Packing your bag at 5.20am still drunk is probably not the most sensible thing to do in the world. But it was something that needed to be done as the bus was picking us up at 5.30am to go to Huacachina. I felt sure I packed everything and headed down to meet our tour guide for the next few days Diego - who was a doppelganger for Danger Mouse's sidekick Penfold. To my delight we had quite the drive to our first stop the Nazca Lines. This meant I could catch on some much needed seep and by fresh for the rest of the day's activities. In other news Christina had some sort of morale values and decided that stealing the cult like outfit was too much for her letting Earl off the hook of looking a complete turd for the rest of the day.

The day's activities proved to be non-existent. Thanks to a huge traffic delay of six hours we missed the tour to the Nazca lines. The delay was caused by some sort of car race, I've tried to google the event for more details but my research skills this time were not up to scratch. But from what Diego told us it was a race by which cars race in a circle from Lima heading down through Huacachina, Arequipa, up to Cusco around the highlands and back to Lima. And unfortunately we had run into it on one of its first days meaning the closure of the road, at first we thought it would be only tenty minutes but it took six hours for the hundred plus cars to whizz by us. We may have missed the Nazca lines but there are positives that could be drawn from the day for example I got ample amounts of rest and recovered. We got to watch several movies including Dallas Buyers Club and Kick-Ass 2. I got a massive section of my book - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo read and perhaps probably best of all the whole group bonded together taking the piss of the situation, moaning about the situation and generally conversing. Our group consisted of a Peruvian / American called Andrew but was also known as Ben for some time because of his supposedly liking to actor and director Ben Affleck. We also had a quite Dutch girl called Annalise, An Indian couple who names were far to complicated for me to remember, Christina who we knew from our time in The Wild Rover, and finally an Aussie couple called Cameron and Bree. Cam and I would go on to have quite the bromance for the next few days of our adventure. After a full day on the bus, well apart from the car racing stop and a stop at a servo's where we could get dinner we arrived at our hostel in Huacachina at 12.30. It was quite the party hostel; the party was in full swing as we arrived with music banging out. The entirety of our group though drained from the 18 hour bus ride simply collapsed in our rooms and despite the music tried to get some sleep.

I woke up from taunting messages from Mr Ashley Radford and Ryan Fitzpatrick because of Man Utd's humiliating defeat to Leicester City. It was the first united game of the season I had failed to watch and perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing. The morning we had to ourselves, however the town was only one short street and once you had been walking 15 minutes you had seen everything which mainly consisted of hostels, restaurants / bars, and travel agencies trying to get you in to do various tours. So I went back to the hostel where I watched the Frank Lampard score for Manchester City against his former side Chelsea and he looked heartbroken scoring against the side he had pledged most of his career for. There was still a bit of time before our activities of the day started so I shared a beer with Cam which was probably the start of our budding bromance and double act for the rest of the Peru Hop.

The first excursion of the day was to El Catador Pisco Vineyard (bodega) where we found how Pisco is made from the grape to the bottle. Ica is the home of Pisco growth in Peru, it was interesting to sample some sweet wines and Pisco. I've been known to comment on these type of tours for being rather too long on showing you the process of the making of the wine's etc and wanted to get straight to the nitty gritty of the tasters. This one however, maybe spent to short explaining the process. Looking back it is was probably ideal as we got into the tasting room and tasted six different drinks three different wines the baby-maker, divorce and break-up sex I'm sure you can all work out why each drink is named how it is. Then we were on to the hard stuff straight Pisco. The first two tasted how I imagine paint stripper would taste, but the third was more appealing had more of a texture like Baileys and was apparently good for male virility. It had no immediate effects on me. After our Pisco trip we stopped for lunch whilst some opted for a fairly pricey establishment called The Pub, Earl and I wondered off to a burger fan where quite a peculiarly on the way a random local guy driving buy requested our photo, so we obliged and then went happily on our way for a cheeky hamburger.

Huacachina is a small town surrounded by massive mountains of sand, or sand dunes and it was these spectacles that led us to our next outing of the day, sand boarding and dune buggying. The dune buggy picked us up outside of our hostel and then made its way up and over the sand dunes. It is up there with one of the most exciting things I've ever done. What makes this ride remarkable is that it takes place in an expansive desert that stretches nearly 50 kilometres to the Pacific Ocean. All I could see was sand as we approached what seemed like the end of the world at virtually top speed. Few things are as exhilarating as the drop the buggy takes after it reaches the summit of a sand dune. I recommend wearing sunglasses. It's not as much for the sun as it is for the sand and wind that will be hitting your face as you race across the dunes. The only other downfall of the dune buggying was the hammering my little fellas got as after each bump the seatbelt crashed hard into them leaving me yelping in pain. The sandboarding was just like snowboarding but on sand. It was very enjoyable even though a tad emasculating. I definitely stacked it more times than I would like to admit and had sand in pretty much every nuck and cranny of my body. Fortunately the rest of the group were the same Cam took a couple of impressive falls including one face plant, Christina was all over the show, but the star for me was the chap from the Indian couple even though he would come down on his stomach or backside he still ended up coming off and doing Bruce Willis type action rolls the rest of the way down. To top the tour off on dune buggy took us to the top at the end to see the sun-set. It was a great tour and I recommend everyone to go to Huacachina to do this immediately.

After emptying our shoes of all the sand we were off on the bus again, heading to the small town of Paracas.

So until next time stay safe and take care

Adi

xx