Week 1: Peru

I've now arrived in South America, first stop Lima, Peru. My flight got in quite late on the first day (on time, just late at night) so didn't get to my hotel until around 1am, luckily had already pre-arranged a transfer from the airport and this took me to my hostel 'Gemina'. On arrival the front of the hostel was all boarded up and look pretty interesting to say the least....actually turned out to be really nice inside though. I was on my own for the first day in Lima so arranged a tour of the city (soon found out there is not much to see!). After this I met up with my group and tour leader Rudy, everyone is lovely and most people are also going all the way to Rio so should be good fun over the next 2 1/2 months!

Yesterday (day 2) we headed onto Pisco and stayed in a small town called Ica. My roomate, Helen (who is lovely), and I decided to go out and investigate and went for a walk along the beach to watch the sunset - Amazing!! However, as we headed back to our hostel nearly got attacked by a local dog for walking past him as he was sleeping...fun! This morning we then had to be up at 8am to go on a boat ride to the Ballestas Islands, this was a 2 hour round trip where we saw penguins, sea lions, pelicans and loads of other birds. There was the possibility of dolphins but unfortunately there were none around as we headed out on the boats.

After that we headed towards Nasca, stopping along the way at a vineyard to taste the locally made Pisco (Peruvian alcohol). Once finished here next stop was dunebuggies and sand-boarding! We got strapped into the buggies, given glasses (to protect your eyes from the sand) and headed off into the desert...SO MUCH FUN! We got thrown over sand dunes for a while and then stopped to take photos and get ready to board down the dunes, pretty much snow boarding on sand but most of the time it was easier to lay on the board than to stand. Once back to the minibus we had a few hours for swimming and lunch, which was pretty nice in amongst the sand dunes!

We were hoping to get to a tower in time to see two of the Nasca Lines, however as we were on our way in the bus a lorry was blocking the road (after tipping over at 7:30pm the previous evening! apparently the driver was alive but injured in hospital!). Once the lorry had been rightened, using another cab to pull it back over, we carried on our journey but by this time it was dark so had to go straight to our next hotel/hostel. Tomorrow night we are off to Arequipa on an overnight bus so should be interesting given the journeys by road we have had so far!

Was hoping to upload a couple of pictures but the internet connection/or my netbook are too slow and its taking too long but will get some up soon.

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