Advertisement
Published: September 1st 2006
Edit Blog Post
we stopped on the way at a cool place with a pool, wish actually we could have stayed there the last night as it seemed nicer than Nasca!!!! we had lunch here before we headed out to go sandboarding and sand buggying!!! Caz again decided to stay at the hostel place by the pool as she still wasn´t feeling great. Nic and Gabby came with us sand buggying but decided not to sandboard. the sand buggying was really cool, felt at time like you were on a rollercoaster cos of the way the guy was driving over the dunes, some of them we came over the top and found there was a really unexpected dip on the other side like a cliff edge!!! it must be the perfect blokes job to be the driver, our guy seemed to be loving racing through the edge of the town revving the engine, then throwing the buggy round on the dunes. we stopped at two of the dunes so we could board down them. the guy waxed up our boards then left us to it and we had to figure out ourselves how we were supposed to do it!!!! we had expected to have
at least some tutition!!! but to be honest we did go down at least half the first one on our bums anyway. we were actually doin well but as your goin so fast you kinda almost scare yourself so wipe yourself out by sitting down, at least thats better than landing face first in the sand!!! the sand was actually really hot, cos of that we were glad not to be wearing shorts, but the sand really did get everywhere!!! the first dune we stopped at was quite little, then we drove to a much bigger one, which actually turned out to be not quite so good in some ways as it wasn´t very steep on the second part so you ended up going really slowly or just getting stuck! we did this second run twice before the guy strapped the boards back into the truck. we were a bit gutted as we all wanted to do more as it was so much fun!!! at least gabby got some cool pictures on tims camera which when he puts on the internet we´ll steal to show you! we did more driving along the dunes, saw a oasis then headed back! we
all had to have showers to get the sand out from everywhere!! we made some quite impressive piles when we tipped out our boots! me and heath obviously weren´t very effective at washing as we did discover sand in our ears when on the bus later!!! we didn´t have long at the place before we had to leave to head to pisco. on the way we stopped at a pisco vineyard to do some pisco tasting. they didn´t have an english guide so we had a spanish one and matt (our tour leader) was suppposed to translate for us. we think actually he was just trying to remember it from previous times he´d been as he definately wasn´t translating what the girl was saying, caz who can actually speak spanish found it really amusing listening to what he was saying knowing what she´d said! there was one part which we all understood (watching too much tv so we all knew what at night was) and he made no mention of it at all!! we were taken on a tour of the vineyard and the process of making it was explained to us before we did the tasting. still not sure
loads of birds that all flew over us on the way back to the port
this is apparently not what always happens, but the birds were literally everywhere! about pisco, even less so now we know that one of the fractions that comes off in the middle is used as a disinfectant!!! pisco is a white brandy liquor, tastes kinda like tequilla. the tasters they gave us got gradually stronger and we think tasted worse, till the last thing they gave us we a kinda baileys thing but made with pisco, that was definately strange but maybe more drinkable than the strong pisco itself. some people in the group bought bottles to take home before we left to head into pisco itself.
pisco we think is really not nice at all!!!! we were advised by matt to eat at the hotel as the food is quite good there and it wasn´t the safest place to walk round!!! we did go to the internet place and its not a good sign when all the shops have the shutters down the whole time and you have to ask to be let in. a lot of the hotels recently have been like that as well where you have to ring the bell and they ask who you are before letting you in! the food in the hotel was actually really
nice though and 6 of us went for the seafood paella which serves two poeple and tasted really good, had every type of seafood in it as well!!!!
the next morning we managed to tip another impressive amount of sand out of our boots left over from the sand boarding, we we heading to the ballestas islands before going onto lima. the islands are known as the poor mans gallapagos islands. we got to the place where we would set off from but we couldn´t go as the whole port had been closed due to the bad weather conditons - was really foggy. the guy couldn´t tell us when it would be opened so it was just a case of waiting till it opened. the guy phoned matt so he didn´t book our bus to lima and we waited! was quite a while before the port was opened, we all climbed onto a boat which had two rows of two seats. we were at the back of the boat, which was good till about 5 mins after we left, the captain came back and was messing round with one of the engines which wasn´t working. the other boat which
had set off at the same time as us came alongside and the captain of that boat was shouting over get it out of the water and turn it off turn it off! think we would have liked it better if caz hadn´t translated that for us!!! anyway after playing round for a while he seemed to fix it and we set off. on the first peninsular we go to there is a giant candilarbra which has been dug into the sand, it was like the nasca lines in that they dont really know who did it or why. they know how deep it is and how fast the sand is eroded but they dont know how deep it was to start with and so how long its been there.
we got out to the islands which have actually turned completely white due to all the bird poo. they actually harvest this every five years and sell it as a fertiliser!!! the islands did stink though, which is not that nice!!! we saw loads of birds pelicans, penguins, cormorants, boobies, seagulls. the guy seemed quite excited by the amount of gulls but it was just like home!!! we also saw
sealions basking on the rocks, then we actually saw two males fighting just before we left to come back. the wind was really strong on the way back and we were freezing!!!! have got a photo of kim where she´s almost completly sealed up her ski jacket round her head so there is just the tinyest bit still showing!
we went back to the hotel, grabbed a quick lunch and got on the bus to lima!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.053s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0316s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb