A damsel in distress, but me in more. Luxury trains, floating towns, and a frozen bus

The Salkantay and Machu Pichu trek is finished, and so am I. My leg muscles throb and the infected bites look like the melting Nazis face in Indiana Jones, and to top those, the blisters on the balls of my feet spasm pain at every touch.

I bribe the bus driver to drop me at the door of my hostel, we get to the road and the only bin men in Peru are collecting the rubbish on the road of my hostel. We can't go any further so I have to walk.

I fall off the bus at around midnight, and I hobble up the cobbled street like Keyser Söze, the pain reaching biblical levels. Up ahead I see a girl standing in the road and looking around. She's got her hood tightened up like Kenny from South Park, she's wearing a backpack and seems a bit lost.

So as to not unecessarily scare her I cross to the opposite pavement, the last thing a women needs is me slowly lurching up behind her on a dark street late at night. I've done that before and it's not ended well.

I get alongside her and she really does seem lost,
"are you lost" is my genius opening line,
"noaw, I kinda know where I'm going, thanks heaps though"
The Aussie accent shrills through the night air like a defective rape alarm.
'oh god, a Aussie' my kneejerk reaction kicks in before I can even think of the word tolerance.

I've never liked the Aussie, but I know why I don't like them, it's obvious. Jealousy.

They're good at sports, look good naked, due to always being in swimwear as the weather is amazing there, win a at stuff a lot, are annoyingly happy and cheery, even when they're pulling pints in a wetherspoons in Watford. They're consistently really good looking and I hate them for it, and their cricket team makes me want to shoot them all in the head. All the time.

But, as usual, the ones I've actually met I really like. That means you Brooke, and now Anita. Oh, and you AJ.

Anyway, the civility has already started so I have to see it through,
"are you looking for a hostel?" I ask,
"noaw, my hotel is up here but I'm thinking that they might be full so I'm going to check"
"well my hostel has been empty the last 2 nights I've stayed there so if it's full you can try there"

Her hotel is locked up so we head up the street to my hostel, which sits at the top of the hill,
"are you ok?" the aussie asks, as my sharp intakes of breath and staggered steps become a little obvious,
"I did the Salkantay trek, got some blisters and infected mosquito bites"
"I did a trek too, but I came off alright, I'm a little tired though"

She looks like she's been to the corner shop and back, and I mutter cusses under my breath.

At my hostel the predictable happens,
"we are full" says the night watchmen,
"where's the next nearest hostel then please?" asks the aussie,
"down the hill, turn left, up the steep staircase to the top, turn right, walk down and it's there"
The aussie grabs her bag and heads for the door, suddenly, from nowhere I hear my own voice,
"you can't go on your own, I'll walk you there"
the aussie points out that I can't actually walk, bizarrely, I hear myself again,
"well you can't go on your own so we're going"

I am practically in tears as we head out again onto the cobbles, and I curse my Dad for teaching me manners and the inportance of respecting a lady.

Even an Austrailain one.

We find the hostel, they have a room, and I say my goodbyes. In the 10 minutes we've been walking she semms a nice enough person so I mention that I'll be drinking beer and eating a fry up in a cafe tomorrow if she's bored, she says that she'll pop by.

I crawl back up the hill and into my hostel, the night watchmen takes pity on me and carries my bag up the stairs to my dorm,
'that's it' I think to myself, 'I'm seconds away from a bed'
The dorm door opes and the final joke of the night is played on me, I'm seeping on the top bunk.

It takes about 5 minutes for me to climb the 4 steps of the ladder, and the woman in the bottom bunk barely notices the wheezing, tearful, pathetic figure wrestling above her. I get to the top, bash my head on the roof and lie down. I'm breathing as hard as Huntley must have been when Hollie hit her head on the bath.

I get under the covers and let the pain flow from my feet to my head and back again. And then I pass out.

Anita swings by the Real McCoy bar to say thanks for walking her home, I'd been there for 2 hours by this point, drinking beers and eating, with my wounded legs resting on some bean bags. We have a couple of pisco sours and she turns out to be wonderful company, and an all round amazing, lovely person. Yet again my sterotyping has been exposed as a pointless and fruitless exercise.

Peru is on strike so I'm going nowhere until they're ready. I'm stranded in Cusco, surrounded by people selling massages, and a thousand people selling their artwork, artwork which oddly all looks exactly the same, as if it had all been mass produced in a factory somewhere.

I finally leave for Puno on my posh train on the Monday. The train is operated by the company who own the orient express, so it's all big chairs, waiters in waistcoats, and carpets. It's brilliant. The toilet on board is the nicest I've sat on in Peru. I've been sat with a lovely couple of ramblers from Peckham, and the chap used to be in Blake 7, and plays the vicar in Eastenders everytime someone dies. We chat and get on like a house on fire, they're backpacking around Peru too, and their enthusiasum and happiness is contagious, I hope I'm like them when I'm in my fifties.

Mike the vicar orders drinks by mistake and they insist I drink them, and on top of the drinks I have correctly been ordering for myself I get a bit drunk, while the beautiful countryside trundles by.

In Puno I go to visit the floating towns built by the local people made from the reeds in the titikaka lake. They started building these floating towns to escape the Spanish, and it's very interesting to see but it has become very tourist driven, and I get a bit uncomfortable when the women of the island start to sing 'twinkle twinkle little star' at me in 4 languages. Japanese being the most cringe worthy.

From there we travel to the island of Amalanti, and spend the night living with a local family. They live of the their on produce, grown around their little house. The lady of the house explains that over the last few years the rains have been less and less, so they are now forced to travel to Puno to sell tat to tourists like me to buy food.

Global warming has a slow burning effect, which is maybe why people find it hard to believe, but when you see it in this context and you see the impact for yourself it's hard to ignore.

They have some Inca ruins on the island, as usual at the very fucking top of a steep hill so we all head up there to see the sunset. The guide has told us that the best view is from Pachatata but I want to head to Pachamama, because I've given offerings to her a few times during this trip, and end up on my own up there.

The view across the lake is stunning and I sit in silence and think. I try to be all spiritual and that, but all I think about is my infected bites, and whether or not I could deal with having my legs amputated, exes, and sex. In that order.

The sun sets and I head back down the hill to the village to meet the rest of the group. As I get to the main square a group of kids are hanging around outside the corner shop playing music out of their mobile phones. I'm 3,000m above sea level, on a island with a population of 2,000 people, with electricity only between 7pm - 2am, and the kids are basically the same as in London. I wonder if it will be like Hackney, and will some of these kids stab me up when I go past? they don't.

In the morning I head out of Puno and out of Peru, and into Bolivia. We get into La Paz at around 5:30pm, but I'm not stopping and get straight onto a night bus heading to Uyuni, so I can visit the amazing salt flats and general wilderness. On the bus I'm given a blanket and we head off. At the next stop a very large Peruvian man gets on and sits next to me. He's bought his own blanket, and he's wearing a massive winter coat,
'it's not that cold' I assure myself and the bus pulls off.

I wake up at 3:30am and my lips have frozen together, and I can't feel my feet. The condensation on the windows has frozen solid, it's unbelievably cold. I'm really badly prepared for this level of cold so I slowly lean in towards the large Peruvian fella to try and share his body heat. I pretend to be asleep when he wakes up and finds my face inches from his.