Peru Part 1: History, Mystery & Damn Good Gastronomy

A first-class train ticket buys you a fashion show, a live band, cocktail-making demonstrations and a man in a mask purring in your ear. A very early morning start gets you a flight over mysterious shapes that some believe to be a message from aliens. A cup of boiled cactus tea with Shamans gives you strong hallucinations said to heal the body and connect you with the Divine. A willingness to eat like a local gets you some of the best food you've ever eaten.

Welcome to the unique, diverse and incomparable country that is Peru.

There are two things you'll find in the whole of Peru: a massive amount of dust and locals who really hate tourists taking their pictures. After that, every region in Peru is as different to one another as a region can be. Every town has its own look, identity, landscape and culture. At first I didn't think much of the country, despite having wanted to come here for ages. But Peru has a magic; a way of just getting under your skin anyway and making you love it and appreciate its variety, history and energy.

We started in Lima, the capital. If you want to know why Peru is considered the gastronomic capital of South America then you need to come and eat in Lima. And I mean EAT. None of this "I only want incinerated food because I'm a fragile tourist with a sensitive tummy" business, because if you do that, you'll really miss out. We didn't plan to leave Lima like so many other travellers we met with a bagful of regrets because they hadn't tried the best ceviche in the world.

Various countries in South America argue over who came up with ceviche first. Having tried it in every place we've been to so far, we can safely say that only people who make it as amazingly well as the Peruvians can be considered the true masters. Chunks of supremely fresh raw sea bass, loads of lime juice, some chilli and red onion, a sprinkling of fresh coriander, and some sweet potato and corn on the side.. that's it. I've re-evaluated my belief that Italians are the number one experts in delicious simplicity. We ate ceviche for lunch and dinner every single day for a week. On top of that we ate another traditional raw fish dish called tiradito and Imran had meat coated with the famous anticucho marinade as often as he could get it. We went to a restaurant called Tanta which is run by the man considered to be the best chef in Peru. I tell you, if a person can create a simple side salad so unbelievably delicious that you nearly weep with joy then you know you're in the company of a palate that is pure genius.

Lima is either very well-developed or in the process of becoming very well-developed. The modernisation is massive here and Miraflores - the part of town where we stayed - feels like you could be in any European city. Normally I wouldn't view that as a positive but here it just seemed to work. Probably because there is still a distinctly visible Peruvian identity and the modernisation lacks the desperation of many other countries that have a "we'll take anything American/European no matter what it is" feel. There are small parks all along the waterfront with fun names such as the 'Love Park,' where snoggers gather and singers with guitars and big hats randomly appear to serenade the lovers. Feeling inspired by the romantic atmosphere, Imran told me he had a surprise for me and proceeded to walk me to.. the Food Museum. My goody gosh, excited much?! That man knows me too well. And just by having a museum dedicated to their national cuisine makes me adore those Peruvians even more. Shame it was all in Spanish and I couldn't understand it. But being the foodie geek I am, I took photos of the entire exhibition to translate when I'm back home (yes, you read that correctly. I'm a nerd and I'm proud!)

Moving on from the breathless excitement that was food museums and ceviches, we went south to the sand dunes in Ica. An entirely different landscape to Lima, Ica is the second driest area in South America with only about 2mm of rain per year. 2mm! Don't we get that in London approximately every hour? Crickey. And yet, randomly, in the middle of this desert, there is an oasis in the form of the Huacachina lagoon. It's all so odd and all so beautiful. We just needed to look up and we could see gigantic mountains of sand towering all around us. And what's the best thing to do when confronted with this particular natural beauty? Sand board, of course! With crazy drivers who liked to race up the dunes and then jump over them so violently you have a split-second feeling you're in a real life version of the end scene of Thelma & Louise, we drove up to dizzying heights and then threw ourselves down the dunes on mini surfboards. I think I had far more fun than Imran did here. I just lay on my stomach and pulled myself over the edge of the most vertical looking dune I could find. Imran tried to use his snow boarding skills and go down standing but ended up falling every five feet. He might have been frustrated but it made for some great action shots!

We left Ica to go to Nasca on Imran's birthday. We celebrated by being in a coach for several hours watching depressing films like Frozen (don't watch it, please: you'll never ever ski again) and awesome films like Taken (Liam Neeson is a bad-ass!) Arriving in this small town, we befriended a young waiter called George in a local restaurant who made sure we had amazing ceviches and fresh juices to rival those in Lima as long as we had lunch at his restaurant every single day (we did - not just because he kept up his end of the bargain with incredible food but because Imran thought George was the poodle's doodles for saying he looked 24 years old.) We went to the local Planetarium to hear theories about the existence of the famous Nasca lines and to look at Jupiter. Imran was worryingly excited about seeing Jupiter - there you go, love: that's your 32nd birthday present.

I've been dying to go to Peru ever since National Geographic did a special on the Nasca lines a few years ago. The mystery of the lines is one of the most fascinating and interesting I've heard and it baffles people to this day. In the Nasca desert, there are lines and shapes (a monkey, spider, 'astronaut', hands, birds and various others) created by moving ground rocks to the sides and flattening the earth between them. These ancient geoglyphs cover an area of 50 miles and the shapes can only be seen in that form from above; it's estimated that they took many generations to create and have stood the test of time (since 400 AD) only due to the extreme dryness of the region. Why were they built? Why can they only be seen from above, centuries before planes were invented? What was their purpose? Theorists argue between religious and astronomical purposes, equinox and solstice significance, practical purposes of roads leading to water sources, and even aliens! But nobody knows for sure and who knows if anybody ever will. It's a really cool mystery and flying over the lines to see the mighty magnitude of them was amazeballs (no, I don't know what that term means either but my little sister once used it to describe something particularly awesome so I'm just trying to be "down with the kids.")

No time in Nasca can be complete without seeing something of the Shamans - intermediaries between the spirit and human world, and people who believe that mending the soul is the key to mending the physical body. You can spend time at healing retreats, hallucinating from drinking the juice of the San Pedro cactus. You all know I would love to try stuff like that but it's not Imran's cup of cactus tea. Instead, we visited a cemetery to see real remains of ancient Nascans and Shamans. These were the 'specialists' - those capable of entering the spiritual realm to receive guidance and advice about matters afflicting their communities. Once again, I love the attitude towards death in this part of the world. Ancient Nascans believed in the afterworld and so would party like it's 1999 at funerals to make sure the departed soul went to its next life happy. If the deceased saw everyone upset, he or she would enter the next life sad. Not to be miserable or gloomy or anything, but you'd all do well to remember that if we suddenly popped our clogs! Rose champagne, JD & coke and carrot juice, people. That's us all over.