A Bert perspective

Well, Tania's been too busy having fun with me for the last two weeks to have time for blog writing but I've offered to cover the main excitements as I've got some time during the flight back to the UK.

Well, we first stayed at a little hostel in Mira Flores, a district of Lima but as soon as I arrived, Tania had to go into a hospital on a drip. I'm being dramatic, she was fine after 24hrs of drinking Peruvian medicinal strawberry juice (& antibiotics). We were looked after by the incredibly helpful hostel owner, Angelo.

Mira Flores is a posh area and reminded me of the States with enormous wide roads and pavements. We flew to Cusco on Sunday 16th March which is a town of 450,000 up at 3600m in the Andes. It's full of Inca ruins interspersed between colonial Spanish architecture which makes it look a bit like Spain. I booked us into a posh hotel so that Tania could have a hot shower and some luxuries she's probably been missing for the last two months - and to try and impress her which, I think, worked. One of the first things we saw was a woman coming out of the lift in the hotel gasping and crying out very loudly and pressing an oxygen cylinder to her face. The Incas were only around for 96 years - in the 15th Century but built lots of stuff out of big rocks - including Machu Picchu which was the destination of our four day Inca Trail trek, starting on 19th.

We spent a couple of days in bars, restaurants and wooly hat / llama jumper / carved chess set / fake alpaca knitwear markets acclimatising to the thin air. An alpaca is like a llama with hairier legs. Both are big in Peru.

The first two days of the Inca Trail took us up through incredible Andean mountain scenery. We were with four guides. About 9 obligatory and very speedy porters carrying our tents and three tonnes of food. We carried everything else. Day 2 included a vertical climb of 1200m up to Warmiwanuska. The tiredness this caused, combined with the effects of altitude and that of chewing coca leaves most of the way up had put Tania in a sufficiently vulnerable position, I felt, so I asked her to marry me. It worked, she said yes. The rest of the group wondered why we were crying together round the corner when we were supposed to be posing for a group photograph. Anyway, that was all very exciting. I gave her a temporary ring made of plywood until she gets back to London.

Then we had another couple of days hiking through jungle. After a 4am start on Friday 21st we got to the Sun Gate by about 6 for sunrise, although even my sundance didn't bring sun until after we'd left the sun gate. We did spend the day in Machu Picchu though and it's spectacular - South America's No. 1 tourist attraction.

Tania and I opted to stay an additional night in a village with a railwaytrack through its high street, called Agua Calientes. The other trekkers: Dennis and Catalina, Shirly and four blonde Swedish ninjas went back to Cusco. We needed a shower.

We spent another four or so days in cold Cusco in slightly less posh hotels buying stuff, visiting the cathedral, whitewater rafting and boozing. Also eating guinea pigs. Brilliant. We visited a place called "sexy woman" which the incas built somehow. It's like Stonehenge but bigger and better. Some of the rocks they transported and carved into perfect shape weigh up to 180tonnes.

Then back to Lima on Thursday 27th to do not very much. We visited a friend of a friend in a shantytown in Lima who has a small manufacturing business and it was very interesting to see a slightly different side of Lima life to tourist restaurants and artisan markets.

My flight home was delayed by 18 hours so we got an extra day together in the end and we got to try cerviche (Peruvian raw fish with chilli and lemon) and heart kebabs. My stomach is fine as I write this. Fingers crossed. An absolutely amazing two weeks for me - only a small slot of Tania's mammoth adventure.