Welcome back to our weekly blog. Last week saw Pookie eating guinea pig next to the roaring river as it crashed past Agua Calientes, a culinary milestone she wears with the same pride as her MasterChef apron. This week, we finally reached the clouds themselves. Or rather, the clouds reached us first.

Most people who venture into Agua Calientes in search of Machu Picchu are on a quest, a pilgrimage if you like, and thus opt to walk from the town up the hill to the venue. We therefore caught the bus. 😊 (whilst thanking modern transport for saving us from the wheezing, gasping, please-just-leave-me-here-to-die mess we would certainly have become had we attempted the hike). The switchback road climbs steeply through dense forest, and even inside the bus you feel the altitude pressing against your temples like a small but determined Peruvian thumb… that is until your ears pop.

Through the customary tourist entrance we traipsed, acquiring a guide who looked at us with the weary optimism of someone who has spent years herding cats in the clouds. Machu Picchu no longer allows one to simply wander. You must choose a route in advance and online, a pre-determined designated path through history. Pookie had been nursing a bad knee for some time, and so we opted for the route that offered a panoramic view of the site from above rather than walking amongst the stone houses themselves. It seemed sensible. It seemed wise. The weather, as our excellent guide confirmed, and with a knowing glance at the sky, had other plans.

Well before we reached the venue, the bus had made its way through layers of cloud thick enough to knit into a tank top. Now at the summit, it seemed we might not glimpse the place at all. Grey mist hung like wet laundry, swallowing everything beyond twenty feet below us. Our guide, a man whose patience I suspect is tested daily by people who expect postcard views on demand, suggested we walk along one of the trails that leads towards Cusco (probably in some vain hope we could see something from there). He was brilliant, helping Pookie nurse her knee over the outcrop rocks that made up the trail, offering stories of Inca customs and daily life as we walked. He told us how the Incas considered mountains to be gods, which seemed entirely reasonable given how little oxygen they offer at close range. He was well worth every sol. But we were not going to get a look at Machu Picchu. The clouds had won this round.

But then, wonderfully, and with the impeccable timing of a West End understudy finally getting their moment, the clouds parted. Our guide stopped mid-sentence, looked up, and said he thought we might be in luck. We were probably about half a mile from the site by now, but I didn’t need telling twice. Making sure I did not miss the opportunity for a photograph, and as if Kenenisa Bekele himself were cheering me on, I ran back along the route to the main area, just as thousands of messenger runners had done in the days when this small trail was the mountainside “motorway”. Still suffering from the altitude and therefore panting like Thomas the Tank Engine after a particularly steep incline, I reached a ledge with a wonderful view.

Standing there, catching what little oxygen the thin air offered, I thought about Hiram Bingham in 1911. He didn't have a guide telling him where to stand. He had a young Quechua boy named Pablito Riccharte, who led him up this same mountainside, through the same dense forest, to a place the outside world had never seen . The boy had played amongst these stones his whole life. For him, there was nothing lost about this city. It was simply where he lived . Bingham followed a child to glory, which feels like the kind of detail that should be a movie.

And so I took as many photos as I possibly could, knowing Pookie with her poor knee would arrive later and might miss the window. The camera clicked like a woodpecker on caffeine. Thankfully, she made it. We stood together and gazed at the presence and beauty of Machu Picchu, the sun now illuminating the ancient stones in warm golden light. It sat there on its mountain saddle, perfectly proportioned, impossibly placed. It looked, for all the world, like a model village built by giants for the amusement of gods.

Despite some not-so-friendly alpaca encounters the day before, strangely these alpacas or llamas, (I still cannot tell the difference) came to say hello. They posed amongst the ruins as if they owned them (which technically they probably do, having squatter's rights dating back five centuries).

With plenty of pictures and inspired breaths taken, the clouds returned and the view was once again lost. You can spend as much time up there as you like, but by now it was past lunchtime and we had been on our feet since 5am, so we made our way back to the bus station.

Back in the town and after a quick bite to eat we collected our things and caught the riverside train back to Ollantaytambo. I watched as the mountains drifted high above and the river roared quickly below and could not imagine a more beautiful, expansive place on earth. The train windows framed the valley like living paintings, each turn or gap in the trees revealing a new masterpiece for one to look at in awe. A coach collected us from the train station and we were once again on our way back to the Hacienda Hotel in Cusco. We decided to go for a lovely meal knowing tomorrow would be our last day and we would go shopping or walking around.

The following day however, I managed to surprise her by organising a cooking class.

See! Nothing says romance like watching your wife's face light up at the prospect of professional kitchen access 😊.

Our chef met us outside Mercado Central de San Pedro. We waited amongst the plethora of street vendors selling everything one could imagine. One man sold Sangre de Grado, otherwise called Dragons Blood, which looked like bark from a tree. This red roll had a red interior and supposedly has medicinal properties. He would crush it and the juice would pour into a bowl to then be tipped into a bottle. I considered asking if it worked on marine engines, but decided against it.

The chef took us inside the market. This was a most bizarre place we have been to and where everything was on the menu and I mean everything. Inside we saw animal foetus, dried whole animals, cow testicles, brains, tongues, lungs, pigs livers and snouts. Horse penis hung next to goat’s heads. Pookie navigated this culinary abattoir with the trained eye of someone who has judged MasterChef, occasionally pointing out cuts she recognised and murmuring appreciatively. I followed behind making the kind of faces usually reserved for medical documentaries. Thankfully our teacher only needed some herbs for our meal, and, after this gastronomically interesting tour we made our way to his kitchen. Here he talked about Peruvian dishes and taught us how to make a classical meal and drink. Pookie was in her element, chopping, tasting and asking questions with the enthusiasm of a child in a sweet shop.

