I´ve had to recalibrate the Wow Scale a few times, and am running out of superlatives, and so to make everything easier I´ll use asterisks and you can insert your own.The road from Puno to Cuzco started quite ordinarily and then became more and more * as it rose to 13,000 feet before dropping down to Cuzco at 11,500 feet. A couple of bikes coming the other way screeched to a halt. It was Ed (US) and his Spanish wife Elisa, both riding, I think, Hondas; they´re doing S America before returning to Arizona. So we hunkered down beside the road to shelter from the wind and had a brew-up, watching a cow lady trying to keep her charges from investigating the bikes too closely. They told me about a great Dutch-run campsite at Cuzco and gave me the GPS reference.

Further on the roadblocks started (Ed forgot to warn me about these). The natives are protesting about the high price of road tax and petrol (it´s about 50p a litre here, which is pretty expensive in relation to the average income). The roadblocks consist of larges rocks and broken glass spread across the road, usually in villages but sometimes in between. I encountered around a dozen of these altogether; they were all quite friendly, because as a foreigner they know it´s not my problem, and the longest I had to wait before being let through was half an hour. At one of them I thought there was a riot going on, but it turned out to be a rather enthusiastic football game, and when someone scored a goal (I think) they moved a couple of rocks and let me through.

So I arrived in Cuzco towards sunset, having ridden through the most *, * scenery along the valley. I managed to navigate through the town, the only hiccup being when attempting to enter Suecia from Plaza de Armas: a police car got in the way and I had both wheels locked slithering backwards downhill on the incredibly slippery cobbles.

I managed to get to the top of the hill on a road no wider than an alleyway and back on to tarmac again. I´d managed to pass the track to the campsite (there´s no sign) when a KTM coming the other way stopped. It was Stuart, who led me to the campsite, and whose first question was "Are you the woman who crashed in Argentina?" Turns out he´d met the Dutch bikers the day after the crash, and had been trying to find out where I was so he could bring me some grapes.

Cuzco is obviously the place to be. Camping on the site are Stuart and Sharon, both on Yamaha XT500s; Dereck (with a broken wrist) on a (now-unbent) KTM 640; Nick and Jill on a BMW R100GS; and me. Quite a Brit gethering. And we all go together for post-prandials at the Norton Rats Pub on Plaza de Armas, run by Jeff who´s a great chap and, unsurprisingly, a Norton owner. They´re all very impressed by the repaired bike.

Five British-registered bikes at Cuzco

As most of you are British I´ll just mention the weather. It´s a bit like the Sahara in winter - well below freezing overnight, so there´s heavy frost on the tents and bikes in the mornings, then after sunrise the temperature quickly climbs to somewhere in the 80s. The only snag is that as the air´s so thin even I´m in danger of burning so I have to cover up by midday.

Today I´m at Machu Picchu. It´s totally * * * * * * * * and *.