South America - Peru: Arequipa, Nazca, Huacachina, Paracas, Lima, Trujillo & Huanchaco

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Arequipa is quite similar to Cusco with a huge plaza and fountain, an abundance of market stalls and souvenir shops and some lovely cafes with delicious crepes and salads for lunch. Jo was heading to Chile from Arequipa while i was continuing my travels in Peru so we had a final night out together which started with giant jenga in the hostel, Jo and i then staggered to the Chinese for food but we were pretty drunk having not eaten earlier and the food couldn´t save Jo so i had to put her to bed while i went out and partied for our last night together (!) with some of the others from our hostel at Deja Vu club in town.

I waved Jo off the next day and was really sad to say goodbye as we´d spent 2 weeks travelling together and out of all the people i´ve met on route i´ve found a true friend in Jo and I can´t wait to go and visit her in New Zealand and hope that she comes to England some time soon.

After Jo left I spent most of the day in the garden trying to piece the night together with the others while baking in the sun. One of the members of staff had brought her dog and 2 adorable puppies in with her, they were running around us lapping up the attention and were sooooooo cute, we spent so long with them and even the boys couldn´t take their eyes off them!

Whilst in Arequipa i went to a local Peruvian school for underpriveleged children. The school looked like it was on a building site the surrounding village was really poor and the school relies greatly on funding. A class of 6 years olds were waiting outside to greet me and ran up and hugged me before i´d even managed to get out of the taxi they were so sweet. No one at the school could speak English so it was a bit of a challenging day! The teacher asked the children questions about the history of Peru and surrounding mountains and town etc and the children answered the questions and told me all about it.

I was taken on a tour around the school by the Head Teacher who was lovely. The pupils ranged from 5-13 years old and most of them only have 1 parent or alcoholic parents and they are from extremely poor families. The children in each classroom welcomed me and asked me questions, most of the younger ones asked me the same questions about my favourite colour, how old i was, if i was married (!) etc but when i was speaking with the 11-13 year olds we were able to have more of a conversation and they were really interested in finding out about other countries i´d been to especially Japan.

I spent some time with the class of 5 year olds last and they gave me pictures they had drawn. They were all so lovely and friendly and came outside to wave me off, they had such huge smiles on their faces considering their circumstances and were so pleased to have people visit them.

I also went to the Museo Santuarios Andinos where you can see Juanita The Ice Princess who is a frozen mummy! Over 500 years ago, only beautiful, perfect children were chosen to be sacrificed to the gods and Juanita was one of them. We watched a dvd about the team who discovered Juanita and had a guided tour of the museum which explained the ritual of the sacrifice and how Juanita, who was 14 years old, had to climb 6,288 metres to the top of the Ampato volcano in shoes made out of lama skin and plants, dealing with the altitude and no mountaineering equipment where she was then given a potent drink to put her to sleep before being struck over the head with a blunt object to kill her! She was buried in the mountain with various objects symbolising different things for example, her umbilical cord, as the Incas believed it helped to cure people when they were ill and always kept it after a baby was born and cut a bit off and put it in a child´s food to help them recover.

My next stop in Peru was Nazca. The hostel only sold tickets for the posh "Cruz del Sur" overnight bus which is supposed to be the best one to take in Peru. It was still only GBP 16.00 for a 10 hour journey which is pretty cheap and i was excited to see how different it was to the local buses and other companies i had been using.......i didn´t sleep all night it was amazing!!!! There was like an airhostess lady, plane food, we each had pillows and blankets and even played a round of bingo - Gran you would have loved it!! The dvds were in English and it was very funny to read the Spanish subtitles compared to what was being said as at one point the subtitle read "Que te pasa?" which means "What is wrong with you?" but what they actually said in English was "Who p1ssed in your porridge?" ha ha!!!

I arrived at 6am in the dismall streets of Nazca and sat in the plaza waiting for the town to come alive at 8am wishing Jo was there to keep me company! Once the workers came out to open their cafes and clean the streets and the sun shone, the town began to look friendlier!

I sat in the plaza reading my book and an 18 year old Peruvian shoe shiner boy came over and was chatting to me. He asked if i was going to the Museo Antonini which i said i had planned to and he said that he would take me. He was very sweet and blagged his way into the museum as my guide and spent about an hour taking me around the museum and explaining what all the pictures were about and what the artifacts were used for so i think my Spanish vocabulary in excavation sites and ceramics has improved now!

Next, Luis, the Peruvian shoe shiner boy, took me to the underground Cantallo Aqueducts which are still used to irrigate the surrounding fields. They are pretty impressive spiralling stone ventanas (windows) which you can walk around and down into. I was just thinking what a lovely day i was having spending time with a local and improving my Spanish when i discovered that he had an alteria motive....we walked down into one of the spiral wells and once we were out of sight he tried to kiss me!!! I said no and explained that i was a decade older, his girlfriend was at home waiting for him and i didnt want to but he was rather persistent so i got my camera out and turned round trying to take pictures of us to distract him! These South Americans do try their luck with the tourists, some of them must succeed as they do keep pestering!

That evening i went to the planaterium where they give lectures every evening about the lines as i didn´t really know the history so wanted to find out a bit more before my flight the following morning. It is basically a network of over 800 lines, some are animal and plant drawings and a German mathematician, Maria Reiche, has been researching them for many years and thinks there is a direct connection with the constellations. We went outside afterwards where we were shown a few visible constellations and looked at a few stars and saw the moon up close through a telescope which was pretty cool.

All flights over the lines were delayed the next morning as it was really overcast so the airport was full of people waiting. At one point we were all sat sleepily in our chairs when an alarm sounded and we had a practice drill in case of an earthquake as nearly a year ago, on the 15 August, there was an earthquake in the nearby town of Pisco.

The weather cleared up and the planes started to take off. I was in a plane with a Spanish guy who sat in the front and an American, Mike, who was sat in the back with me and i had to apologise to him for my constant squealing as it was such a weird sensation flying in the tiny plane and the pilot took us over the lines, dipped the plane to the side so that my window was the underneath of the plane, took his hands off the controls and pointed out the lines not looking where he was going - I was very grateful to land safely!

Mike and i were heading in the same direction so i had a new travel buddy as we set off for Huacachina, a tiny place of 200 people surrounded by towering sand dunes.

We went sandboarding the next day which was a completely different experience to when i went in Chile. We were picked up in a dune buggie and strapped in with seat belts which went over our heads like you have on rollercoasters. I was just wondering why they were taking these precautions when we suddenly sped off up the dunes, got to the top and went vertically down the other side bouncing out of our seats as we went! We stopped on route for a view of the city which was amazing set amongst the dunes before setting off on our sandboards. In Chile we practiced on the same dune so it was easier to improve but here, we weren´t given any instructions and set off down several different height dunes all falling off the boards as we went! We were so hot and sweaty the sand was sticking to us, we had pockets and shoes full of it! At one point i fell over and was sandboarding upside down with the board still attached to my feet which you couldn´t of done if you´d tried!

Mike and i had decided to get a bus to Lima the next day, he was going to stay there for a couple of days and i was going to get a bus straight to Mancora for the 16th where a new Point Hostel was opening and i was meeting up with several people from the Point hostel in Arequipa for a beach party, but unfortunately the road was going to be closed the next day in memory of the earthquake disaster which was a very odd thing to do! We tried to hop on a bus that evening instead to beat the road block but discovered everyone else had the same idea and the queue for the bus was 2 hours long and full of locals.

We trekked around with our backpacks on trying to work out what to do and decided food and wine would help make the decision! We met a lovely family who owned the restaurant and Tio (Uncle) who was a lovely old wise man, helped us out with where to go next. We took a taxi to Paracas which is known as "the poor man´s Galapagos Islands" and were charged GBP 20.00 for a 45 minute journey in a taxi which was rather extortionate!

We took a trip around the Islas Ballestas and our multilingual guide, Hubert, who was lovely said we´d been ripped off in the taxi the night before as everyone was trying to cash in on the earthquake disaster and he was sorry we had met those people - bless! I have no idea what the Galapagos are like but the Islas Ballestas were very smelly as there are 6 or 7 types of birds and the islands are covered in bird poo or "guano". We were told to wear hats on the tour as it is not uncommon to be directly hit by guano from birds flying overhead and a couple of people did which was quite funny!

Apparently 200 people come to the islands every 4 years to clean them and they used to get flees and tics when they were not protected well enough from it, not a nice job! It was coming up to the fourth year which is why it was extra smelly for us! We saw penguins, boobies, pelicans and loads of sea lions which was cool although i understand at the Galapagos you can actually swim with the sea lions and they come right up close to you but i will have to wait for another trip for that one when the bank balance is looking a little healthier!

We were told there were no buses to Pisco that day because of the earthquake but some taxis and collectivos were able to get through so we went to Pisco by collectivo (advice from Hubert which was GBP 0.20 for the journey - a far better price) to find out what was going on. We wanted to see what Pisco was like after the earthquake and also thought it would be a good day to go as there may have been memorial services etc as it was the anniversary but when we got there the police were lined up at the side of the road not letting people through, it was a very small, poor town but it was difficult to tell if it looked the way it did because of the earthquake or just because it wasn´t a very nice place and a lot of the properties were unfinished. Apparently the South Americans can avoid paying tax if the property is not fully finished so there are many 1 storey properties with the second floor not complete or no roofs! It wasn´t great and it didn´t feel safe so we went straight back to Paracas and discovered that they were eventually going to let buses through to Lima later that day so we booked ourselves on and headed for Lima.

Arrived in Lima and found it all very strange. It is really difficult to adjust straight away when you hit the big cities with millions of people, noise, pollution, beeping cars and richer people, worlds away from the poor village of Pisco we had just come from but in reality only 3 hours.

It was too late for me to get a bus to the beach party so i changed my plan and decided to go to a couple of towns on the way up to Mancora and arrive there later. I left Mike and got an overnight bus to Trujillo and sat next to a lovely Ecuadorian girl who said i was missing out if i didn´t go to Ecuador!

Stayed at the "Chan Chan" hostel - Chris tried to send you a photo but it wouldn´t attach so putting it on my blog for you! Also see you have a cafe in town as well (check out the photo!), you could have told me so i could get a discount ;o)

Woke up the next morning to find there was no electricity or water. Apparently there are problems with the electricity board and it sometimes goes off at weekends and has been off for 5 consecutive days before! I managed to wash my hair with the dregs of warm water left in the tank and was thankful i didn´t have to deal with a 5 day blackout.

I walked through the town and met lots of locals including an annoying Peruvian guide who grabbed my hand and declared he was my boyfriend, tried to kiss me and wanted to take me to Huaca de la Luna where i was going. I was getting a little fed up of pushy guides so was very firm with him and told him to leave me alone and set off on my own. I had an English guided tour of the 1500 year old Moche pyramids - Las Huacas del Sol y de la Luna, caught the bus to Huanchaco, a nearby fishing village and surfers paradise which is famous for its caballito boats which are shaped like canoes, then went back to the restaurant attached to my hostel where i met an Irish couple who were waiting for a bus and had just come from Ecuador. I said that i had wanted to go to Ecuador but wasn´t sure if i had time with only 2 weeks left of my trip but they said that it would not be a problem and told me exactly how long it would take to travel there, bus companies to use and the best places to go with the time i had so very excitedly i changed my plan and set off for Ecuador the very next day.

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