As we get to the desk, Blake Chadwick stands aside and ushers me in front of him. ‘You go first, Annie.’

If he says, ‘Age before beauty,’ I’ll smack him one. But he doesn’t. My boss is being genuinely nice and caring and I risk a smile. ‘Thanks.’

The rest of the group are standing waiting for us, shuffling about impatiently. ‘Come on, you two. Get a move on,’ Minny shouts. ‘We’ve got a plane to catch!’

Blake lifts my bag on to the conveyor belt. ‘Ready for this, Sexy?’

‘Yes,’ I say with a grin. ‘Let’s do it!’

Chapter 116

Chapter 116

After a gruelling twenty-three hours of travelling, we arrive in Lima, Peru. I’m here. I’m finally here.

The air is hot, thick and smells of diesel from the snaking traffic jams that clog the roads. Apart from the small, nut-brown, sturdy people who populate it, the outskirts of Lima look much like any cosmopolitan city.

Then we take a short orientation tour into the heart of this, the City of Kings, which blends ancient and colonial architecture with the modern, and I feel that the real Peru emerges. As we twist and turn through the squares and walk under the shade of the intricate balconies of old Lima, the city’s history starts to unfold for us. The old ladies with black bowler hats sit swathed in their hand-woven red blankets smoking pipes. Young men in ponchos sell cheap alpaca hats and gloves and socks, and I think that I should have brought a bigger bag for all the souvenirs I’ll want to take back. Children in brightly coloured traditional clothing, full skirts, felt jackets and flowered bonnets, clutch dolls in the same attire and pose with smiling llamas and alpacas for photographs with the tourists. Music from lilting pan pipes fills the squares.

We stroll through the Plaza Mayor visiting La Catedral with its imposing twin towers then on to the striking yellow and white Spanish-Baroque church, convent and cool catacombs of San Francisco. A high proportion of Peru’s population live cheek-by-jowl in Lima and the bustling streets only serve to confirm it.

That evening, tired and footsore, we check into our hotel in Miraflores on Peru’s Costa Verde. It’s a beautiful, Spanish-style building with white adobe walls and dark wood shutters on the windows. After dining on rocotos rellenos – hot red peppers stuffed with meat and tomatoes and raisins washed down with my very first pisco sour – the first of many – I sleep like the dead in my bed covered with colourful Inca blankets. In the morning, I throw open the shutters and, looking out at the ocean, I think that I’m raring to go on the other side of the world. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. Let me out and at it!