Spaceships, Sand Dunes and Sea Lions

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Arequipa and the Colca Canyon

Next stop after the Inca Trail was Arequipa, Peru´s second biggest city and called the "white city" because of all its buildings which are made from white volcanic rock. There are also 3 volcanoes surrounding the city, one of which you can see the top of (covered in snow) from the city centre. I was still suffering from a freezing-nights-on-the-Inca-Trail-induced cold but luckily the weather was boiling hot so we spent lots of time wandering around the city in the sunshine! And then we treated ourselves to a trip to the cinema in the evening and saw the new Indiana Jones. The film was pretty rubbish but its set in Peru and talked about lots of the things we'd seen or were going to see which was really cool. In fact you could hear all the Peruvians in the cinema getting really excited and whispering to each other when the film mentioned all the diferent towns!

From Arequipa we went on a 2 day tour into the Colca Canyon which is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon! The scenery was absolutely amazing (see facebook pictures) and the best bit was that we saw condors which really huge birds. Im not usually a bird fan, but these were really impressive and we could see them really close up from the look out point. The condors look a bit like vultures and their wingspan is up to 3 metres! Thats about twice the height of me! And they are also the heaviest birds o prey at up 10kg so you can imagine that they are pretty big. We also spent the night in a village called Chivay in the Colca valley itself. It was absolutely freezing there but we visited the thermal springs which was really nice and warmed us up a bit! That night we went to a "traditional show" and saw some of the strangest dancing I´ve ever seen, involving a man lying on the floor and being hit wiht a stick by a woman! It was very strange and obviously quite hard not to laugh at!

Nazca

We came here to see the famous Nazca lines and I was being so much of a history geek that I even took us to a lecture about them before we went to see them. It turned out that the lecture was actually really interesting because it went through all the different theories as to why the lines exist and how they got there. The conclusion though was pretty much that nobody knows and that somehow people from 200BC - 700AD created them in the desert to be seen from above even though humans didn´t fly until the 18th century. There is one crazy guy who is 100% convinced that the lines are there because the ancient Nazca people recieved visits from aliens-he thinks the lines are runways for spaceships. But I wasn´t overly convinced by that theory. The most likely explaination is that they were made to be seen by the gods and that each generation made different sets of lines, one set being an astrological calender, one being pathways to water sources, another being meeting places and roads for religious rituals etc. You can have a look at the pictures on facebook or here: http://www.onagocag.com/nazca.html and here: http://www.go2peru.com/gal_nazca01.htm YOU HAVE TO LOOK CLOSELY TO SEE THEM! and see what you think! After the lecture we got to look through their telescope and see Saturn AGAIN! It was almost as good as in Chile just a little less clear and we could still see the rings!

The next morning we went to the Chauchilla cemetary which is basically just in the middle of the desert outside Nazca. It was found by grave robbers who stole lots of the textiles and jewellery but not the mummies which were burried in tombs in the desert floor. The mummies were about 2000 years old but because the conditions there are so dry they are in unbelievable condition - Naza has an average of 30 MINUTES rainfall per year!!!! It was really weird looking at the mummies because they still has hair and teeth! Even though they were that old. And the archaeologists even found a mummy of a baby and you can see that it still has its toenails! Very weird but fascinating - I didn´t know that skeletons could be preserved for that amount of time let alone hair, teeth and toenails!

In the afternoon we had our flight over the Nazca lines in the smallest planes I have ever seen with only six seats all squashed together inside it. I felt quite a bit sick in that plane, especially when the pilot kept turning it right on its side like something out of Top Gun so that we could see the lines. The lines themselves were really really impressive. It was almost impossible to believe they were made such a long time ago and the pictures really do look like a monkey/spider/humming bird etc. And the lines are so straight as if they were done using a massive ruler. Ive put some pictures up facebook so you can see them but you have to look carefully! The monkey is particularly impressive with its huge spiral tail as was "the astronaut" which is a giant picture of a person made in the side of a mountian.

Huacachina

Armed with our swimming costumes and Alice (Hughes) who joined us from Cusco we headed to Huacachina after a brief stop in nearby Ica. Huacachina is basically an oasis in the middle of the desert and not a million miles from paradise! See a picture here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13182609@N05/2351301672/ .
We spent a few days quite happily sunbathing in the hostel (which had a pool) and eating delicious chicken sandwiches and pasta from the nearby restaurants.

On the second day Ben was feeling a bit poorly so Alice and I decided to "get out of his way" and go wine tasting! One of the wineries doubled up as a "museum" but was the strangest museum i´d ever seen. Its contents included a 2000 year old mummy, a stuffed baby sloth, a statue of a peruvian body builder next to a statue of the virgin mary and a porcelein jesus with a skull and crossbones on it. Lovely. They gave us some really nice wine to taste and then made us shot some 43% pisco (spirit made from grapes) at which point I actually thought Alice was going to be sick. After 3 wineries and a lot more wine and pisco we were feeling a bit worse for the wear! At least we had the rest of the afternoon to sleep it off in the sunshine!

The next day we went sand buggying and sand boarding down the huge sand sunes surrounding Huacachina. The sand buggy ride was absolutely terrifying! Alice and I screamed pretty much the whole time as we went at far too many miles an hour up and down the dunes which were so steep they were almost vertical drops! Before I was sick we luckily stopped to do some sandboarding down the really huge dunes! Alice´s snowboarding experience showed and Ben did pretty well but had some impressive wipeouts! I went down on my stomach which was better for my knee but also really fast! Luckily the sand was so soft it didnt hurt if you came off the board but I did get a mouthful of sand on a few occasions!

Paracas and Islas Ballestas

Next stop was Paracas which was a tiny town that had been partially destroyed by an earthquake there last year. We went there to visit the Ballestas islands which are described as "the poor man´s Galapagos". Since we were the poor man it was perfect! The tour was absolutely brilliant as the islands themselves were really beautiful rocks and rock archways with nothing on them except about a million birds (and a million isnt an exaggeration) of different breeds. Some bits of the rock were so covered that you couldnt see the surface, only hundreds of birds. They had some cute litle penguins there and in th sea we saw bright orange shrimps swimming. The best bit though was the sea lions who were lazing around on the rocks and the boat took us really close to them. They were so cute! We also saw the "big daddy" sealion - a huge male one lounging around who would have weighed about 10 times my weight! After the islands we went to the national reserve which had beautiful bays but you could see the earthquake damage in the rocks which had huge cracks in them and will probably break off some time soon. Since we were on the coast we just had to have some fish for lunch and it was absolutely delicious!

Lima

After saying goodbye to Alice we hopped on a bus to Lima, Peru´s capital and have a week here before flying back to Brazil for the final 3 weeks of our trip. Yesterday Ben started a 6 day paragliding course, at the end of which he might be able to apply for a flying license in the UK! We went to the sand dunes to learn take off and landing and he was really good, he even got to learn other techniques because he was such a natural so the instructor says! The instructor was also so lovely that he gave me a chance to fly too all by myself! I landed on my bum not very impressively but it was really cool to do it on my own! Don´t think I´ll get my licence though... In the afternoon we got free tandem flights of the cliffs of Miraflores (area of Lima) and flew over the coast which was absolutely amazing! I was absolutely terrified when we went soaring of a huge cliff but really loved it, even if I was glad to get my feet back on the ground afterwards.


PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: I´ve addded some new pictures (in a bit of a random order) to the my profile in the albums "Highlights of South America 4" an "Highlights of South America 5" on facebook. Have a look if you can though I warn you they are all in the wrong order! xxx

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