Peru - Trujillo, Paracas and Huacachina

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Some bas***d robbed me on the overnight bus from Huaraz to Trujillo. It wasn´t until we got to our hotel that I realised our camera, my phone and wallet had been stolen. Its typical as it was the first time I have managed to get a decent nights kip on a bus! To make matters worse it was Hannahs birthday. I dont think spending the day trying to communicate with the Peruvian police to get a report was quite what she had in mind. In the end it took approximatley 6 officers and the whole day to get our half-page report. The chocolate cake we had for lunch was a bit of consellation...

Purchasing a new camera presented its own challanges, eventually after the most stressfull shopping experiance ever we managed to get a fairly decent one. God I miss argos!

Heading South from Trujillo it was time to join the so-called ´gringo´ trail. First stop Paracas, a few hours South of Lima. From Paracas we visited the Isla Ballastas (the poor mans Galapagas) on a speedboat tour. We saw loads of bird and marine life, Peruvian Pelicans, Penguins, Sea lions, Peruvian Boobies (believe it or not this is a type of bird!) Gannets, Inca-somethings and loads of other feathered creatures. We also saw a giant cactus that had had been etched into the sand during the olden times - a bit random.

Another few hours south, Huacachina, the dessert oasis. A bizzare lake in the middle of the sand dunes. We headed up into the dunes in a 4wd buggy. Racing up and down soome pretty steep sand dunes was so crazy it made the taxi drivers in Lima seem sane! We stopped at the top of some dunes to try sandboarding. This follows the same principles as snowboarding, but the snow is replaced with sand (obviously). The first few dunes we lied on our fronts instead of standing up, getting some serious speed up. The 5th or 6th dune we got to was best described as ridiculus, bloody steep and very high. There was no way me or hannah would be going down this one. Some foolhardy english girl went for it and survived, being the only bloke in the group I was pretty much forced into doing it! Reluctantly, I positioned myself at the top of the dune and before I knew it I was off, plummeting face first, towards certain death. Hannah also conquered this mighty dune, I think she enjoyed it. The next few dunes I tried standing up and a few face plants later started to get the hang of it.

Imagine the scenario, you are a chef in a pizza restaurant, an order comes through for a Hawian Pizza. Fair enough you think, I have made Hawians many times before... but when you look in the cupboards you tradjically discover you have no pineapple. What do you do? Do you explain to the customer that the Hawain is off the menu? Or, do you replace the pineapple with tinned peaches and hope the customer does not notice? Our chef went for the later, Hannah will definatley confirm that Ham, Peaches and Pizza does not work. Hannahs face when she took her first bite of this pizza has to be one of the highlights of the trip so far!!

On our 3rd day in Huacachina we met up with Miguel, a friend of ours from uni. Randomly he was at the same dessert oasis as us, at the same time. After a few cheeky sherberts together, he went off sandboarding. When he returned his little finger was sellotaped to the next and at a slightly odd angle - he had dislocated it after crashing his sandboard! A few medicinal beers later and we had to leave to catch the night bus to Arequipa.

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