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Published: August 23rd 2018
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From the north to the south of Lima the landscape changes from high altitude mountains to desert landscape that is accompanied by the Pacific.
There's small town called Paracas which is a popular spot to stop for a few nights.
It was good to be back in to some warmth and less altitude and we didn't think about coming here until a couple we had met in the Galapagos were staying here and we thought that it would be a good opportunity to catchup with them and see what all the fuss was about.
Paracas has some cool things to see and do. One trip everyone does is to take a boat to visit Los Ballestas islands (or poor mans Galapagos) which consists of thousands of birds including nazca boobies, comorants and terns and it also has a population of penguins and sea lions. All these animals combined on a few small lslands means there isn't much space between neighbours and every little nook and cranny acts as a home. The islands are famous for being covered in Guano (bird poo) which is collected every so often.
It was a fantastic little trip that also included a visit to a
carving which predates thousands of years etched in to the side of the national park hills and measures around 80 meters in length and 40 meters in width and 1.5 meters deep.
That was the morning activity and after a lunch and relaxation we moved on to our afternoon activity which is also a popular and really fun thing to do and that's to visit the Paracas National Park on the outskirts of the town by dune buggy!
These Mad Max style buggies are surprisingly fast and thrilling, we both took turns driving off road in a deserted landscape and visiting various beaches and lookouts and we even had the tour to ourselves!
Paracas was a fun place to go to, not only the activities but also catching up with Thomas and Sarah. It was fun going to their hostel bar for the two evenings for some drinks and even joining in a table tennis tournament of which Anna came extremely close to winning both finals!
It's also a good spot to break up any bus journeys or even relax as the temperature is quite plesant at this time of the year.
We then moved on South
for two hours to a place called Huacachina where an oasis sits amongst sand dunes. The dunes are massive and the thing to do here is sandboarding.
Plenty of places rent boards on an hourly basis and the time flies by as it can take quite some time just to climb the dunes and a fraction of time to go down. Its a lot of fun but also very hot and tiring work constantly going up and down!
There used to be another activity here which was riding in dune buggies as a group but last week two foreigners died. Up until then, there were no regulations on speed and who drives. They have now stopped that activity but unfortunately something like this had to happen before someone realised and took action.
It was only a half day at Huacanchina for us and we enjoyed the sandboarding and desert views. It was a handy place to visit as is was also on route to our next destination of Cusco and Machu Picchu!
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