We thought it was a wonderful end to our trip and as we headed back we happened upon a restaurant called Oculto that had a lovely wine display at the back of the restaurant. We popped our heads through the door and cheekily asked a man in the empty restaurant if he was open and if he would serve us a drink. He replied that they were closed, but when we thanked him and praised his wine collection he decided we could in fact stop and have a drink. What happened next was quite remarkable. No sooner were we drinking wine and talking foods that go with it, than his kitchen staff decided they would cook for us. And so we talked wine and crops, sampled, and chose dishes the staff were all too willing to prepare. We had the whole place to ourselves for about an hour before official opening time and had a fantastic time with the owner. It felt like we had stumbled into a private dinner party where we were the guests of honour and also complete strangers.

Cusco is a magical place. We met so many lovely people and ate some of the best food we have eaten anywhere in the world…  we would return to it and Peru in a heartbeat.

Sadly however, for us our time was up. We had been on a whirlwind trip lasting only fifteen days. We had been to Rio for the carnival, seen the Sugar Loaf Mountain and Christ the Redeemer, been nearly mugged on Copacabana Beach, boated on Lake Titicaca and visited Lima. We had been stranded on Amantani, met the Uros people, lived in a homestead and seen one of the great wonders of the world. Our flights now were the final leg, and the first was to Barbados.

Our overnight flight was uneventful, which after recent adventures felt like a luxury. But, when we landed in Barbados, we were told our connection to Grenada was cancelled. There had been an incident, a small aircraft had experienced brake failure upon landing, causing a temporary closure and a backlog of flights. We were put up in a nearby hotel. Because it was a Friday and we had never been to Barbados before, we decided to visit Oistins for their famous “Friday Night Fish Fry”. When life gives you lemons, you find someone selling grilled flying fish to go with them.

Oistins has become famous for its Friday night fish fry, and for good reason. We went to an ATM, jumped on a local island van, and got a lift. The village of Oistins transforms on Friday evenings into an open-air street party, with the aroma of grilled fish filling the air and music pulsing from multiple stages.

We arrived around 7pm, just as the sun was beginning its descent, and found the place already buzzing with energy. Food stalls lined the square, each with its own grill sending smoke signals into the twilight. Flying fish, mahi mahi, marlin and tuna all sizzled over hot coals. We found a stall, ordered plates piled high with grilled fish, rice and peas, and claimed a spot at a shared picnic table. Locals and tourists ate side by side, conversations flowing as freely as the rum punch. A band played on the central stage, and as darkness fell people began to dance. We watched the sun go down over the beach, a perfect end to what could have been a travel catastrophe. Barbados had taken our cancelled flight and turned it into a party. We made a mental note to thank the pilot with the faulty brakes if we ever met him.

We returned to Grenada the following day and climbed back aboard Sawasdeekat, relieved to be home. But we had a problem. The propellor was making very odd noises. Not the reassuring hum of a job well done, but the kind of clanking, grinding complaint that suggests mechanical existential dread. We found a local diver who lifted it out of the water. The anodes, the metal blocks that protect the hull and propellor from corrosion, had not fared well. They had only been fitted new in Monfalcone, and little of our time since had been spent in marinas where corrosion is worse. Open sea should have preserved them, yet here they were, eaten away like chocolate left in the sun. Another mystery to add to the boat owner’s handbook, which at this rate we could probably write ourselves and call it “Everything That Can Go Wrong Will Go Wrong And Usually Does”. He tightened it up and reattached it.

Encouraged by the food in Cusco, Pookie began cooking some stunning dishes in earnest. The galley filled with aromas that made neighbouring boats tie up closer at mealtimes. We also met some medical students who took us to local off-the-tourist-track restaurants, showing us a side of Grenada we would never have found alone. It was now early April, and we felt we had to get a move on or we would miss the sailing season. The Caribbean has a season that lasts from October to June. Between those months, everyone has to hide their boat from hurricanes, which have the unpleasant habit of treating yachts like toys in a bathtub.

We decided to head to Victoria on the northern part of Grenada. Everything checked, tanks full, we set off on a Sunday in earnest of some good sightseeing. Now if you are a long-standing reader, you will remember back as far as Blog 002 where I had to be rescued by lifeboats off the coast of the UK. Ever since that second blog, I do not think I have written many sailing accounts that did not involve disaster. If the world ever looks like it is coming to an end, I will be well practised. I will greet the apocalypse with a resigned sigh and a muttered there goes another engine.

And so we headed out, smiles on our faces, wind in our hair. We did not even get around the headland before a problem arrived. The port engine had only recently had its propellor repaired and refitted, so I decided to use the trusty starboard one. By the time we reached the rough sea off the south coast of Grenada, this had decided to sing a song that sounded perfectly like the first and would soon be terminal if I did not switch it off. The melody was unmistakable, a grinding, complaining aria of mechanical distress. Our plans quickly altered. We made our way back into Port Louis Marina, the very same one we had arrived in two months earlier from our Atlantic crossing. The boat knew the way by now. Probably could have done it on autopilot with its eyes closed.

The staff put us on exactly the same spot as before. Welcome home, they might as well have said. We got on the phone to the divers and asked for their help once again. They must have us on speed dial by now. We made the best of the three extra days in Port Louis, exploring corners of the marina we had somehow missed during our previous extended stay. And then, confident that both propellors were now working, we set off. This time directly to Union Island. This time, surely, with nothing left to go wrong.

Join us next week where we take you through the Caribbean islands. We meet some fantastic people, go scuba diving, visit Salt Whistle Bay and see the stunning Tobago Cays, a mecca for snorkelling excellence. And this time, I promise, the engines behaved…. Mostly.