Sandboarding an oasis, lots of birds and rock legends!

Continuing the theme of visiting places with ridiculous names, I headed to Huacachina (pronounced wa-ka-cheen-a) with Laura (from Germany) who I'd met while trekking the Colca Canyon.

We got a good deal on a 12-hour night bus, or so we thought... Usually on these buses the driver cranks up the air con so much that you need a blanket to keep yourself warm.  We got on the bus armed with a sleeping bag and layers of clothes and were pretty warm when the temperature started to drop.  Then, for no reason at all, the air con went off and it started to get really really hot.  It must have reached about 30 degrees at one point.  I got about 7 minutes of sleep.  At least we saved 15 Soles (£4).

Huacachina is a beautiful oasis town (or village really, it is only about 1 square km).  It is the most oasis-like oasis I've ever seen, an emerald lagoon surrounded by palm trees and huge sand dunes. This is probably why it features on the 50 Soles bank note (nice bit of trivia for you there).

We found a room in an average guesthouse but with a great pool (priorities!) and headed up the nearest sand dune for a look over the town.  After 20 minutes of trudging through knee-deep soft sand we'd made virtually no progress so gave up and watched the sun go down.

There are two things to do in Huacachina, sandboard and ride around in rollercoaster-style dune buggys.  We did both the next day - it was great fun!  We strapped into a huge dune buggy with 6 other people and sped off to the dunes.  It really was like a rollercoaster - we drove up near-vertical dunes, flying over the crest and shooting down the other side at ridiculous speeds.  It was made more scary by the fact that our driver did it all one handed.  And possibly drunk.  We spent the rest of the evening slicing down the huge golden dunes on sandboards - great fun!

The next destination was the small beach town of Paracas, near Pisco.  The main drawcard here is a visit to the Islas Ballestas, nicknamed the poor man's Galápagos, which are home to a huge variety of wildlife.  Laura has the same guide book in German and, strangely enough, they have chosen to nickname them the small man's Galápagos - not sure what that says about Germans...  Paracas is inside a huge national reserve but you wouldn't know it as there are loads of factories and even a small offshore oil rig.  It seems Peruvians only do conservation properly when it pays...

Anyway, Paracas is a nice sleepy town with sandy beaches and a laid-back atmosphere (and far away from the oil rig).

We checked into the imaginatively-named Backpackers hostal and met up with Matthais & Fabian, the Swiss guys from the Colca Trek.  They had spent the day making the awesome sand sculpture below.  By now everyone had been taught the card game Shit Head and the evening was spent playing cards & drinking beer :-)

The next day we went to explore the islands.  I hadn't realised that you can't actually go onto the islands, you just cruise round it on a boat.  Those who know me will know that I hate boat journeys - lots.  But by then it was too late so I jumped on and we sped off into the sea.  We briefly stopped on the way to look at a large Incan sand sculpture.  It looked like the tracks someone would make if they slid down the sand dune on their ass.  I was not particularly impressed.  There was also an oil refinery on the same island.  Lovely.

What was lovely though, was the Islas Ballestas.  From a distance it looked like the rugged rocky islands were covered in huge black puddles but as we got closer I realised they were moving...  Each was a tight group of thousands and thousands of birds all squawking away to each other and looking for fish.  When a school of fish was located they all shuffled to the edge of the cliffs and jumped off, flying out into the sea to get some lunch.  The flocks of birds fly in fantastic lines, darting across the sky in perfect unison.

We saw Homboldt penguins, pellicans, sea lions, seals, jellyfish and hundreds of species of birds, all mingling around together on the islands.  They all seemed to be chatting away to each other and the noise was really something.  After about 2hrs I was feeling the waves and more than happy when we pointed the nose of the boat towards the shoreline and sped back to Paracas...

Oddly enough, there is a huge Hilton hotel in Paracas.  It is a nice place but it is in the middle of nowhere and there are not really that many tourists.  I cannot understand why there is a huge resort there - it had over 300 apartments and we saw about 20 people there (it also housed the only ATM in town...).  They should open it to backpackers...

The next day we headed for Lima.  The Swiss guys opted for the cozy bed bus which passed through Paracas.  This was the expensive option so, as we are hardcore backpackers, we opted for the much cheaper (but more ridiculous) route.  We took a collectivo to Pisco then a tuktuk to the highway and then a local bus for 4 hours to Lima.  Surprisingly, it all worked out perfectly and we arrived in Lima just in time to see the sun go down!

Laura is pushed for time so after a day wandering around she headed straight to Ecuador.  This involved a 36-hour bus journey - thankfully I don't need to do that!  Anyway, Lima has a bad reputation for crime and for being a bit boring but nothing could be further from the truth!  Myself and the Swiss guys had heard about a gig called "Rock Legends" where Gene Simmons, Glenn Hughes, Joe Elliott, Sebastian Bach, Matt Sorum, Joe Elliot, Billy Duffy, Duff McKagan and Steve Stevens all played on stage together.  I'm not a huge rock fan but I was really surprised they were all in Lima.  The gig was sold out but we went anyway and managed to score some tickets outside.  It was great fun but a bit tame for a rock concert, probably due to lack of beer...

The next two days were spent wandering around Lima, partying, surfing and visiting the remains of a huge pre-Inca pyramid.

The pyramid is build completely from adobe (basically mud dried into a brick shape in the sun) using the "Bookshelf" technique).

There was also some tombs and a footprint that is apparently over 3,000 years old.  Apparently.

They also had a special breed of dog that evolved in the desert and therefore has no hair - if the devil owned dogs, he would have two of these!

I've just arrived in a town called Huaraz, right up in the Andes.  This town was made for me - it is surrounded by snow-capped peaks and you can go climbing, trekking, downhill biking and more.

Right, I have to go before I pull off one of my ears - I am currently sitting in the lobby of my hostal next to two people, a Frenchman and a German girl, who have been discussing honey for the last 45 minutes.  German Girl thinks that it is wrong to eat honey because of "it is wrong to enslave bees".  French guy only eats honey that comes from "happy" bees.  I can't understand how the conversation is still going on, but I'm going to escape.  Here are some more pics from the island.