Flapping about

The winner of my little comp was 'Anonymous' for 'These ain't hotsprings'.  I thought anonymous was maybe Krichelle, but she usually signs in and spells devil with a 'b', so my second guess is Nic.  Tell me if I'm wrong.

So I've now arrived in Peru and after a couple of days in Lima have begun the Lima-Cuzco Intrepid tour which has been great so far.  We've got a bit of a mixed bunch, but fun people, our 11hr day on the truck went pretty quickly.  Our designated event manager, Laurence & Sharon his 2IC made us a quiz, I know know at least three different versions of 'shithead' and on our lunch stop we made friends with some local school kids and talked them into helping us flap our dishes dry - anyone who's done an overland trip before knows about the flapping.

Huacachina was our first stop.  It was ace.  We arrived at this little oasis out in the Peruvian desert where we climbed aboard the sand buggies and took off into the desert.  The sand dunes are huge and steep.  The buggies go pretty damn quick and between your screams and giggles you're wondering how much can these things take before they roll.  When you stop it's like being somewhere where there is a rollercoaster nearby; you keep hearing these screams in the distance.

When we stop it was not just to admire the sensational view of giant sand dunes in all directions, but for sandboarding down what looked like the hugest ones they could find.  I'm quite happy to admit that I was feeling nervous wees when looking down.  But then you're on your way; it's really fast, with the wind in your hair and the sand in your eyes, mouth, nose, ears, then you hit the bottom and and jut-jut-jut-jutter over the hard sand.  It was fantastic.  The sandboarding award went to Janet though, who came off, got back on and then came down the slope in an absolute avalanche of sand.  She has an awesome purple hand so show for it.

That night we camped in the desert.  A toasty camp fire, great bbq dinner, full moon, loads of stars and just us and our sleeping bags with a few pisco & colas.  Pisco & colas taste like rum & coke, so a few of those down the hatch and night sand boarding seemed like a great idea.  Ok, so the sand dune wasn't quite as big as the ones in the day - we did have to walk up these ones - but it was a pretty cool thing to do anyway.

Huacachina desert at night

Our next big stop was Naza, for the Nazca lines.  Half a dozen of us went in the little 8-seater plane for the fly-over.  I've never been in a little plane before and it was fun, but I was feeling more than a little queasy by the time it was over.  And it was over pretty quick; we saw alot of the Nazca lines, but it was 'quick look left', 'oh it's gone', still amazing to see though.

On the way out of Nazca we stopped at the Chauchilla cemetary.  Our local guide Juan was one of those funny fellows who still loves cracking the same old jokes and thinks he's funny.  He was good value and the tour of the cemetery was pretty cool.  Lots of old tombs from a previous civilisation just sitting open in the desert - mummies, well preserved for a 1000 years, just laying there amongst the rubble.