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Published: August 7th 2007
Church of San Francisco in Lima
This church dates back to Spanish occupation and is home to the catacombs where over 70,000 people were buried.Lima
We arrived in Lima, Peru on the 9th of April. We stayed in Miraflores (near the coast) for a few days and checked out some of the museums in town. The places we visited included a couple of churches that date back to the 16th Century, one that had tens of thousands of people buried underneath in Catacombs. The bodies have been excavated over the last two centuries and the bones have been laid out for the tourists - there was a space for femurs, a space for skulls etc.
From Lima we visited the ruins known as Pachacamac on the coast. This was a pre-Inca site extending over many hectares however when the Inca´s came along they decided to expand on it and build a temple to the sun. We were both amazed by the size and quality of the site.
Huacachina
Huancachina is an oasis town, nestled between sand dunes 4 kilometres from the regional centre of Ica. The town is built solely to serve tourists looking for adventures on the dunes, inlcuding sandboarding and dune buggying. We went on a mad ride across the dunes for two hours where we got to try
our hand at sandboarding (take a look at Kirsty going down head first - cheating!). The driver was a madman - Kirsty had her eyes shut for two hours as the driver would go over the tops of dunes at 100km/h. Scariest were the drops off the high dunes... we would approach a peak not knowing what was on the other side, only to find out that it was a 15 metre, almost vertical drop.
When we went out to the restaurant in Huacachina we stumbled upon another place paying homage to Bob Marley.
The museum at Ica had some interesting artifacts including deformed skulls and a mummified Macaw!
Nazca
If it wasn´t for the lines, Nazca would be the most boring town on the planet. We took a half hour flight over the famous Nazca lines in a small Cessna plane, which consisted of the pilot banking steeply to each side and sticking out a pointed finger while yelling "monkey, monkey... left hand side Monkey!" The site includes numerous sketches of animals and geometric lines and shapes that go for kilometres in every direction and over mountain ranges. The lines and shapes across the desert
Huacachina
Township of Haucachina. It took Chris half an hour to climb the dune to take the photo. We stayed in the place with the big pool of course. Overnight Chris suddenly developed into a tightarse after doing some crude calculations to try and figure out how much we were spending. As a result of his unneccessary panic, we took the ´cheaper' bus for the 10 hour ride to Arequipa. This meant our knees were under our chins and we couldn´t get any sleep. From this moment on we vowed to pay the extra few dollars and get the first class service on the long journeys.
Arequipa
Arequipa (3235m asl) is a city south of Lima that is surrounded by volcanoes and canyons. Juanita, 'the Ice Princess' was found nearby- a young girl who was sacrificed to the mountain gods during the Incan period, along with a few other children. We went to visit the museum where Juanita now lives. She wasn´t there, but another sacrifice (still frozen)was on display which was really amazing to see.
From Arequipa we took a two day trip to Canyon Del Colca - the second deepest canyon in the world at over 3000m deep. It is about twice the depth of the Grand Canyon. From there we did some Condor spotting and a couple of hikes that took in
some pre-Inca tombs. It was on this trip that we got to experience altitude sickness for the first time. The bus trip went over one mountain pass at 4,800m. To put this into perspective, Mt Buller is 1800m. We both had headaches and felt sick. The only good thing is we are now hopefully 'acclimatised'and we wont have to go through the same thing when we get to Cusco. Chris tried chewing Coca Leaves (only legal in Peru and Bolivia) which was supposed to help. The only thing it really did was make the mouth numb.
Off to Cusco tonight, on a nice expensive bus...
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luke
non-member comment
its alright for some ehh :P
hope you keep enjoying it and were looking forward to seeing you when you come over p.s. nice hat