Being treated like a royal couple on a charity visit near Cuzco: 17th March

By far the most unexpectedly wonderful experience of this trip were the events of the 17th of March, when we visited a sponsored child of my parents, her family and their rural community 45 minutes drive from Cuzco. To explain: they give money to a charity called actionaid every month to help improve the lives of people in poorer communities, and part of the experience is that you 'sponsor' a child, and send regular letters back and forth to help learn about each other's lives.

We've been sponsoring this family for a good number of years and so I had been expecting a warm welcome. What I hadn't expected was to arrive at Annabel's (our sponsored child) school classroom to balloons, a seat of honour at the top of the classroom and a full programme of performances by the class to welcome us into their world. It was clearly a big deal for the whole class to have us their and they all seemed very nervous in presenting to us.

Next followed several speeches of appreciation for our support and a huge wreath of freshly picked local flowers for each of us, which they must have been up since the early hours preparing. We were then given a dry potato and cheese and were left to eat it with most of the class staring in wonder at us, and perhaps a certain amount of jealousy that one of Annabel's sponsors had actually come to visit her.

Potato eaten, we managed a slightly awkward question and answer session with the kids (maths is everyone's favourite subject!) before some photos, an attempt by me and Mareike to express our thanks in Spanish, and then it was on to see some of the projects in the community that the money has helped to fund.

We visited three separate viviendas (self-sufficient farms) on our tour, including that of our sponsor family, and in each one the goals of the projects were quite similar.

The aim was to help them to be truly self-sufficient and do it in a sustainable and hygienic way. So families had received paving to stop the courtyard from flowing and increase crop production, toilets and hot showers to make that hole in the ground redundant and an outhouse in which to breed guinea pigs and keep them away from the kitchen area where they had previously been running around as a 'part of the family' and making the children ill.

A big part of this is education about why these new methods are better than their old methods and tutelage so they can keep them up. We were proudly presented newly-built and furnished digs for volunteers who stay with them and do so much more good work than I could hope to have done.

Oh yes, and the guinea pigs... I had already tried guinea pig twice and had presumed it to be either a curiosity that is rarely eaten, like rabbit or lobster for us, or a bit of a touristy gimmick. Oh no. It was outlined several times to us the crucial role that these low-maintenance and protein-rich critters play in the livelihoods of the families there.

Not only do they eat one as a family around three times a week, but they can also take them to market and fetch a handsome 5 dollar price tag for them, more than enough to keep their children going to school. When you realise that after 6 months of having a large outhouse for them one family was breeding 300 guinea pigs at any one time, you see the huge difference that this is making to people's lives.

As the final part of our visit we were driven around as Annabel proudly showed us the lake near the village and the honey production. We were then taken to the family vivienda, where we were served guinea pig, played chess with Annabel's brother, and were shown a lovingly kept folder filled with our letters and photos.

It was then that I realised the importance of these correspondences which she so cherished - money is clearly very helpful, but it is the communication that makes it special and makes a little girl feel there's a family on the other side of the world that really cares for her. And by the end of the day, we really did.

Underestimating the power of the mountains and paying the price: 12th - 14th March

The dangers of a slightly time-pressured schedule (we needed to be in Santa Cruz in the east of Bolivia for Mareike's flight on 4th April) is that you can try to take certain shortcuts in your aims to see everything possible in a short space of time, and in that not show certain geographical features the respect they deserve. This was true of our fisherman 'guide' who sent us into the waves perched on a few sheaths of reed from my previous entry and it was certainly true of us when we took a night bus from the coast to Huaraz.

Huaraz is a gateway to the Cordilleras mountain range, the highest range of mountains in the Andes (bit like how Skipton is the gateway to the dales I guess), and as such sits at around 4000m above sea level. And that is as a base to explore higher climes... If I told you we gave ourselves a day to acclimatise straight off a night bus before setting off on a trek to Laguna 69 way above 5000 metres high then you can already guess how that ended up.

Yes, predictably even copious amounts of coca tea (more about that famous Peruvian export later) couldn't prepare us for that dramatic climatic change. After the tour company had teased us by taking us to the very last café before the end of civilisation and also after stopping for photos by the clearest blue lake I'd seen since, well, Quilotoa in Ecuador two weeks previous, we found ourselves huffing and puffing up a valley surrounded by Everests.

We were struggling even before my girlfriend's tube broke. To clarify, she is not an unborn foetus but a diabetic, and has a tube attached to a needle in her belly which pumps insulin into her body. To compound matters her glucometer (measures sugar levels in the blood) chose that moment to give up the ghost.

The problem with being at altitude is that the symptoms of altitude - dizziness, loss of breath, thirstiness - are very similar to that of high blood sugar. With no way of telling, we had to turn back after one more glance at the awesome scenery. I was secretly relieved as we hadn't even reached the climb and I was out of breath, and I consider myself to be in pretty good shape.

