Jet lag? Pah! I feel alive, zinging in every nerve cell. My incredible adventure is about to begin. This morning we’re setting off on the first of our long bus journeys. This one takes us south on the Pan American Highway across the vast wastelands of the Atacama Desert and on to our ultimate destination, the incredible Nazca Lines. Before we depart, I try ringing home for about the third or fourth time since I got here. Mobile phone signals are, at best, patchy and when the line has eventually connected, I haven’t yet managed to catch Greg once. At the other end, the phone rings again but no one’s at home and I can’t quite work out what time it should be there. Every minute, with all the wonderful sights I’m seeing, I’m wishing that he was here too.

I text my husband to tell him that I love him and I text Lauren and Chelsea to tell them that I’ve arrived safely and am already having a brilliant time. Then I haul my bag downstairs and out on to the pavement. The smokers among us are having a quick drag before we leave and the others are stuffing last-minute additions into bulging backpacks. Blake Chadwick is walking up and down looking very keen to be off while Sarah Bennett – the inspiration behind this trip – is busy supervising the loading of the luggage on the bus.

Minny is bouncing with excitement. ‘I can’t wait,’ she says.

‘Me neither.’ I’m itching to get going, be on our way.

‘Ready, Sexy?’ Blake asks me.

I nod. ‘As I’ll ever be.’

‘You’re doing great.’

‘I’m loving it already,’ I tell him.

‘Glad you came?’

‘Yes,’ I say, and I know that I owe him for organising this for me. Blake might be brash and the world’s biggest flirt, but I do think that he has a kind heart too. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

He hoists my bag into the luggage hold and I take one last glance at this hotel. The next time I see it will be in two weeks’ time, when we spend our last night here. Then, as I go to climb on to the bus, I hear a voice call out my name.

‘Annie!’

I spin round and I can’t believe what my eyes are seeing. Surely, I must be hallucinating!

Running down the street towards me at warp speed is my husband. My Greg. Tourists out for an early-morning constitutional dive out of his way as he races through them, arms flailing.

‘Annie!’

He’s carrying a rucksack and, for a moment, my addled brain wonders exactly what he’s doing here. And then I realise that my husband – my stick-in-the-mud husband, who prefers his holidays in Cromer, has travelled halfway round the world to be with me – and tears spring to my eyes.