I think you should endeavour to make every trip your ultimate trip, so my post has to be about the moments of ultimate coolness on my last trip!

The whole shibang was awesome as it was a round the world trip. The Amazon rainforest was the highlight, however in terms of ultimate experiences I would say our race to Cusco was the most interesting!!

We had intended to spend three weeks in Mexico before flying to Peru for our Salkantay trek, but unfortunately this was the exact day that the WHO declared Swine Flu a pandemic! We got to Mexico City fully intending to move straight on to Lima, only to find out that Peru and Ecuador had shut their borders to flights coming from Mexico! After a lot of too-ing and fro-ing LAN fully established that we could not be flown to Lima, but if we were to get the same plane as the Peruvian nationals who were allowed (!) then we would be taken to Lima, left on the plane, then flown on to Santiago de Chile.

OK, we thought, and discussed it with some of the fellow members of the Mexican Escape Squad we had met whilst stuck in the airport. None of us knew anything about Chile except that they made good wine, but we thought 'so what!', let's have an adventure!

And so Accidental Chile was soon followed by Arbitrary Argentina and we had made a firm friend in the Mexican Escape Squad who stayed with us for nearly 6 weeks. It was amazing. But we still had our deadline to get to Cusco to start our trek. It was time to get a bus, then another bus, then another bus (as is the way in South America).

However, the universe still wanted to give us some more obstacles in our race to Cusco on time! We arrived in Arequipa, Peru, to find out that our connecting bus to Cusco was cancelled on account of a 48 hour road blockade that was starting in the morning. After some frantic running around and terrible Spanish, we found one tiny bus company that was running a bus to Cusco on account that the service was due to arrive before the blockades were begun. Perfect! we thought, and on we got.

However, the bus got a puncture, which of course the driver and his mate had to fix. This put us back a few hours, which put us right in the path of the road blockade! About the 10th vehicle in, in fact!! All of a sudden the traffic came to a standstill and we realised that the blockade was actually block after block of the Andes barring the road!!! At each blockage, all the passengers on the vehicles that were stuck had to get out to move the block by hand. At one stage, the protesters (protesting the government's desire to privatise the water, including the rivers, which you can't argue with farmers not liking!) were on a ledge in the mountain above the road, throwing massive rocks at the bus! This point was pretty scary as you can imagine!

We finally crawled to the town of Urcos, where the bridge had been blocked with massive trees - we were going no further. The protesters had no problem with the passengers personally and were alowing people to cross the bridge. Some of the locals on the bus began to walk. OK, we thought, we'll walk too - how far can Cusco be by now?

40km was the answer, on the not insubstantial inclines of the Peruvian Andean roads! So, we decided to stay with the bus. The rest of the day was spent being secretly snuck into local eateries so we could get food without the villagers being attacked by the protesters for helping us and taking a wee down the hillside being watched by a pig! We managed to find a tiny pre-blockade shop that sold beer and had our first drinking at altitude experience! We shared with others that were stuck and made many new friends. Eventually, in the middle of the night we were allowed to move on (there was another incident in a later village with a blockade consisting of a wall of fire, but that's another story).

We made lifelong friends and we got to Cusco on time (just!). It was the ultimate adventure and pretty much one of the best days of my life, barr my wedding!!

Here's looking forward to meeting up with the Mexican Escape Squad in California and Mexico next year for the next installment of our Ultimate Life Adventure!

• swine
• mexico
• peru
• road blockade
• Cusco
• accidental chile
• South America