Peru

We arrived in lima at 5pm and our flight left at 9pm so it gave us a few hours to kill! We headed for one of the main squares and a football themed bar, with life size models of famous football stars!
So we sat down and had a few drinks with Maradona and Ronaldinho.

Em was rather taken by Maradona!

I had a hard time convincing Ronaldinho that he should come to Brighton and Hove Albian and play for free!

After a great meal we headed for the airport. On arrival it made Em´s day by finding english magazines so we proceeded to by quite a few. Adios Peru!

With the Nazca lines we were unsure what to expect, we initially werent going to bother but had met quite a few people who had said it was worth the trip! And it was only 25pounds each for the half hour flight over the lines! After a 2hour bus journey we arrived, and soon realised Nazca had zero to offer apart from the lines so we booked on a flight within the hour. We would be going up in a small 4 seater Cessna plane, which was all good apart from the rather high winds, but me (Rob) assured Emily it would be fine.

However as soon as we got buckled in we were handed sick bags just in case…..I immediately put mine away as I was never going to need it!!!! Doh!

The first 15 mins were fine, we flew over the lines which were ok, much smaller than we imagined and not really that interesting, but the flying was cool…..could have done with some top gun music in the background!!

But then I began to feel sick and after that nothing really mattered apart from landing as soon as possible. After our flight, Emily looked particularly smug at my slightly grey colour I had turned, and we boarded a bus to Lima…We were going to stop at Pisco on the way up to Lima but had managed to move our flights forward and we were really looking forward to heading down to Patagonia!

Not impressed with Arequipa we headed for the coast and a small oasis town called Huacachina (close to Ica). The oasis is known for the sandboarding and sand buggying. Huacachina town surrounds a lagoon and is positioned within huge sand dunes.

It was extremely hot so Rob and I decided it was time to try tan the white pasty bodies (or maybe i should say burn)!

We also found the holy grail of places to eat!!! Somewhere that sold marmite on toast!!! The owner who is british goes back home to get regular supplies, we tried to buy some of her she wouldnt sell. We have missed it so much and needless to say we went back for many rounds.

That night we booked onto a sand buggying and sand boarding tour during sunset. So the next day we joined our group of 8 people and headed to the sand dunes in a metal framed buggy with a tuned up toyota engine which sounded great! Seat belts were supplied but if we were in the UK full body protection would be required!!

As we sped into the dunes we began to realise that our driver was a bit of boy racer, we literally flew over the dunes, and went down/up some near vertical drops! It was wicked!

When we got to the dunes, trying to actually stand up and board down was impossible so everyone resorted to lying face first on the board which was much more fun!

It is incredible how sand got everywhere, and we mean everywhere!!!!

It was a great afternoon, and we slept like logs that evening only to be awoken by everything shaking, and realising that we were in the middle of an earthquake! It only lasted a few seconds and soon went back to sleep!

We also noticed that the Peruvian Lamborghini´s were slightly different to the ones back home!

After so much recommendation from nearly everyone we met we headed off to Arequipa for a couple of days. We arrived very early in the morning, waited until day light to check into a hostel and spent the day checking out the town and its tours.

We decided not to bother with the Canyon tour (to be truthfull we have seen so much beatifull scenery that 2 full days in another coach was not our idea of fun) and spent only one more night before heading off again towards the coast.

Arequipa is formed of many white old buildings and its main attraction apart from the Canyon is the Convent, still in use. The convent is a huge village-like place surrounded by high walls.

The buildings are painted bright colours following an earthquake that demolished much of its original structure.

Peruvian people are not the tallest!!!

Now feeling much better we jumped on the 4hour train journey to the town of Aguas Caliantes (Hot Springs), closest town to Machu Picchu. The train journey itself was very slow but the amazing scenery more than made up for it.

We arrived just after 10am and found somewhere to stay, we planned to see Machu Picchu the following day. The town of Aguas Caliantes is set in a deep valley surrounded by lush forest. It could have been beautiful, but as you can see in the pictures it was more like a building site!

The following morning we were up at 4am and set off to make sure we were the first ones into Machu Piccu. It was quite a hike up the side of the mountain, not quite the Inka Trail but the next best thing!

After 1 1/2 hours of climbing steps we reached the entrance to Machu Picchu. Slightly worn out but excited to be the first ones in. The coach bringing the first lot of tourists arrived and we were straight in at 6am. We quickly went to the place where the classic shot is taken in hope to try to take a picture without any obscure tourists in the photos. Fantastic.

The photos again cant describe how you feel when you are looking down on the site. It is huge, many different areas that were used for different purposes for the Inka´s. For example below is a picture of the residential sector.

We spent approximatley 6 hours at the site exploring all the different areas. There are many walks you can do around the site, but as I (Rob) found out they involve cliff hugging paths, the phrase ´my bum is beginning to twitch was used often´ as I am not good with heights!

Em moved in quickly!