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May 24, 2010 · Filed under Uncategorized

Last day in South America tomorrow.  Wow it has flown so fast! Im not sure why, but i am finding it difficult to remember what I did only last week..

Since the OT conference in Chile I returned to Lima and headed down the south coast to Nazca. Nazca is a small town with not much there except the Nazca Lines. I organised to fly over the Nazca lines in a small aeroplane and had no idea what to expect, except from the pictures advertised. There were 6 tourists in the plane and two guys flying the plane. It began well until we came to the very first picture and suddenly the captain took a sharp right and before we knew it we were all on our sides trying to look at whatever picture was beneath us.  The next picture was on our left and we took a sharp left.  The flight was 30 minutes and throughout the whole flight we were constantly rolling from left to right to left to right. Everyone was trying not to throw up whilst also trying to take photos of the famous nazca lines… To sum up.. it was an expensive experience in a light plane seeing very small pictures etched in the ground.

From nazca I took another bus down to Arequipa, a place i coundt wait to get to. One reason being that I wanted to do the Colca Canyon trek, and the other reason being that I hadfriends  who were volunteering there. On the bus to Arewuipa I met this lovely Swiss lady who later turned out to be a Physiotherapist!  We found a hostel to stay at and organised to do the Colca Canyon trek together. We did a 3 day trek, First day taking a bus at 3am till 9am, getting out to look at these huge condors (birds), then getting back in the bus to drive for another 2 hours. We reached a town called Cabanaconde, had luch there, then began our trek down into the canyon. It took 3.5 hours of steep down hill trekking to get to the bottom of the canyon. My legs began to ache a little and my knees were definitely getting week and shakey. We crossed a bridge then proceeded up hill for another 2 hours to a tiny, rundown hostel. Very basic with no hot water. Lovely! Stayed there for the night, had one little piece of cuy (guinea pig) for dinner.. which kind of made me sick just looking at it. Reason being that they had not shaved off all of its fur and there were chunks of fur on my bit. Day two we hiked long the canyon to a beautiful oasis filled with gorgeous blue swimming pools. Spend a few hours at one pool swimming in the cold, and eating a good lunch. Then we began our uphill ascent out of the canyon. Surprisingly it only took us 3.5 hours to get up to the top of the canyon, but we did hike at a fast pace and didnt have many breaks. It was TOUGH going!!! Spent the night at another hostel in the town Cabanaconde, then returned to arequipa the next day, after going to a lookout spot that morning.

Spent 2 days in Arequipa buying last minute souvenirs, sent a huge package home with clothing and stuff i DONT need in the US (summer) and then took a bus up to Ica. From Ica I went to Huacachina, an oasis surrounded by sand dunes OOhhh  YEAH!! Went sandboarding there.. almost killed myself after doing  awesomely. Hit my head and pelvis.. brised and battered but still kept on going! There I met these 2 Israeli guys who were also travelling back up to Lima and so I joined their group of two and we became three.

Lima, have been here for about 4 days now, can honestly say i havent done all that much. Good thing about travelling with other people is that its possible to go out at night time and experience a bit of the night life .. so thats what we did! Also managed to buy expensive tickets to AEROSMITH!!!! ohh yeaa !

Last day tomorrow in south america. Maybe Ill end it with paragliding over the beach…

k