The best weekend of my life!

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Wow, what a weekend! I can honestly say that I have just had one of the best weekends of my life! This weekend we went on our trip to the coast and it was great!
The weekend started off well with a talent show at the prison which was really good fun. I had never been in a prison before so I was a bit nervous, but there were no problems at all. There was quite a large group of us that went, about 15 or so, mostly volunteers but some staff as well, and we had to go through three check points and had our arms stamped twice in order to get in. When we were inside the prison, the atmospphere was really relaxed, and nearly all the women were sitting around doing crafts, mostly sewing mantas which are the big cloths they use to carry their children on their backs. I know that the women also do classes in the prison (Tori teaches them cooking and English) and they can get their sentences shortened by taking part in such classes. All the women were really friendly (they are seperated from the men and have their own open courtyard to sit out in) and I immediately felt welcome there.
Tori and Marisol (our placement adminstrator) have been planning the talent show for a few weeks and it went really well. Unfortunately quite a lot of the volunteers were ill, and so some of the talents that had been planned couldn't be shown, but some of the women got up and danced and sang, all the volunteers danced to the hokey cokey (bizarrely called the hokey pokey in the US) and one of the doormen and his friend did some breakdancing. The women enjoyed it so much that they asked to have a talent show every week. Marisol was really pleased to see the women get so involved and have so much fun. I think the consensus is that once a week might be too much but we may do one every fortnight.
After lunch and a busy hour packing up our things, we got into our coach and left for the coast. We had a 7 hour drive and arrived at our hotel at about half nine at night. But when we got there we were amazed! Our rooms looked out onto a gorgeous pool and a couple of the guys bravely jumped right in. However it wasn't until the next morning that we saw how truly beautiful a setting it was. Directly outside the back gate of our hotel was an oasis and we were surrounded on every side by massive sand dunes. Apparently the dunes are some of the largest in the world, and the oasis is the only remaining natural oasis in Peru, and I think in all of South America. It was absolutley beautiful.
We had breakfast sitting outside on the veranda and then got in some dune buggies to be taken up into the dunes. The ride was amazing and I could have happily spent all morning (and probably all day) riding around. The drivers went pretty fast over some of the dunes and it was like a fairground ride taken to the extreme! However, our morning was to get even better as we stopped amongst the dunes to go sandboarding. I was pretty scared at the thought (I mean can any of you really imagine me sand boarding, or any kind of boarding for that matter?!) but lying on my stomach flying down the dunes was one of the most fun and exhilerating experiences of my life! Walking back up the dune wasn't quite as much fun, in fact it was really really hard work, but it was worth it to be able to go back down again! We were taken to some more dunes, each one longer and steeper than the last, and I think we did about 7 or 8 runs all together. It was so much fun, I can't even begin to tell you! It was pretty exhausting and we were covered in sand but it was the best start to the weekend. That morning alone made it worth the $200 we paid, and it was hard to believe that we had so much more to look forward to!
We went back to the hotel for a couple of hours, swam in the pool, looked around the beautiful oasis and the many souvenir stands and had a lovely lunch, before we packed up and headed back onto the bus. The afternoon was spent doing a short city tour and a visit to two wineries where we sampled the local wine and peru's national drink Pisco. The wine was really sweet, kinda like a dessert wine, and the Pisco was really strong, but it was interesting to see how they were made. The first winery we went to used traditional techniques to make their wine and also had a museum showing some of the goods that had been traded for wine in the past. There was lots of really random stuff such as stuffed animals, skulls, guns, knives and chests. The second one we visited used more modern techniques and made other products beside the wine and pisco like cream liquor, marmalades, fruit juices and honey. I bought some really delicious marmalades, fig and mango flavour, and I can't wait to get them home to eat them.
We then travelled to nazca where we were again taken to a surprisingly nice hotel (surprising because of the price we paid for them) but unfortunately we had a very disappointing dinner at what had looked like a very nice restaurant. It seems that restaurants here are not really able to cater for vegetarians and the pasta dishes we had asked for without meat came with bits of ham in. Katie sent hers back only for it to return with some but not all of the meat picked out. Me and Tori just decided to put up with ours and pick the meat out, however my 'tomato' suace tasted more like Daddies sauce and was pretty disgusting!
But the next morning we had the trip to the Nazca lines to look forward so that was pretty exciting. When we got to where we would fly from there was a lot of waiting, as many different airlines were trying to offer flights at the same time, and unfortuantely the ride made me feel really sick, but I was glad to have finally seen the nazca lines. I didn't think that I would be able to see them because they are really close to where the centre of the earthquake hit, so was very pleased that I was able to after all. The lines are pretty amazing- they're big drawings in the sand, and no one knows how or when they were put there - and they were really interesting to see.
We went back to Nazca town for lunch, this time much nicer, and then got back onto the bus to drive to Paracas where we were to spend our last night. It is our tour guide, Pancho's birthday this week so we took him out to dinner that night and ate at a really nice seafood restaurant right on the seafront. It was really nice to be back by the sea and our hotel was once again perfect. Well apart from the lack of hot water showers, but we've pretty much got used to that now! The next morning we got into a boat and were taken out to the Ballestas Islands, which have been nicknamed "The Galapagos of Peru", where we saw penguins, sea lions and loads of birds, some of which are apparently pretty rare. And we saw an absolutely massive group of birds which apparently produce the best fertiliser in the world, which incidentally smelt really awful!
During the boat ride back one of the girls, Natalija, started complaining of needing to go to the toilet and of being in a lot of pain. She was put straight into a taxi off the boat and was taken to the hospital in Pisco by Pancho. Unfortunately Natalija has made rather a pain of herself since being here and we were running out of patience with her. She had had a big tantrum on friday night and went to sleep in the bus (Pancho had to go to persuade her to come back to one of the rooms), and again on saturday morning when she decided that no one liked her and that she wanted to go home. As far as I'm aware both of these hissy fits were brought on with no interference from anyone else, and she held us up on saturday for, as far as we could see, no good reason! So unfortunately we had little sympathy for her by monday morning and were just fed up of her ruining our plans! Because of this we had to leave early, without having lunch, and had to wait for her and Pancho in Pisco for about half an hour. This led to a very grumpy group who were absolutley starving by the time we stopped for something to eat! (By the way Natalija has just been to the hospital again and apparently has nothing serious wrong with her, apart from some slight inflammation, so I'm not feeling too guilty for my lack of sympathy, luckily!)
The bus journey back from Pisco was pretty awful, with lots of people feeling ill. We climbed from sea level to pretty high in the mountains during the 7 hour drive and I think that, combined with the poor diet we had been keeping, the possibly-dodgy motorway cafe we ate in, and the amount we had put our bodies through that weekend, led to us all feeling pretty grotty! I felt sick the entire journey back and was so excited to see the lights of Ayacucho appear before us!
So all in all I had a brilliant weekend! There were a couple of hiccups but they by no means ruined the trip for me and I'm so glad that I decided to go! I can't believe how much we fitted inot one weekend, or the fact that it only cost us $200 for the entire trip! It was really pretty amazing! Pancho appears to be the best tour guide in the world and I'm gonna talk to him about my trip at the end. If he can fit so much amazing stuff into one weekend, imagine the trip I can have for two weeks!
Anyway thats all I have to say for now. This morning it was back to work and I'm absolutely exhausted still so this afternoon had been really lazy and I'm sure this evening will be too. We have another guest speaker tomorrow afternoon so I'm looking forward to that, and will hopefully be visiting the prison on friday to take the babies there out for the morning. Will write more when I have more interesting things to say! Take care everyone! xx

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