The land of llamas

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Leaving the distinct smell of urine behind in La Paz, we headed west to Lake Titicaca, the largest high-altitude lake in the world. We spent a night and two days eating the most amazing trout you have ever tasted (and cheapest), drinking wine, and hiking across the island exploring Inca ruins and local villages. Sadly, it was then time for us to say our final goodbyes to Bolivia and with a tear in the eye, we jumped on a night bus bound for Peru and woke up in the town of Arequipa.

Peru’s second largest city and enclosed by stunning mountains and a stand alone volcano, Arequipa is absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately it was here though that Zack got sick with a flu (possibly man flu) and after 6 nights, the city started to loose its appeal amongst the honking cars and ridiculous number of pigeons. But despite sickness, we managed to make a day trip out to Colca Canyon where we watched the famous Condors (the bird with the longest wingspan in the world) cruise along air streams over the canyon. On our last in the city, we reunited with the wonderful Miss Mary, our Irish travelling companion from Patagonia, to have one last dinner and drinks fiesta before she headed home.

Once Zack was well enough to face another overnight bus trip, we bought a ticket onwards to Nazca. Back in Bolivia, a 6 hour bus trip would have cost us about US$5 - $10 dollars, so after hunting around for about 2 hours and the cheapest bus we could find was about US$30, we were not impressed. But we had no other choice so sucked it up, bought a ticket and jumped on. Now talk about a bus to remember! Huge, soft, reclining seats, a welcome safety video (like the one you watch on a plane), hot meals, drinks, a waitress asking if you needed anything, pillow, blankets, WIFI, an internet “hub”, English movies and last but not least, a working toilet. We couldn’t believe that this was really a bus in Peru, a country which is meant to be one of South Americas poorest! We didn’t even get it that good on buses in Brazil which we paid twice the price. So after an amazing bus journey (it was that good I didn’t even want to fall asleep), we arrived in the tiny town of Nazca.

Now this place is famous for only one thing…giant, ancient scratches and geoglyphs in the ground known as the Nazca Lines (featured in the latest Indiana Jones flick apparently). All up there is approximately 800 lines, 300 figures, and 70 animal or plant drawings sketched into arid bone dry dessert land in the middle of nowhere and still today no one really knows where they came from, or why. One of the more believable theories is that ancient Paracas and Nazca cultures created them as some form of astronomical calendar, but then again others believe they were made by aliens, so it’s all a mystery. We took a two hour tour out to three different lookouts to get an idea of the vastness of the lines and see some of the pictures up close. A fascinating morning but unfortunately no aliens in sight!

With no need to stay in Nazca any longer, we jumped on a bus that afternoon to a random place we read about called Huacachina, not really expecting much when we arrived. But the taxi driver rounded a corner and all of a sudden bam, we were in a beautiful, lush oasis in the middle of a dessert…literally. We treated ourselves to a hostel with a pool and restaurant and spent our last weekend of freedom before we started our volunteer work soaking up the sun, eating amazing food, and flying through sand dunes in a buggy! Fun times 😉

But now, its time for work!

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