immigration forms. Now, bearing in mind that every country in the world requests you to complete these so everyone on the truck has done at least one, Michael was asked the following questions: -How many forms do we need ...

On Thursday we made it to La Paz - the highest capital city in the world at 3,660m. We entered the city via El Alto which was a huge corner that just opened up onto the city below - spectacular view. The buildings in the city just seem to cling onto the sides of the mountain and then spill downwards. We also had a view of Mount Illamani in the background which is 6,402m high! After an early night, 6 of us got up to embark on the Road of Death. This involved mo...