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Lake Titicaca is famous for more than one reason. Primarily, it is the highest navigable lake in the world, sitting at 3,800m above sea level. Its 893 cubic kilometres of water maintain a steady 12°C, with more than half of this lying in Peru and the rest in Bolivia. It’s also famous for its floating reed islands. Many years ago, as the Incan Empire expanded, the indigenous Uros people moved from the mainland and began to live on the lake itself. While they initially lived in

With Ruby booked into the garage the next day, we didn’t want to head far out of the city. We opted to stay for free on the side of Selva Alegre Park. From here, we walked back to Nowhere Brewing company and had a couple of drinks and some food, as neither of us felt like cooking that evening. Back at the van, we walked the girls around the park before heading to bed for the night. The following morning, we headed off to the garage we had been speaking to. We met the owner ou

As we had now been here nearly two days, it was high time to enter the canyon itself. This popular tourist destination fills daily with a string of white tourist Sprinters and larger coaches that take people down to the famous Mirador del Cóndor. For us, we piled into Ruby and slowly made our way to the same point. We stopped to pay our entrance fee (by which I mean the bank of mum and dad), before continuing on. We were certainly being spoilt with them here. The mirador was

The following morning, it was Ruby’s time to shine. The last place my parents wanted to visit was Colca Canyon, just a couple of hours’ drive from Arequipa, so it made sense to end up back here before their flight. That meant retracing our steps across the altiplano, past the turn-off to the ghost village of Sumbay, and over the highest road we had driven so far at nearly 4,900m. Unfortunately for Ruby, she’d be tackling her highest-ever drive with two extra people and a whol

My parents had decided that, unlike their previous visit three years ago, they wanted to move around less. Back then we’d covered a lot of mileage in the States, them in their hire car and us in the van. All that driving meant we didn’t spend as much time together as we probably would have liked, and this time they were happy to trade doing less for more time together. The rough plan was to visit two or three different places during their two-week stay. After Arequipa, they w

It was the morning of the 19th of September, and it was the morning my parents would land here in Arequipa. They had flown into the capital, Lima, the previous day, and their connecting flight would bring them here this morning. I couldn’t quite believe the day had finally arrived, their first trip to Latin America. We packed up and set off for the airport to pick them up. It was only a short drive, and soon we were parked directly outside the doors. It’s not one of those rid

This would be the first time on our trip that we would re-cross a border. Despite the fact that it was the same border, the rules were not the same when crossing it the other way. When entering Bolivia from Peru, there were basically no rules except don’t bring in fuel. The main difference when re-entering Peru was the presence of the SENASA office at the border. This governing body deals with the movement of produce and animals and therefore would want us to declare any frui

With Machu Picchu off our list, we had time to visit one more spectacular place in Peru as we bombed it to the border. Peru’s rainbow mountain was only discovered in the last decade due to global warming melting its once ice covered peak. With the snow gone, the stones were revealed in stripes of several colours, giving it its name. It’s a huge tourist destination and you can book tours to it from pretty much anywhere, naturally for us though, we’d take a different approach.

By the time we left Cusco, there was only a few hours of daylight left and so we didn’t head far. After paying for three nights of proper camping and thoroughly enjoying all of the nice food and drink the city has to offer, it was time to reign the budget back in and head somewhere free. Lee picked a nice looking little laguna an hour or so in the right direction. We were both pleasantly surprised when we came over the hill and saw the snow covered mountains glowing pink in

I could have happily spent a week in the desert at our own private slot canyon, but we had to keep moving. Our time near the coast was nearly done and the next stage of our journey would take us over the Andes mountain and to the city of Cusco. The final point of interest for us here would be the world famous Nazca Lines. There are a couple of places to see these without paying for one of the aeroplane tours to see them from above. We decided to visit the first, this is a ver

Huacachina, located just 15 minutes away from its much bigger neighbour, Ica, is not a town of particular note. For it’s not the buildings that make this place special. While the architecture is the usual everyday affair, the town square is not. It’s home to the only natural oasis in South America. We arrived after a few hours of driving, having left the capital behind us and spent the previous night on the silent beach of Puerto Viejo, just south of Lima. After the bustle o

Conveniently for Lee, our arrival into Huaraz coincided with the football and so once we found the campsite and said a brief hello to our friends, we headed into the town itself to find a bar. We got into the world's slowest collectivo and so by the time we had eventually arrived into the town we only got to the bar for the second half. Still, there hadn’t been a goal yet and soon with a nice cold beer in hand, and rather angry Lee turned into a happy one. We had contemplated

Now that we were somewhat acclimatised to the altitude, we wanted to do one more hike in the national park, the famous, Laguna 69. This is a moderately challenging, but relatively short hike that would take us from the campsite at 3800m to a glacier lake at 4600m. As this is quite a popular thing to do, we wanted to get in there before the weekend and so we stocked up on supplies in Caraz, before heading straight there. As part of trying to be better with money, we had resolv

After a quiet night in the canyon, we were able to see our spot in the light of day and realise how it would have been even better if we had camped further down. It's one of the reasons I hate arriving in the dark; it’s so hard to gauge your surroundings. I could have stayed here another night, but time was ticking and we needed to push on. Now we jump back for a second. First we’re sitting on the beach in Lobitos. Then in our chairs on the campsite in Piura. Lee is angry an

There is not much of interest on the northern coast of Peru and so we had planned to head inland to the visit the Gocta waterfall, the second highest in the world. However, after spending two whole weeks in Porta Verde and an entire month of our visa in total, we decided we didn’t have time. Instead, we headed down the coast, planning to get to Huaraz within a few days which offered cooler weather and spectacular hiking. We hadn’t done driving much for a while and so we didn’

After the rather unpleasant, but short lived drive around Talara, Piura was the first biggest town we’d really been in. Having driven through 9 other Latin American countries, we are used to the drivers. Colombia’s towns are inundated with scooters. They cross in and out of lanes as if they don’t exist and completely disregard any kind of traffic lights, signs or other road users. In Piura, it’s the tuk-tuks. This is even worse than a scooter, because while they drive with th

Much to my displeasure, Lee roused me less than four hours later at 8am, to cross the border. As the camper was such a complete mess there was no hope of coffee. We hadn’t even been able to brush our teeth the night before and I pulled back on yesterday’s clothes in the muggy morning before crawling out of the cab. We grabbed a slightly warm cheap energy drink from a nearby vending machine, that would have to do. Happy Birthday to me. After wrestling the pop-top back down, we