Desert tales
Trip Start
Apr 11, 2006
1
13
21
Trip End
Ongoing
Nasca, Peru
Monday, May 22, 2006
Had quite a good few days.
The day before yesterday we went to a big nature reserve. First we took a boat trip out to some islands with some really good wildlife. We were in this big tourist group, complete with Japanese with camcorders. It was quite embarrassing actually. But we got to see dolphins and loads and loads of sea lions (the baby ones were so cute). There were also a load of birds, thousands of them. Got absolutely covered in bird poo! Luckily I was wearing my mac. The second part of the tour was in the nature reserve. We were expecting something like a big wildlife park with loads of animals, what we actually got was a desert with a few flamingo´s. The scenery was pretty cool, but the tour itself was pretty dull.
Yesterday we went to a place called Huacachina, ICA. It was incredible, right in the desert, surrounded by huge sand dunes (huge!) with an oasis in the middle. We spent the morning lazing by the hostel pool and in the afternoon we went sand boarding. It was the most fun I have had in a long, long time. We all piled into these huge ´dune buggies´and sent off into the desert. The ride was crazy, very fast and off the sand dune edges (like cliff edges). I have never screamed so much. When we got to our first sand boarding spot we were all handed a board and told they would meet us at the bottom - no instruction on how to use them. For my first ride I took the stylish stance of sitting on the board, whilst the pro´s stood. You go so incredibly fast, and its best to avoid screaming as you end up with a mouth full of sand - yum. We worked our way up to higher and higher slopes.The last one was actually vertical I swear. I fell really badly and rolled most of the way down. Ended up fairly bruised and completely covered in sand. At the end of the trip my pockets were full of sand! Its such a dangerous sport. We stayed up on the dunes to watch the sunset, and then had another crazy drive down.
We are now in a place called Nasca. Tomorrow we will go up in a small plane to see the ´Nazca lines´ - huge drawings in the sand that originate from hundreds of years ago and can only be seen from the sky.
Now I am off to an astronomy lecture.
Hope you are all well.
All my love,
Carin