Luckily we could ramble back to the road, jump into a passing car, find a pharmacy and get Mareike the batteries and injections that she needed. There was then time for me to almost pass out from exhaustion and worry (leading some passers-by to ask 'estás muerto?') before getting lost one more time on the way to Huaraz with our tails between our legs.

One good thing came out of the day though - that evening whilst waiting for our night bus we experienced a local spirit frothed up with egg white aka

Reason to love Peru #2: pisco sour.

It wouldn't be the last time we savoured that little delicacy.

Our bus took us with Cruz del Sur overnight to Lima, where the lady in the Che Lagarto hostel took pity on our frazzled-looking faces and let us have the breakfast before checking in. Our only full day in Lima then consisted of sleep, hanging out with homeless cats in the Parque Kennedy, looking down on the sad little city beach from up on the cliffs, eating an anorexic guinea pig for 20 quid at a tourist restaurant (plus a pisco sour each tbf) and being almost hustled out of a few more notes at an outdoor chess betting syndicate whilst waiting for a sandwich.

Finally we realised that given our mental states and the lack of options in Lima that was a pretty decent day, and slinked off to bed. The next morning we revisited the clear highlight of Lima (the homeless cats of course) before a bus outta there to join the rest of the gringos on the way to the capital of the Inca empire.

Getting to know the bus network of Ecuador

Loja is a great place to live but one thing it doesn’t have going for it is proximity to anything in particular. In fact, you could just as easily say that it’s in the middle of flippin’ nowhere. It requires a bus to make a perilous upward journey for 20 minutes, gaining 1000m in the process (first time my ears had ever popped whilst in a land-dwelling vehicle) before you even make it out of the valley, and the next decent-sized town is 4 hours of lurching, windy roads away. Little wonder that many residents don’t bother ever leaving the town.

  However I happen to be of the opinion that there’s more to life than Loja so I packed the old travel sickness tablets and my Boot’s travel pillow and strapped myself in for the ride. Not literally of course – seatbelts are seen here as an optional extra rather than a safety essential.

  The first weekend away, on 28th Sept, was to Zamora, a small mining town deep in the cloud forest of the Podocarpus National Park. For those unfamiliar with cloud forests, it’s kind of like an Amazon-lite, where it rains less and is merely cloudy all the time. This may not sound very exciting but it covers an elevation of 1000 to 3000m and has 560 different bird species so it’s a bit of alright really.

  The bus journey over there was worth dedicating a weekend to on its own, with an embarrassment of little roadside waterfalls and sheer drops to tree-lined enclaves below, and I felt a genuine rush of excitement to be heading up into the  ACTUAL CLOUDS. Once there, and after a night of eating meat on a stick (pincha) and savouring the local German beer, Pilsener, we trekked into the trees (minus Oliver who unfortunately chose chicken on a stick instead of beef). I soon realized that I wasn’t as fit as my strolls through the Yorkshire Dales had had me believe as I fought my way up half an hour of sheer climb, but the view of a valley of endless lush green steeply sloping hills was a fair trade-off for a lost pint of sweat. Once I’d stumbled back down, there was the small matter of a massive waterfall in which to go behind and underneath ( the ultimate power shower) before a ride back perched on a ledge next to the driver with a nail sticking in my back. Lovely.

  Two weeks later I had learned my lesson and sat on a luxury overnight coach on the way to Baños, the adventure capital of Ecuador. Although nothing there was quite as adventurous as that coach journey, I managed to cycle 15km to stand behind another scarily powerful fountain, zipline 100m above the valley and get back to the town in time to see Ecuador all but secure world cup qualification. This was celebrated later with an impromptu street party – rum, percussion band and crazy topless bald blokes all included. 

  The next day was necessarily quieter, but that didn't stop me, Oliver, Ross (an Englishman in Loja the past 2 years), Diana (a big reason why) and their friend Tania heading up into the chill of the mountains firstly during the day for photos ops with the 5000m (very) active volcano that towers over Baños and then for an overnight stay with an indigenous family up there in the hope of seeing some glowing magma. Well we happened to choose the night where it stayed cloudy all night but we still enjoyed huddling by the fire and sipping an unidentified warm glowing orange alcoholic liquid for warmth.

  Sunday involved the ticking of some more adventurous boxes, with white water rafting in the morning and the genuine insanity of 'puenting' in the afternoon. For the uninitiated, this involves jumping off a bridge attached to a few ropes, and then swinging down from said 100m high bridge after a second or so of free fall. I didn't have the balls to jump but I was more than happy to be pushed backwards off the edge, and all I can say is that the $20 was worth it for that moment of relief at feeling the tension in the rope after the fall. An amazing experience.

  Ah in all that excitement I forgot to mention eating the national delicacy, guinea pig! You get the whole thing served in 6 pieces after it's been spit roasted over a grill, head and all (pictures below). It was very tasty actually, kind of like a gamey pork, and now I've eaten it I can rest safely in the knowledge that I won't have to see that terrifying head staring at me from my plate for a while yet.