Miraflores is one of the wealthiest parts of Lima, and home to most of its best hotels. It sits on the cliffs high above the coast, and has very pretty gardens which run along the front.   more »

The defining feature of Machu Picchu is mystery. Even though the buildings are bare and decaying, there is still the sense that the place has just been abandoned with great haste. You half-expect to come across a dinner plate with half-eaten Alpaca bones in one of the tiny houses below. But who was here and why did they leave?   more »

After serving as a monastery for hundreds of years, the palace is now Monasterio, without question the finest hotel in Cusco. And the ‘Best Hotel in South America’, as voted by Conde Naste Traveller in 2007. Monasterio, part of the Orient Express group, is certainly a fine place to stay, in a unique setting. The staff are first class, and there are two excellent restaurants which serve Peruvian cuisine (think Alpaca, think Guinea Pig) with a contemporary twist.   more »

Trekking through the Atacama desert is the closest that I will ever come to being on another world. The resemblance to satellite pictures of the the surface of Mars is not so far-fetched. In 2003, a team of scientists from NASA found ‘Mars-like soils’ in the Atacama. In other words, the samples they analysed produced very similar results to those of NASA’s Viking mission to Mars in the 1970s: no sign of life and virtually undetectable organic material. This strange result gave the researchers hope that life on Mars may be found one day.    more »