Sandboarding and the Capital City

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A Desert Oasis

Amazingly we made it out of Bolivia in one piece. Public transportation has been shady at times in Peru, but Bolivia is a whole differrent world.
We caught a 24hr bus ride a couple days ago from La Paz, Bolivia to Huacachina, Peru. AFTER getting out of Bolivia we had a very pleasant ride up through the desert of western Peru, more specifically to the oasis town found on the back of the Peruvian 50 sole bill, Huacachina.
The town is made up solely of backpackers looking for some sandboarding and working on their tan. We figured it would be a perfect detour for us before heading up to the capital of Lima.
The sandboarding is one of the cooler things any of us had ever done. It started with hopping in a 9 person dune buggy with a loco Peruvian driver. After raging through the dunes for about half an hour we stopped at the top of one where our driver soaked our boards in lube. After riding the dunes like a snowboard for a while we decided it was much more fun to just jump on the boards headfirst and see how fast we could go, which turned out to be very fast. Some of the dunes were crazy steep (refer to the pics).
On Friday afternoon we headed up to Lima to stay for a night before catching our flight to Buenos Aires. What all four of us failed to realize however was that instead of our flight leaving at 2:30pm, it had already left at 2:30am. Military time is a real bitch. Anyways, we ended up being able to spend all day today (Saturday) hanging out in Lima and will be catching our plane at 2:30am Sunday morning. Cost us $40 to reschedule, but our day in Lima was well worth it.
So the next blogs will be flowing from steak loving city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Til'then.


............only 12 more days in South America.

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Photos

Huacachina
A true oasis.

Flipside
Galen doin a little sand gymnastics.

Head first
If you look very closely you can see four of us at the top, David cruisin' down and Robin at the bottom. Gives an idea of how HUGE these dunes were. Galen and I bombed this one head first.

Recooperatin
Our hostal pool and bar. Great place to find some balance.

Paracas
Small town with a view of Islas Ballestas that we saw from the bus on the ride north to Lima.

Miraflores
View from the bluffs of the Miraflores area of Lima. We splurged for some world renowned ceviche at the restaurant on the pier.

Miraflores en la noche.
Lima, Peru

Plaza de Armas
Lima, Peru

Couples Hour
The Plaza is oh so romantico. Sooo many couples.

Comments

[Dana]

Peru Earthquake
Just read there was 7.9 earthquake in Lima, are you okay??? It looks like thats where you are (of course), so hopefully you and all of your companions are alright! Let us know! By the way, it looks like youre having fun, Jo! Dana