The tanning time is over :-(

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...and it had only just begun!
Big news in the world of Lizzie and Spud - Mark has arrived! Yay! It is fun to have an addition to the group, and such a welcome one at that (Faye almost peed with excitement before his flight got in yesterday)! Having spent the day wandering around central Lima, we are all travelling to Ayacucho tomorrow on an overnight bus, and from there, who knows?! Heading towards Cusco, ultimately...and anyone who read my last entry can guess how ridiculously happy I am about THAT!
Much has occurred since I last wrote; Faye and I set off from Cusco to Arequipa, which was a minor disappointment as we had been told such wonderful things about it, but in comparison to where we had just been, it was a let down! The monastry was very beautiful, though, and I found it quite moving. Deciding against investing time in the Colca Canyon, which some Israelies later informed us had been a wise decision, we moved on to Nazca. Now, the only reason people go here, we had been told, is for the lines...but what THEY don't know is that you can use the pool in the swish 5 star hotel for only 20 soles, which includes and sandwich, drink and chips! BARGAIN, says I! So our tanning mission began with a lovely chicken sandwich accompaniment, and our pool time was interrupted only by the necessary trip to the Nazca lines - Inca traces in the ground which become animals and fascinating shapes when viewed from a plane. It is a very exciting, if slightly sick making, trip, and even the one and a half hour wait didn't deter me from enjoying myself very much! After Nazca came Huacachina, previously referred to by me to my family as "paradise"! It is a crazy place: a little settlement nestled in sandunes only a few minutes from neighbouring Ica (which has a museum with dried up heads, but apart from that, not a lot to say for itself) where backpackers migrate to indulge in dune buggy rides and sandboarding (Faye and I decided that these sandboards were a lot more painful than the ones in New Zealand!)! It's a really cool place to be, and we continued our trying task of chilling by the pool for a couple of days with no problems...Pisco, our next destination, also passed by us relatively uneventfully, although it did include a trip to Bird Island (it does have a real name, but this one pretty much sums it up) and me getting sunglass marks...perfect...
Now in Lima, the sun has stopped shining for us, but we're still having a good time. Let's see what tomorrow will bring, eh?

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