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Published: September 13th 2008
Inside the Plane
It was smaller than a car!(Catherine)
Well, our first few days in Peru didn´t go exactly as planned and included a couple of unscheduled stops - one to a medical clinic in Lima for me to be treated for a viral infection and one to a Police Station in Ica for Matt to report his camera being stolen (along with two month´s worth of photos we hadn´t copied onto disk) on a bus. After stocking up on multi-vitamins and adopting a ´we don´t trust anyone, even that old lady who appears to be very sweet and innocent´attitude, we decided to give the country another chance.
We´d only planned to spend a night in Lima before heading further south, but decided to stay a few days so I could fully recover. We found a lovely homestay with an auntie-like lady called Maria. She treated us like long lost relatives and even kissed us on both cheeks when we arrived! Our room was on the roof and we had a DVD player (Maria brought us a new selection every evening!), a kitchen, a bathroom and an outdoor eating area all to ourselves. I didn´t venture further than the internet cafe and supermarket but Matt made it
to the ´Museo de la Nacion´ where they had some interesting potato displays! Apparently the museum houses the world´s largest display of potatoes and they were proudly on show in all their glorious shapes and sizes. It even had displays of Pringles and Lays crisps - crazy!
From Lima we headed to the tiny oasis village of Huacachina where the main (actually, make that only!) attraction is sandboarding. The village is surrounded by sandunes and you can go on a dune buggy tour where you´re driven over the slopes very quickly (it was like being on a rollercoaster at times!), then you surf down them and are picked up at the bottom by the buggy. The first slope our driver took us to was absolutely massive and I was too scared to go down it - I wanted to start on a baby one and work my way up! After spending a few minutes trying to convince me to go down, our driver eventually told me to get in the buggy and drove me down to the bottom of the slope to meet the others! After hearing how much fun they´d all had, I was determined to try the
The Alien/Snowman
The only line that actually photographed quite well! next slope...no matter how big it was! It was soooo much fun that I even struggled back to the top of the slope with my board to have another go! After that, I was the first one down every dune - even the scary double-slope we did at the end. I did all my surfing lying face down but Matt had a go standing up as well (like snowboarding) - it didn´t look as much fun to me!
Next on our itinerary was Nazca to see the Nazca Lines. We booked a 35-minute flight through our hostel and the next day we were sitting at the back of a tiny six-seater plane. We´d been warned to have a light breakfast as the flights are notoriously bumpy and the pilots perform some very sharp turns to make sure that the people on both sides of the plane get to see the lines close up. It was an interesting journey (and nowhere near as scary as I´d thought it would be) but the lines weren´t as impressive as I´d hoped. They weren´t as clear as I´d expected and nowhere near as big. Sometimes, when the pilot pointed out a particular line,
The Spider
When you zoom in on it, you can actually see what it is! it took ages to spot it. The lines were also really hard to photograph - so many of my pictures just look like a big patch of sand and it´s only when I zoom in I can see what I was actually trying to photograph! Matt bought a new camera in Nazca so he´s back in business - although his photos of the lines were about as successful as mine!
Our next stop is Cuzco where we plan to eat lots of fruit and vegetables, sleep-in and acclimatise before doing the Inca Trail in 10 days time. Why didn´t I book train tickets to Machu Picchu instead?!!!
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Sophie Dyas
non-member comment
Boo!
Oh no, what a bum about getting ill and having your camera stolen. I guess the way that you have to look at it is that at the end of your trip you'll still have 10 months worth of photos left which is a LOT!!! The excitement of the travel blog book will hopefully make up for it! Hope all is going well. Make the most of it, work is bum! x