I’ve never travelled to South America, so given that Macchu Picchu has always been on my wishlist, and given the sad sad compromise that a trip to Andalusia turned out to be, it was a pretty obvious place to plan a 2017 trip especially since BA has now started up non-stop flights through to a number of S American capitals.

So we will fly from London Gatwick straight through to Lima in Peru for a brief overnight stay at the airport hotel before flying on to Cusco. A number of people suggested that given a choice, I should cut down on time in Lima in order to spend longer in Cusco which is supposed to be a beautiful place to hang out as well as the obvious stopover to acclimatise and see the sacred Valley of the Incas.

From there we travel on to Ollantaytambo where we catch the tourist train to Macchu Picchu, staying overnight at nearby Aguas Clients before travelling back to Cusco.

From there (and after a couple of days chilling out) we catch the tourist bus to Puno, the obvious place to stay over and visit lake Titicaca.

Rather than turn around and head home at this stage, or visit the Nazca Lines, we decided to head towards La Paz in Bolivia. I may or may not visit South America again, and if not, I wanted to have seen the salt pains at Uyuni. So from la Paz, we fly down to the salt flats and a stay in a salt hotel before flying back to La Paz, onto Lima and home.

And one of the reasons is that the eldest has decided she won’t be coming with us this year so we might as well go for the longest of long-haul flights since she truly hates flying (my fault!)

Next year, it’s going to be all four of us and Iceland is on the cards – not too far, not too similar.