Wayne:

Off to Nasca, Mandy, Patrick (american), Rachel (american/isreali), Jason (Canada) and myself ready to take on the world after our days of doing nothing in Cusco. We arrived in Nasca at about 8am and by 10 we were climbing into this rickety 5 seater plane ready to fly over what is supposed to be a wonder of the world. (How were these amazingly huge drawings made, especially since they can only be seen from the sky? I think with minatures and rope, but hey.). The flight was really fun, except for the spiraling 5 times, in each direction, around each drawing. It was hard to concentrate on it's grandure while keeping you yoghurt breakfast down. At the end of the flight, about 5 minutes from landing, the pilot asked if we would like him to do something different. Of course I yelled ¨MOST DEFINATELY¨, and the next thing the plane was heading straight towards space and within moments it felt as if the plane had died as we began plummeting to earth. It was AMAZING, my camera and hat which were on my lap started floating infront of my face and by body felt as if it were in limbo. This lasted only about 4 seconds before everything fell back into place. AGAIN, AGAIN.

So Nasca came and went in a morning which made it seem a little surreal. That afternoon we were on another bus heading towards Ica and Haucachina, an Oasis in the desert. Canada (as we called him) was off to Lima to catch his flight home. One of many goodbyes. The rest of us ended up in a great little hostel, with a swimming pool. YAY, a bit of warm weather.

The next day we would sandboard... once again WOW, so much fun, and I actually rocked. The most talented of the whole group that went, if I do say so myself...hehehe. You get into these fantastic 8 seater dune buggies and go for an adrenaline rushed roller coaster ride up and down dunes before stopping at the top of one, giving us the opportunity to fall down it (which is what happened to most of us the first few times). I was still getting sand out of my ears 3 days later. The best part is you don´t have to walk up those dreaded sand piles only to spend 10 seconds rolling down. The buggies started on a baby ¨mountain¨, and by the end of it mandy and I were standing at the top of what seemed to be mount everest. Once again, I ROCKED, and mandy did really well too, concidering her minor fear of falling down what appeared to be a vertical drop millions of meters up in the air.

We spent another day at the Oasis for a bit of R&R, said goodbye to Rachel, and hello to Anat (an Israeli girl Patrick really fancied) and then headed to Pisco and the nature reserve along the Peruvian coastline. We found a great little Hospedaje in Pisco, where Mandy showed off her amazing cooking skills by producing what has to have been an ´A´ class beef stroganoff, even though the meat was bought at some dodgy side steet hole. Very early the next morning we went on a boat ride to some islands where penguins, seals, birds and more birds live, and the islands themselves have beautiful rock formations and caves. I was a little grumpy due to the cold, but it was actually awesome and looking back at the photos a great experience. That Afternoon however turned out to be a little DULL. We went into the Nature reserve on a little tour, expecting to see a bit of greenery, some wild life and maybe something interesting in a museum. Well.... there was sand, rocks, more rocks and I think I saw the man on the moon. NOTHING. It´s as if the government had this big piece of land the didn´t know what to do with, so they decided to call it a national park and trick tourists into coming to see special rocks, shells and NOTHING.

Back to Pisac for the night and then to Arequipa, to see the Condors.

Arequipa is a pretty city, but doesn´t really have much to offer, except for a 2 day trek to see some Condors. We were expecting to see them in one day and leave, but you have to do a 6 hour trip out of the city and with our time restraints (Tim arriving in Cusco in about 5 days), we decided to skip it and head straight to Puno and do some island hopping on Lake Titicaca.