From the mountains to the desert.

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While the rest of the group headed back to Cusco, Renee and i hung around in Aguas Calientas for a night. During the high season this would be a pumping little town full of trekkers trading war stories. It was fairly quiet while we were there which was ok. Ended up getting 'piscoed' on the peruvian drink pisco sours. Cruised around some local markets the next morning before catching the Vistadome train back to Cusco.

The next day we went whitewater rafting on some Class III rapids. I'd always thought it would be boring, and while the heart rate never really got up i can see how on some tougher rapids there would be a real buzz. Going to look into that when i get to the U.S.

Met up with the Aussie lads from the trek and had a night on the cuba libres in Cusco. They give them away and i've never been one to say no, so needless to say the head was beating hard the next day, which happened to be a day of travel.

Caught a bus across to Nazca, which takes about 13 hours. Decided to splash out an extra 25 soles (6 euro) and go first class. Massive leather recliners, tv, food service etc. No roughing it for us.

Jumped off the bus to be surrounded by 6 little Peruvians all trying to sell us tickets to flights over the nazca lines. Eeni, meeni, myni, moed it and took a flight with Aero Condor which lasted about 40 minutes. The number of lines over the area is amazing. I think i might of missed a few of the designs due to my less than perfect eyesight but over all it didn't live up to my expectations.

We moved straight on from Nazca to a desert oasis called Huacachina. It's a lagoon surrounded on all sides by massive sand dunes which you can cruise down on boards. We chilled out on the first day and then went sandboarding on the second afternoon. There's no point even trying to stand on the boards that they have so you just lie down head first on your stomach and go.

On my second run Renee was down the bottom trying to line up that prize winning photograph and at this stage steering wasn't really an option for me. As luck would have it my path was straight at Renee and she forgot to move. Hit her doing about 30kph. Cleaned her up good.

They have these cool buggies that they use to get around in the dunes. Nothing but a roll cage with a motor and some seats that they strap you in to. Great fun. Would kill to get behind the wheel of one of those things. Some of them look like something out of The Road Warrior.

THis was pretty much the end of our travels in Southern Peru. From here we were heading to Lima to catch a plane up to the Amazon jungle in the north of Peru.

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