After a couple of days in Lima, sightseeing, tenpin bowling, and eating way too much, we drove on to Paracas National Park. We ended up stopping for lunch about 3km from our campsite so a few of us took the option of walking the rest of the way. It's a desert park on the coast so rocky and sandy with no trees in sight. It was cool to walk up a rise and see the truck parked in the distance with little people putting up tents around it. At that point we were thinking it was not too much further, that is until we saw there was water in between and we had to walk around the bay to get there. There was no hurry though it was an afternoon to chill out.

Next morning we were booked for the Ballestas Islands boat trip. On the way out we passed the Candelabra which looks like someone has drawn in the sand with a stick, but like the Nasca Lines it somehow never goes away. The islands themselves were rocky and barren but absolutely covered in birds. Brown footed boobies, cormorants, pelicans, penguins, all sorts. Some places were quite smelly from all the poo. There were also seals sunning themselves on the rocks and fishing in the sea, mostly females but we saw a couple of males as well, they're HUGE!

Returning to land we visited a pisco winery for a tour and tasting. Pisco is like the local spirit here, made from grapes, like wine, but a much higher alcohol content. Standard is around 40%. The most popular cocktail with it is a pisco sour which has lime juice, sugar and egg white, yummy but potent! We tasted about eight different forms of pisco, most of which I wouldn't touch without a mixer, and everyone came out a bit tipsy so we quickly moved on to Huacachina for lunch.

That afternoon we had the option of an overnight desert adventure so we hopped into dune buggies, quite big ones, all of us fit easily into three, for some stunt driving in the sand dunes. There was the option of sand boarding down some dunes which I wasn't too keen on. I tried one and didn't feel the need to do the other two, especially after one girl hurt her wrist on the last one. We had to drop her back to town to go get x-rays (not broken but in a cast for ten days to heal) and the rest of us went back into the desert to watch the sun set and find our camping spot. We had BBQ dinner and more pisco and 'desert disco' dancing then slept under the stars, woke up slightly damp and headed back to town for breakfast.

A few hours drive brought us to Nasca where we were able to do the flight we just had to organise it ourselves. It was worth doing. The flight took us over 12 different 'pictures' in the desert, some were a bit smaller than I expected, so harder to spot at first and the plane was quite bumpy so hard to get photos but they were really good at making sure both sides got a clear view of each one. Without doing the flight you could only see two from a viewing tower we stopped at on the way, and they weren't too impressive from there so I'm glad we had the option to fly.

We camped one last night on the coast and drove in land to Arequipa yesterday. We are gaining altitude again now. This morning we had a 'Reality Tour' of the city. The idea being not to show how poor people are but to see how they solve their problems. We visited the local market and learnt about some of the staple diet foods, then drove out to the edge of town with a bit of history along the way. We visited a quarry where men craft stone building blocks by hand in the hot sun, then a community kitchen where women take turns to cook bulk food making it cheaper to feed a lot of people rather than families cooking individually, and finally a cemetery before coming back to the hotel. It was an interesting glimpse into the lives of some of the locals. Now I'm tucked up in bed with a cold and don't feel like doing much, hopefully I'll be better tomorrow for a bit more of a look around the city. Might have to give karaoke a miss tonight though...