Lines in the sand.

After we left Huaraz we went via Lima and Ica to the small desert oasis of Huaccachina, on our first day here, after mostly sleeping we climbed the large dune behind our hostal for the sunset across the desert... As we clambered up the gigantic slope sliding in the sand, our minds fell back to two days before when we were trekking up the glacial peak of Vallunaraju, except this time it was not the cold but the heat which was our enemy. The next morning Alex and Max decided to go to the top for the sunrise, at 5.30 in the morning they climbed the slopes passing several groups of heavily inebreiated Brits, only for the sunrise to be obscured by a heavy fog. Thankfully making the extra time i spent in bed all the more worthwhile. Later that morning we organised and booked our sandboarding and the dune buggy tour, before heading out to an Internet cafe for some communications. Then we took the sandboards out for a little practice... we climbed a fair way up the dune and before long we were tumbling down the sand at quite some speed. We frequently fell over on our attempts with alex bruising his backside after attempting to use it to slow down. After a few hours of travelling at high speed down the dune then taking the tiring walk back up we went to lunch. After this our Dune tour/sandboarding commenced. The buggy drove quickly over the undulating terrain and if we weren´t packed so tightly in there may have been some genuine fear. At the first dune we stopped at we attempted to stand up whilst going down, and experienced some pretty spectacular falls. Next up it was a much larger dune for which we decided upon (and were advised to) lie down whilst doing. On this we built up some serious speed and the bumpy section at the bottom was suprisingly painful. Back in the buggy and we attempted a succession of ever larger dunes, and ultimatly finished on a smaller dune which we did standing with an amazing sunset across the desert landscape. Once back at the hostal we had a small rest before heading out for tea, and then back in preperation of our trip to Nazca the next day.

We got a bus straight from Ica to Nazca where we took a taxi to the airport. At the airport we bought a flight over the ancient geoglyphs, and soon set off. The flight totalling 35mins took us over all of the most famous sites, but was also rather warm, and bumpy not a great combination for Alex. Nethertheless we all managed to get some amazing views of the lines and animals. Tonight we plan to travel on a disproportionatly expensive bus to Cuzco where hopefully the next installment of the blogothon will be released.