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A long journey from Arequipa to Lima was followed by a nice hotel (to celebrate Anne's birthday). We were waiting for Heather (James' sister) to arrive from USA so had a second day in Lima Miraflores district merely hanging around. An early start to meet Heather's plane from Mexico where she was transiting. We arrived at the airport around 5.30am but much to our annoyance the plane was delayed by over 7 hours. Anne disappeared back to the hotel whilst James sat and let the world drift by for what seemed an age.

Travels with Ickle Sis.

James and Anne Walkington
2006-09-26 18:06:15

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and caught the train back to Cusco. Little did we realise that it was going to take over 5 hours to get back - it is only 120km. Overall Machu Picchu was probably better than we had all thought it would be but the town at the bottom is little more than a joke.

A final day and night was spent in Cusco eating in cafes etc before catching another luxury bus to Nasca. Unfortunately the driver had the heating on full for the whole of the 12 hour journey and by the time we arrived in Nasca we were well cooked through. Nasca is another typical dirty Peruvian town full of touts and dirt. The only thing to do here is see the Nasca lines so from minute one touts are pestering you to buy tickets. After a shower and breakfast (biscuits and crisps) we headed to the airport and found a reasonably safe looking plane to fly in. With two Australians we flew for around 35 mins seeing all the classic drawings in the desert. The flight involved lots of tight turns and high G, Heather was concerned that the pilot didn't know what he was doing when coming into land. There are many theories as to how these huge desert drawings were made but some of the best include Alien landing strips and water channels. Although it was pretty hard picking out the actual drawings from a plane as you were strapped in we still got some good views of the desert.
Next was the short bus ride to Ica in the middle of hundreds of enormous sand dunes. We stayed at a lovely oasis village - Huacachina - about 5km from Ica. Surrounded by dunes, swimming pools, lakes and parrots we hired out some sand boards - like snowboards - and hit the slopes. Although climbingup the dune was little fun - coming down them was great! Although as Heather and James got cockier the falls and bruises got bigger!!

Three relaxing days included a couple of hours of dune buggying - like a rollercoaster ride through the desert interspersed with some sand boarding down some truly enormous sand dunes.

Finally it was on to Paracas now only a couple of hours away from Lima. A national park reserve with hundreds of sea birds and sea lions. We even saw penguins. We stayed at a deserted very upmarket resort and spent the last two days of Heather's stay playing ping pong, swimming and minigolf. The highlight was when James was lowering Heather over the pool fully clothed - needless to say what happened!

Finally it was back to Lima and a last day with Heather shopping for presents, a visit to Hooters for lunch and finally a taxi journey to the airport to sadly wave bye to Heather. She was about to start her nightmare 48 hour trip back to the UK.

Anne and James are now heading into the Peruvian jungle and then onto Brazil via the Amazon.