Everyone has a different idea of their perfect holiday and I found mine in the four days we spent on a yacht in the Galapagos Islands. It was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen (even including New Zealand), the weather was...

The Galapagos giant tortoise seems to play dead with its consistently bored expression. It seems as if the weight of its monstrous shell is too much for its scrawny, leathery neck. Or maybe it's just the sheer boredom of living longer than most...

Cerviche is the national dish of Peru and in the country where Tim had eaten an alpaca steak and a guinea pig, he had to try what all the Peruvians cherish like fish and chips. We knew nothing about cerviche, except that it is a fish dish. [IMG1 L]...

I've never known an animal as comically designed as the tapir. They are elephant-like animals about the size of a very fat Dalmatian dog. We saw them at the Buenos Aires zoo and I found them a little creepy, to be honest. But then I met...

A bald, impotent man with conjunctivitis would love it in the jungle. Here in the place where the monkeys play and the mossies bite, Victor the medicine man knows a plant and recipe for a hundred medical complaints. And if you're a...

Our guide Victor hovered above a hole in the middle of the jungle with a thin stick in his hand. He inserted the stick in a hole and slowly twisted it out. Our group hovered above him in quiet anticipation, unsure of what he was showing us....

It was our first day in the Peruvian jungle and we were slopping through piles of mud in single file. The guide, Victor, had asked us to be quiet so we could pay attention to the sounds of the jungle. With 15 travellers in knee high...

I'm standing in a wooden dining hall with a lot of other people and I feel a pang of pain shoot through my foot. I scream in front of all the diners and look down to see a giant ant making a meal of me. Welcome to the jungle. A few...

We were on board the ever-swaying train from Machu Picchu when the sickness kicked in. I'd been feeling ill all day but this surpassed anything I had felt in a while. The train was swaying from side to side in a tortuous rock that was...

We were high on the hills of Machu Picchu surrounded by green mountains covered with mist. The ancient Incan city spread for miles around us and each stone structure seemed like a miracle. I tried to imagine the Incan workers meticulously...

People flock to Cusco to go to Machu Picchu and the other Incan ruins but the city itself is worth a couple of days of exploring. It is the most unusual place and I really felt like I was in another world, even another century. The altitude...

Nothing had prepared me for the way tourists are treated in Cusco. The entire city seems set up for the English-speaking visitor with a wallet full of cash. Every restaurant has an English menu, all the staff speak English and all the people...

In Cusco, at 3,800 metres above sea level, we got a glimpse into what we'll be like in 60 years. Even the slightest incline saw us slow to the pace of geriatrics. Long slopes took every bit of energy we could muster and we'd stop at...

Cusco, in Peru, may as well have been Never Never Land because after 32 hours in buses trying to get there I was convinced we would never set foot in the high-altitude city. We could kiss the Incan ruins goodbye as far as I was concerned....

Crossing over a South American border in a white Cadillac sounds like a bit of a dream right? Well, not quite. We did it from Chile to Peru and it was preceded by two hours of quiet panic. In the Northern Chilean town of Arica we were...

The wild surfing haven of Iquique, Chile is 28 hours north of the capital Santiago. The waves there are among the biggest I've ever seen but the water turned our poor limbs numb within seconds. This is the cruel joke found on Chilean...

I never expected Chile to look so much like the Sahara Desert but you can drive for hour after hour and see nothing but huge expanses of sand-coloured hills with absolutely no vegetation. We drove through these hills for a couple of hours on...

It got chilly in Chile. I couldn't have been happier when we stepped off the bus at La Serena and we were hit by a cool wind. Santiago had been so stifling and now I could finally stop regretting packing that space-hogging hoodie. La...

Men with padded uniforms and stern looks have lined us up in a cold, breezy building in the middle of the night. Our belongings are stacked on metal pews in front of us. They are eyeing us suspiciously, pacing the room. I'm dressed in my...