Cusco

We arrived in Cusco a couple of days before our trek started. It's a gorgeous city and we soon found the shops selling all of The North Fake gear, so we kitted ourselves out ready for our trek.

We also finally succumbed to the llama jumpers and got his and hers...

The real deal, going for a stroll

Cusco at night

Lots of our friends we'd made along the way also seemed to be in Cusco at the same time which was great. We celebrated Norway's National Day with our Norwegian friends, Elise and Andreas...

John the next day...

Then we checked in with our G Adventures tour to meet the rest of our group for the Inca Trail and to take advantage of the TV in our room! It wasn't a very productive day...

 

Largo Titicaca

After the pampas, we headed to Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world. We arrived to the mainland just in time to catch a ferry to the Isla del Sol, so we decided to go there for a night.

Being at such high altitude, we found the lowest hostel we could and rolled into it, we did not fancy carrying our bags any higher! Our view was still pretty good though...

There's lots of hiking to do and some Inca ruins to see, but our priority was finding a good restaurant we'd heard about. We went completely the wrong way, scaled terraces, but finally found it by chance. We arrived about 4pm, so decided to have a late lunch, go watch the sunset and go back for dinner. What could be better?!

And our meal of baked trout and veg was well worth the trek...

A lovely sunny day to follow

John made some friends...

Then it was time to head back to catch us bus to Cusco in Peru, in time for our Inca Trail!

 

The Pampas - time to get bitten

We flew from La Paz to the Amazon in the tiniest plane, so small you couldn't stand up; they didn't even bother with safety announcements. But John did get to sit in the cockpit!

We arrived in the town of Rurrenabaque and then started the drive to get to our boat that would be taking us through the waters of the Amazon Basin.

Ready to see some wildlife!

We saw a lot of aligators...

This one was the 'pet' of our lodge. Think it liked the leftovers...

There were loads of monkeys too...

Eye on the prize

Got it

Tortoises

And lots of birds

We also swam with pink dolphins. What they don't tell you is that pink dolphins like to bite, and a lot of feet and bums got nibbled. Each time someone new got in who didnt know, you'd wait for their screams "Arghhhh *&%^ It just bit my bum!"

May as well be a shark's fin

Our favourite moment was once we'd finished swimming, our guide took us around the corner and told us that's where we would be doing piranhna fishing!

We watched a gorgeous sunset

But as soon as the sun went down, the mossies came out, and our repellant couldn't hack it. John became flavour of the month...

Apart from being eaten alive, it was a great trip