Peru - Huacachina, Nazca, Cusco and Machu Picchu

After we finally left Lima we took a bus to Ica and then a taxi to nearby Huacachina - a small village surrounded by sand dunes that has a lagoon in the middle.

We stayed in a hostel which had a swimming pool and plenty of sun loungers which people took advantage of everyday as the weather was consistently excellent.

The hostel quite regularly put on eat and drink all you want BBQs. We went to two of these, both times ensuring we got value for money. Especially where the drinks were concerned! We mostly drank Pisco Sour, the local cocktail of choice. Unfortunately it wasn´t a sleep all you want hostel as the loud music from the bar could be heard clearly in plenty of rooms (including ours) until about 4am.

The main activity in Huacachina is sandboarding and we did this on our second day. The sandboarding itself was fun but very difficult and we both resorted to using the sandboards as sledges on some of the larger dunes. Many others did the same and in some ways this was better as you could go straight down without worrying about crashing so much.

An added bonus of this trip was riding in the buggy that took us to the dunes which are used for sandboarding. The driver was crazy and went out of his way to go up the steepest dunes and over ridges with sharp drops on the other side - this invariably prompted a lot of screaming in the buggy! When the sandboarding had finished our driver took us to a secluded spot to watch the sunset which was really spectacular. All you could see in every direction was massive sand dunes which made it seem as if we were on another planet.

We ended up staying in Huacachina for four nights but didn't do that much else. We were hanging around with some English people, Stuart & Beth and Mark & Chrissie, and spent a fair bit of time by the pool in their hostel. In the evenings Mike would play football with some of the local guys and Ellie would climb up the sand dunes. Like the other activities in Huacachina these were only possible later in the day as it was always too hot earlier on.

After leaving Huacachina we had a (relatively) short 2 1/2 hour bus trip to Nazca with Stuart and Beth. We arrived quite late in the day, found a hostel, went out for dinner and a bit of a walk around the fairly uninspiring town centre.

We were up early the next day and got a taxi to the airport so that we could arrange a flight to see the Nazca lines. It was easy to sort out and within 45 minutes the two of us and Beth were in a four seater light aircraft flying over the lines. The Nazca lines are spread over a vast area and can only be seen properly from the air. The most elaborate ones (which are mainly of animals) are between 60 and 300 metres in length and can be made out clearly from the sky. They include a monkey, a dog, a spider, an alcatraz, a tree and a parrot. A lot of mystery still surrounds the ancient lines and no-one really knows who made them and what their significance is. Probably the most reasonable theory is that they were made by humans for religious purposes. However, others claim they were made by aliens!

Getting between Nazca and our next destination, Cusco, turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. The bus left Nazca at 8pm and was meant to arrive in Cusco at 10am the following morning. This would have been bad enough in itself but as it turned out the bus broke down in the middle of the night and they had to wait until it was light to fix it. We didn't get to Cusco until 4.30pm (over 20 hours after we left Nazca) so essentially we lost a day! This only gave us a day to sort out a trip to Machu Picchu. We weren't able to do the Inka Trail as it needs to be booked in advance (although Ellie has done it previously), so we decided to go with the Inka Jungle trek which involves a day of mountain biking, a day of walking and a day to see Machu Picchu itself.

We left to go on this trip early in the morning in a minibus with the seven others in our group. This was going well until about 11am when we came across the first landslide. This had blocked the narrow mountain road we were driving down but fortunately it was almost cleared by the time we came to it. We were only delayed by about half an hour so this wasn't too bad. We weren't so lucky the second time though. About 10 minutes after the first one we encountered another landslide which was much larger than the first and had happened more recently meaning there were no bulldozers on the scene to start clearing it. Our guide made the rather bizarre decision to leave our bikes on one side of it whilst getting everyone in the group to run across the landslide to wait on the other side (whilst small rocks were still falling). This time we were delayed for about three hours, which was spent standing about in the rain.

Eventually our bikes were allowed to pass but no vehicles could get round it so we had to start cycling from where we were. In the end we spent about three hours cycling to the point where we were meant to start! This is where we finished for the day. It was an enjoyable ride though which was almost entirely downhill and took us past some amazing scenery.

The following day, fortunately, went much more smoothly than the first. The days activity was a walk through the 'sacred valley' which wasn't particularly strenuous but provided some good views of the surrounding mountains. We walked along some paths at first and then onto a railway line that took us to Aguas Calientes, the town that is used as a base for visiting Machu Picchu. We thought these were disused train tracks until we were told to stand to the side as a train was coming! We arrived in Aguas Calientes in the afternoon and had time to relax in some hot springs before having dinner with everyone from the group.

The following morning we were up at 4am in order to set off for Machu Picchu at 4:30am. This involved walking up a lot of steps through some forest that took us to the entrance for 6am. We had a tour of the ruins about half an hour later which was quite interesting but would have been more beneficial had everyone in the group no been so knackered.

After the tour we decided not to climb Wyna Picchu mountain (the one you can see in the photo above) which is what the majority of people do, but instead climbed Machu Picchi mountain which is something that most people are unaware is even possible. We probably only saw about 20 other people the whole time and got some amazing views of the ruins. Fortunately we had good weather so we were able to see everything clearly from the top which is not always the case as it is often very cloudy.

When we had finished looking at Machu Picchu and walked back down to Aguas Calientes we had some ridiculously over priced pizza and some most welcome cold beer with the three Brazilian guys from our group before getting a train and bus back to Cusco.

The day after we got back to Cusco one of our friends from home, Louise, arrived with her friend Mim. We ended up staying for another 4 days to spend some time with them. On one of the days we went on a walk around some of the archaeological sites near Cusco but on the whole we didn't do too many activities. Stuart and Beth also arrived during this time and we went for a Sunday Roast with them - our first of the trip. On our last night we all went out for dinner and the two of us had the local specialty - guinea pig. Predictably there wasn't much meat on it and it wasn't very tasty but when in Rome...