Coca leaves

For centuries indigenous Peruvians have used coca leaves to make a kind of tea, "mate de coca", which is said to alleviate altitude sickness and help digestion. You can even buy boxes of coca tea-bags in supermarkets. This comes in handy in Cusco and Puno, where we are now, which are almost 4,000m above sea level.

It's cheap, too, and harmless (when drunk as tea, anyway :), so I thought we could bring some back to the UK for presents. But Katherine's fine legal mind hypothesised that that might just be illegal, and, alas!, it is, according to the Foreign Office. Oh well. (It doesn't taste that nice anyway...).