We had considered travelling from Lima to Cusco on one incredibly long overnight bus, but decided there was enough interesting things between the two cities to break up the ride. This led us to Paracas National Reserve for a night, about three hours south of Lima by bus. The Peruvian coastline is where the ocean meets the desert and it's a beautiful area with sandy cliff faces up to the water's edge. We hired bikes to explore the reserve, allowing us to see the best of the area and a lot of birdlife in one day.

Another three hours on a bus took us to Huacachina, touted as the only desert oasis in South America. It too was a sight to behold, with vast sand dunes springing up next to an oasis complete with palm trees. The thing to do there is sandboard, so we gave it a try. Our previous few tries on a sandboards yielded less than spectacular results, and this time was pretty similar. We had a lot of fun exhausting yourselves walking up very high and hot sand dunes carrying weighty wooden planks only to ride down with regular re-application of candle wax. On the bright side, at least the views were nice!