Peru

We got out of Bolivia as quickly as we could and so headed north in to the dusty Peruivian desert.

First stop on the itinery was Arequipa, the white city.We spent 4 days wondering the beautiful (white) streets of Arequipa.After much searching we finally found the ultimate cuisine: kebabs and cake.Within 48 hours we had consumed 7 kebabs and half a bakery between us.We ate a lot of cake. We decided against all the "must do" tours and spent our time eating and when we were not eating we spent our time roaming the streets looking for something else to nibble on.Lovely.

Our next choice location was Nasca in order to see the Nasca lines, or rather for Jen to see the lines.Marky decided that a mornings leisure lounging by a swimming pool was a more productive way to spend his time.He argued that he had already seen the Nasca Lines in photograph format!!

After much haggling, Jen and her flight team eventually got the price down to a whopping $50. We borded a tiny, tiny 6 seater plane and set off to see the much talked about Lines.The area covered by the lines and shapes was gigantic, they were truely incredible and we were all amazed at how they were all perfectly intact after hundreds of years, that is except for the "lizard" who was decapitated by the building of the highway before the lines were discovered!After 20 minutes of turbulance and extreme aerobatics I was happy to get off the plane.Markyo was enthralled by my images of the white lines on a pale grey background, all 150 of them! We had seen what we came to see in Nasca so headed off to the small oasis of Huccachina.It was literally an oasis surrounded by the biggest dunes imaginable.The town was a tiny gathering of hostels and restaurants which circled a desert lake.I took the opportunity to get back on the sand board as my last experience was a bit of a disaster.Markyo took the opportunity to play with his camera in the sand and capture my skills on stills (Mark's literary gem)!We jumped on a dune buggy to take a rollercoaster tour across the sand mountains, stopping sporadically to sand board down the highest dunes.A few days later I was still finding sand in the most unwelcome of places!

We left our oasis and headed to Pisco, this was a destination that was not on our original itinerary, we had met a lovely Dutch couple in Bolivia who had volunteered in Pisco with an organisation called Pisco Sin Fronteras (PSF), they suggested we should go along and help.We decided that after 10 months of self indulgent travel we should do something with a purpose, so we headed to Pisco to give some of our time to PSF. The Non Governmental Organisation was set up to assist local people in rebuilding their lives, following the 2007 Pisco earthquake which devastated 80% of the city and surrounding areas. The Peruvian Government has done little to assist the rebuilding of Pisco since the earthquake, horrifically, the Government stated that the 8.0 earthquake was under 7.9 on the Richter scale so that they did not have to provide aid, therefore the city still relies heavily on international assistance.We spent 12 incredible days here and in that time helped build a family a shelter, assist in the construction of communal toilets, mixed a whole load of cement, constructed stuff out of wood and taught English at a local school!It was a perspective changing experience, apart from both of us getting the dreaded "Pisco Belly" we had a great time and met some wonderful people. We eventually had to say goodbye (we were only due to stay for 4 days but got sucked in and stayed for 12 - it was a difficult place to leave) and decided it was time to head to Ecuador.The idea of visiting the Galapagos was starting to take over all my thought processes.So we packed our bags hopped on yet another bus and made our way into Ecuador.