As the monarch died, I boarded a plane bound for Peru and spent the mourning period having Peruvian adventures instead of being stuck at home with nothing but Mourn-Hub on TV.

Here’s a photo gallery, you can also click the links below to see some description from my microblog at the time.

I flew all the way to the pacific ocean and found Lima full of a rainbow of types of cops, checking out a monastery filled with bones.

Another flight over the mountains to the interior filled with lifeless desert.

Looked around Arequipa viewing some volcanoes and a monastery that housed nuns, pondering on the nature or religious war.

Drove up a mountain looking at smoking volcanos and stopping to watch the llamas.

Hung out with some condors and saw the tops of some mountains before stopping at a beautiful hotel on the shores of Lake Titicaca

There are people who have been living on floating islands on that lake for 500 years since they fled the Spanish invasion. Went to visited them, and they were very welcoming.

There’s an archeology site on the borders of the old Inca empire. Was it a temple? A trading post? Nobody really knows but I visited and admired the long corridors that weren’t lining up with the sunrise coz it was the wrong time of year for that.

A day in Cusco visiting Saqsaywaman, a temple dismantled by the Catholics to build their less-earthquake-proof cathedrals, and the museum of pre-Colombian art.

Went to a little farm to feed the Llamas and for a walk up a terraced mountain in Ollantaytanbo to walk across the sky-walk.

Went through the jungle to Machu Picchu an amazing old temple up a mountain.