Peru Continued...

Day 3

Today, we travelled by taxi (very noisy 1966 Dodge Coronette) for a couple of hours along the coast to the sand dunes around Huacachina Oasis, where much fun was had in sand buggies and sandboarding down the dunes (not for the faint of heart).
We then relaxed by the pool at the Oasis before taxiing to our hotel for the night in Nazca, a little further south down the coast.

Days 4 & 5

We spent the day in Nazca which is a small city, most famous for the nearby Nazca lines. Naturally, we had to take a small plane for an arial view of the lines. While very interesting, we found them a little harder to spot than we thought they would be - maybe we were a little higher off the ground than we thought.
We wandered into the center of the city for supper and spent the rest of the afternoon lazing by the pool and having the odd cervesa. I attempted to update this site but the internet connection was not quite up to it.
Then we had the wonderfull experience of an all-night bus trip down the coast and inland to the City of Arequipa (2nd largest city in Peru, after Lima).

This proved to be a very nice city, lots of character, restaurants and night clubs etc. Some of our group partied pretty hard - not us of course!

Day 6 & 7

In the morning, we were collected from our hotel "Casa de mi Abuela" by a mini-bus and guide for a two-day trip to the Colca Canyon. The bus took up up over the mountains to look for Vicunas, Llamas and such.
At the top of the pass we were at 4910 meters and the air was very thin. Any exertion would get us breathing very hard. Some of our group suffered a bit from altitude sickness - headaches and such, but we survived ok for the most part.
As it was very cold up there, lots of us bought some local sweaters and hats, which will no doubt be very useful on the upcoming Trek in a few days.
We drove along the Colca valley until in turned into the Colca canyon. Both were incredibly spectacular and quite a surprise to us. The Colca canyon is the deepest canyon in the world and is the home to the giant Condors, of which we did see a couple.
Our mini-bus then took us back to Arequipa for the night.




Day 8

Up at 4.30 in the morning to get a bus to the airport for a flight to Cuzco, where we have spent some time walking about the town and getting aclimatized to the altitude. Very pictureque city where we would love to spend some more time.

Tomorrow we start the 4-day Lares Trek. Hopefully we are ready for it.