Saturday, 12 May 2012

White Lines and the Oasis

Nazca was great - mainly for the 35 minutes we flew over it. The town itself is deadsville in the desert, so we took a light aircraft over the famous 'Nazca lines' which made me feel violently ill but was nonetheless very impressive. I've never been in such a small, comedy plane and hopefully never will be again, but to see the glyphs from overhead was really cool. I watched the National Geographic documentary on loop in the "airport" waiting lounge, explaining their supposed origin. But whatevs, the aliens totally did them.




Hopping out of Nazca as quickly as we'd arrived, we took a random night in Huacachina, an oasis in the middle of the desert near to Ica, and on the way to Lima (it's the one on the back of the 50 soles note). I'd planned on going straight to Lima, but so glad I stopped here - it actually turned out to be one of my highlights. I honestly thought oasises (oases?) only existed in cartoons.


We arrived at 'Desert Nights' hostel, and immediately got into a sand buggy for a hilarious white knuckle rollercoaster ride through the desert. We then essentially threw ourselves down 200 foot high hills of sand on a plank of wood. I proclaimed at each drop (they were getting bigger and bigger) that 'I'd sit this one out' but found myself screaming down each one louder and louder. I'm still picking sand out of unmentionable crevices. SO. MUCH. FUN. We watched the most beautiful sunset and partied the night away in the dunes before heading on to our final destination, Lima - capital of Peru and capital of my big fat belly.









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