Puno, Huacachina, Pisco and Lima

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Puno, Huacachina, Pisco and Lima We departed Cusco and the Point Hostel after a total of 7 nights there, and headed by train through the mountains up to Puno and Lake Tiicaca. The train journey was really quite long, something i had to get use to, but was very civilized with i meal served on proper plates and the table covered with a fancy table cloth. I slept the first night in Puno as i felt quite ill from the altitude, but feeling better the next day we explored the town and some lunch. I had the worses t pizza and pretty much the worses t meal of my life, it looked and tasted like playdo. that afternoon we visited some funeral towers by a smaller lake. The towers were quite interesting but it was the views and surrounding of the lake that were really impressive. Our final day in Puno was spent on Lake Titticaca. We first visited one of the many floating islands where we swayed on the lake and tried the reeds that the islands were actually made of. We continued further on to the lake to one one the real islands. there we roamed around and got views across the lake and border to Boliviar. One we returned to the main land we caught our night bus all the way to Ica, a town near the coast and on the way back to Lima.

The bus journey was a long 19 hours where we were nearly continuously disturbed by the bellowing TV. Where we finally reached our destination Ica we got straight into a cab and took a short journey and the small oasis town of Huacachina. We stayed a a lively hostel with a swimming pool and that arranged trips sandboarding on the dunes, the reason we were here. There was a trip leaving the afternoon we arrived so we got right to it... Strapped in to and unsafe looking sand-buggy we sped off towards the dunes. We soon realized the buggy ride its self was the real excitement that you were paying for. It cruise the open dunes and a blistering pace, hitting jumps, spinning in the sand and shot off near vertical sand dunes. This was a roller coaster taken to the next level, you actually felt like you could crash and die at any instant. It had been described to us by a fellow traveler as "an experience that makes grown men scream!" The sand boarding its self was also very fun and involved lying face first on a wooden board and pushing yourself off a dune. It was very fast an exciting and it was also fun to try standing up, very difficult though.

After Ica we went to the nearby town of Pisco where we took a speed boat out to a small island to see the wildlife. We saw lots of different birds and some sea lions. It wasn't that exciting but it was something that we hadn't done anything like before. We took a bus straight from Pisco to Lima where we would spend our last two nights in Peru before flying out. We stayed in an Israeli hostel as the Point Hostel in Lima was fully booked. The hostel had a Playstation with Pro so we spent quite a lot of time there playing. We visited the main square in Lima and saw the cathedrals. We also visited the coast but we didn't really have much time to do anything else. In what had seemed like an instant we had already finished our second country and were a fifth of the way through our journey!

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Photos

Funeral Towers
The funeral towers with its beautiful surroundings.

Funeral Tower
A close up of one of the funeral towers that surrounded Puno.

Lake Titicaca
Riding the boat out into the lake to visit the different islands.

Sand Dunes
On top of a sand dune.

Sand Hotel
Our hotel oasis in the sand dunes, with its swimming pool and westerners.

Lines in the Sand
The picture in the desert, as seen from a boat.

Birds...
A pic from the island near Pisco with all its birds and sea lions.