Lima-Pisco-Paracas-Nazca

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Soooooooo.....from where we left off

On Sunday, James and I were picked up from the hostel by our tour leader and met up with part of the group at the plush hotel. After intros, Oscar (tour manager) took us all downtown into lima on the collectivos and we toured around the city centre. It was absolutely nuts, cause there was a religious procession going on, which can bring crowds to the downtown core (a few blocks) up to 100,000 people. Needless to say we were clutching on the bags pretty good, and oscar even gave the ppl at the back of the line a good warning about watching your things/back. Headed out for dinner that night, got a good sleep with a room that actually had a locking window. We were lucky another guy on our tour who stayed at the first place with us didn´t have a locking window and got robbed within 5 min of being at the hostel. Not impressed.

On Monday we all stuck to Miraflores the much safer part of Lima, went to a market, to a lookout with sculptures, and to a grocery store to get some snacks for the evening bus to Pisco.

Tuesday, we left Pisco and headed for Paracas about 15 minutes away, both towns barely exist any more because of the 7.2 mag earthquake that hit last year. In paracas we headed out by boat to the balesta islands to see a candelabra carved in stone, and sea lion!bird colonies. Needless to say the amount of birds there were, I got pooed on twice. I must be quite lucky.....When we got back we had some lunch, and James and the guys went and played a good match of soccer with some local guys.....needless to say the local guys won. Shocker. heading out that evening we headed for nazca. Arriving in around 10 we had our dinner and went to bed, dinner is a late event in SA.

Today James and I went on a flight of the Nazca lines, in a little 6 seater plane. In order for both sides of the plane to get pictures the pilot thought it would be a good idea to do super figure 8s. lovely....as we were flying back, i became a little ill, which resulted in a baggy being used and some french ppl feeling sorry for me. They handed me wetnaps which I thought was quite considerate, and then i humoured them with a merci beaucoup. Trusty french all the way. We got back to the hotel, feeling rotten, both of us, and headed for the courtyard pool at the hotel. there we lounged and swam for a few hours, then headed out on a tour of the Nazca aqueducts. Nazca is very similar to egypt from what i hear, with the valley being green and the rest desert. Tongiht heading off to Arequipa on a 10 hour night bus.
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will post again soon, love to all,
erin and james

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