Onwards and Upwards

Hello hello fom the sunny side of Peru! Since my last blog I have made my way to the desert and north following the sunshine all the way! I can see why the wishy washy conquistadors were happy to stay at the coast allowing the Incas anothe 40 years in teh Andes after they arrived here!

Leaving Arequipa I boarded my first ovenight bus! Wow! It was luxury, almost fully reclinging seats, with food, films, blankets and cushions not so bad after all. UNitl they chuck you out of thebus in some dodgy looking town at 5.30am saying you´ve arrived! As it turned out I had actually arrived at my destination, but as most of you will know I´m not a morning peson and don´t appreciate such a rude awakening!

The place I had arrived was Nasca, it has some pretty pictures made in the desert by some pre-inca civilisation and a cemetary full of mummies, it felt very Indianna Jones! Nsca was a strange town, it seems as though half of it wants to welcome the tourists and the other half doesn´t. The views are around the town are so different fom what i´ve been used to for the past 7 or 8 weeks. It is in the desert after all and is shaddowed by the worlds highest sand dune, cerro blanca.

The Nasca lines were pretty spectacular too, especially since I had to fly in a tiny 4 seater aeroplane to see them!

I left Nasca for a place called Ica and a much more sensible bus journey of 3 hours! There´s not a lot in Ica but I had a hotel with a pool and my own room and bathoom with cable TV, this is luxury! I spent a few days erlaxing Ica, after all this travelling thing is really quite tiring! I visited a pisco bodega and probably not very sensibly afterwards I went sand boarding! Never mind no broken bones!

I also visited "the poor man´s galapogas" or by its official name Islas Ballestas, it was kind of like a boat trip to the bAss rock but with different animals and more sun. I did however get to see Dolphins, I have never seen dolphins either in the wild or in capitivity, they were swimming in the bay as we left in the moring. The island was covered in South American Sea lions, penguins, pelicans and the peruvian boobie (teehee!).

Now I am in Trujillo, north of Lima for a couple days before I head to the beach and then back to Lima for my flight in a weeks time.

Since leaving Arequipa I have felt as though I am in a different country becasue the landscape is so different, th cities are diferent and the people are so different, I didn´t get harrassed half as much by men in the andes! I think that is the only thing that I have lost patience with so far. It is driving me mad now, why would they think it´s ok to shout things at a single female visitor to their country?! Anyway I´m not going to have a rant I´m going to try and control myself so that I dont turn around to some poor unfortunate peruvian and give him a piece of my mind in my best Penicuik slang!