Heya,
Im in Lima at the moment, a massive city most travellers try and avoid because of muggings and what not. I nevertheless ventured into this mammoth place and found a pretty amazing city, once beatiful and still grand, however quite run down. The place did make me hold my bag that much tighter but we were fine and Im gald to have seen it, you cant miss these places. We are here after a trip further south to Pisco (Angie - home of the Pisco Sour!) where we went out on a speed boat to a rocky island. Here there are heaps of Sea Lions and penguins and boobies and bird poo, which is the main industry on the island exported as fertiliser. Was good to head here, particularly because we missed the Galapagos Islands. After Pisco we headed to ica to meet the rest of our travelling group. We stayed in an oasis - literally! Huge Sand dunes surrounding a little Laguna at which theyve built a little tourist town for us to really appreciate this natural wonder! The water is now brown and filled with children and paddle boats! Our hostel however, backed onto a massive sand dune which took half an hour to climb. Two steps forward and one step back! Well worth the effort though to see the most spectacular sunset over a very Laurence of Arabia style view of the desert. The following day we went sand boarding, which I looked forward to but got very excited about when I saw our transport was a massive 12 man dune buggy. In we hopped and absolutely roared off over the mountain like dunes to our destination, being a 'small' slope for us to begin on...hmmmm, this slope would have freaked me out on skis! Off we went though, was heaps of fun and didnt hurt too much when I stacked! We gradually went on to steeper and bigger slopes which was ace, the best bit being we didnt have to walk back up the hill as we all jumped into the buggy when we reached the bottom. The ride on the buggy was amazing, the vehicle reaching about 80km on the flats, but then going straight up sand walls and straight down... what a rush! After about 6 runs of boarding, we were taken to watch the sunset, one of the greatest Ive ever seen. Felt like I was in africa or something, the sun was sooo big and red. We then returned to the hostel, not before convincing our driver to do another run of one of the biggest dunes, on which he went up so fast that the whole buggy flew into the air...sooo cool.
So back to Lima in a regular old bus, and we head to Cusco tomorrow to start the Inca trail. Cant wait.
Hope everyone is well wherever you are
Take care
Love Hannah