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Published: November 25th 2009
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After the quiet of the mountains I arrived in Lima to a cacophony of honking horns! I spent a day looking around the city centre visiting San Francisco monastry (where we got a tour of the catacombs), the cathedral Museum of the Congress and Old Tribunal of Inquisition and Museo del Banco Central de Reserva. I had my first try of ceviche in Peru - Mmmm spicier than I thought it would be.
So the next morning I left the hustle and bustle of Lima and headed to Huacachina. After a 5h bus journey and a short taxi trip I arrived at Huacachina which I discovered was a little oasis surrounded by huge sand dunes and as a bonus my hostel had a pool! It was also at the edge of one of the sand dunes so, of course, I set off to climb it with the intent of getting up to see the sunset - easier said than done. I did manage to get to the top though just after the sunset - it was frustrating work with the sand sliding down as I tried to go up! When I finally got to the top I was rewarded with
a view over Huacachina and the nearby Ica I then ran down it in about 5 min!
The next day I decided to laze about by the pool taking in the sun whilst I waited for the sand dune buggy and sand boarding tour I'd booked for the evening. This was amazing - the dunes stretched out for miles and our driver took us on a roller coaster trip through them. We also stopped off for some sand boarding - a few people tried standing up but after seeing one of them somersault through the air I, and everyone else slid down on our fronts - picking up quite some speed - great fun! We finished off watching the sunset over the dunes (with some huge chicken factories in the foreground, hmmm).
I went to Nasca the next morning and slept most of the way only realising we'd arrived when most of the bus had got off. I got off the bus (half asleep) to be accosted by people trying to sell me flights and bus journeys. I finally managed to get my bus ticket to Cusco and stow my bag and then was transported off to the
airfield having agreed a price for the flight. The flight was in a 4 seater plane and we were first informed of where the sick bags were hmmm. The flight was quite bumpy but not too bad and as a bonus my flight had been upgraded (because the others had booked the longer flight) so that we circled each of the lines so everyone could take pictures (though I don't whether this was necessary for me as taking pictures of the faint lines in a moving plane seemed to be beyond the abilities of me and my camera!) but I also got to see the Palpa lines which I didn't even know I was doing until we flew over to them! It was then back to Nasca to wait for the night bus to Cusco (15h ugh!).
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