Lake Titicaca and the million dollar bra

Watch out for the giant flag

See our Lake Titicaca pictures. (30 in total over two pages, including Amy on a horse, 10 children in traditional dress, two silly hats, kittens, llamas and one angry bird).

We'd heard bad things about the Bolivia / Peru border at Desaguadero. Border officials stealing money from tourists; planting drugs in their bags and then threatening them with prison unless they cough up a hefty bribe - you know, the usual.

We'd also heard that the border officials were wise to tourists stowing money in money belts and boots, so we had to stash our cash in a place they'd never look: Amy's bra. She had about $400 dollars rammed in there and she couldn't have looked better.

As it turned out, we passed into Peru and reached our destination of Puno (which I can confirm for Amy's dad, who'd been reading the Home Office website, is crammed with rabid dogs) without any problems at all. From here we spent a couple of days on Lake Titicaca, which was great fun despite the efforts of probably the world's worst guide trying his hardest to ruin it for us.

I won't go into details, so you can look at our Lake Titicaca photos instead (warning: contains a picture of us in silly clothes).

We're now in Cusco, "the naval of the Inca World" as all guidebooks remind us. There's an incredible number of tourists here - everyone's either waiting to see Machu Picchu, or are on their way back from doing it. We can't walk down the street without being chased by a crowd of touts trying to bribe us into their bar, restaurant, or get us to book the bloody Inca Trail with them.

To everyone here, we look like like big, walking wallets (apart from the shoe shine boys, who think we look like big, dirty boots.)

We're being scrooges and boycotting the four-day Inca Trail. It's too expensive and quite frankly, we're lazy and would rather catch the train. We did shell out $60 each today though, for seats at Inti Raymi (more info). It's the annual Inca festival of the sun and features lots of funny costumes and dancing, culminating with the sacrifice of a llama. It's on Friday. We can't wait.