Quickish Update

Hi everyone,

Well it's been a fairly uneventful few days, although we have managed to head down to Nazca and see the famous Nazca Lines. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After getting back from the Inca Trail, the plan was to stay a night in Cusco, and then head to Nasca with SAS again, and then up to Lima. The night before we were due to leave, we went for dinner with our new Canadian friends, and Fran had some dodgy chicken. So the next day she was out for the count, and we had to delay our departure. We tried for the next day once Fran was feeling better. We went to the bus station to catch our overnight bus to Nazca, which was due to leave at 5pm. 530 came and went, and so did 6. The locals were getting pissed off and went to the company's office at the station to get some answers. To cut a long story short, by 730, we were told there was a "problem" with the bus, so that meant another night in Cusco. Ordinarily that's no big deal, but it meant cutting out Nazca and going straight to Lima the next day, and also fronting up yet more cash in the VERY expensive Cusco. But finally we left Cusco, and made our way down to Lima.

Lima is a pretty dull city. There isn't much going for it really. Check out my Lima gallery. Just two pictures.. taken 20 minutes apart. That's how much Lima excited us. BUT, I did manage to buy an underwater camera for the Galapagos, so that's a plus. A Panasonic TS1 for those curious. Awesome little thing.

One of two shots taken of Lima!

Anyway, after a couple of days of not really doing much in Lima, we decided to go to Nazca afterall and look at the famous Lines. I'm so glad we did! An 8 hour bus trip took us to Nazca, and as soon as we got to our hostel, we were booked on a flight to see the Lines in half an hours time. We went to the airport with a Spanish couple from our hostel, and in 20 minutes, we were up in the air! The planes are all Cessna-sized, and anyone who's been in one knows just how bumpy they are. Within 10 minutes I was feeling sick. Thank God the flight is only half an hour. But the planes are all flown by what I'm sure are ex-stunt pilots, as they do almost 90 degree turns over the huge glyphs in the desert, banking horizontally left and right so both sides of the plane get a good view. It's like a MiG doing a 4 gee negative dive, Mav.

The desert

Upside down whale - I'll get around to rotating and cropping at some point

The hummingbird

The spider

My favourite - The Astronaut

The condor

Oh, also in Nazca is the world's largest sand dune - Cerro Blanco. Over 1km of pure sand going vertical, the damn thing dwarfs the mountains around it. Really weird.

Other ruins:

Puquios.. mysterious aqueducts in the desert

more Puquios - Fran gives a sense of scale

Ruins

From Nazca, we made our way back to Lima, but only for two hours to catch a connecting bus to Trujillo. By the way, if anyone is in Peru, try a bus company called Cruz del Sur (literally, Southern Cross). They are the most airline-like bus, with meals, compulsory seat-belts, pre-departure safety video, GPS positioning (where a central command can shut down the bus or even change it's speed!), and get this... Wi-Fi. There's even a computer "room" on board where a laptop is set up for you to email/work from. Eat your heart out National Express.

We didn't stay in Trujillo, but opted to meet Craig and Laila again in the sea-side town of Huanchaco. There's nothing here really, except the beach, and the weather isn't that great most of the time. But we were lucky enough to withness a damn nice sunset. The following pics are the only ones I've taken in Huanchaco so far.

Sunset 1

Sunset 2

Sunset 3 - my fav

So yeah, that's pretty much it! The ruins of Chan Chan are set in between Trujillo and Huanchaco, and they are HUGE. The first time you see them is pretty bizarre, because the main road runs right through it. There is no fanfare shouting "here is Chan Chan"... you suddenly find yourself surrounded by what looks like lumpy sand dunes that stretch for miles, but are in fact ruins of the adobe settlement thst pre-dated the Incas. We're hoping to go and visit the site tomorrow if we have time,

I'll leave it there for now - not much else to report! We start our Galapagos trip on Friday, so we're making our way into Ecuador tomorrow. Peru has been great... more expensive than we'd planned, and we've missed out on lots of places I wish we had time to visit, but I guess that's for next time.

Much love, I'm tired.. gotta go