After Lima we caught a bus down to Pisco. The place is still a bit of a mess as they had an earthquake here a few years ago and it hasn´t really been rebuilt. We took a boat round the Islas Ballestas which is known as the poor mans Gallapagos. The islands were completely covered in birds from end to end and obviously also bird s***, so they had an interesting aroma. Apparently they come and collect the bird s*** every ten years to use as fertilizer, that must be a pretty crap job (boom boom). There were also loads of sea lions on the island and penguins.

We then spent a couple of nights at a place called Huacachina, which is an oasis in the middle of the desert. It was a really strange place, just a little island of green in the middle of all these sand dunes (see photo above). We were sharing a dorm with two wee Korean guys who didn´t speak much English and we obviously don´t speak much Korean so conversation was fairly limited. We christened them Ant and Dec and went sand boarding with them where I got friction burns on my elbows.

We spent a few days here getting sunburned before moving on to Nazca. Here we took a flight over the Nazca lines in a rickety little six seater plane. For some reason they put me, the person with the longest legs, in the co-pilots seat. I kept nudging buttons and levers with my knees. The flight was quite scary but really good as you can only see the lines from the air. They are basically huge lines through the desert that make all kinds of shapes including a spider, a condor, a humming bird and even one that looks like a spaceman. They are thousands of years old and nobody knows why they bothered drawing them as they would never be able to see them from the ground.

We are now back in the mountains in a place called Arequipa. It is a really nice place and we are going to stay here a few days while Kate gets some much needed Spanish lessons. She is in the middle of a four hour session at the moment. There are lots of nice bars here so we will be able to entertain ourselves for a few nights. The local drink is called a Pisco Sour which is made from a kind of brandy. They also stick an egg white in it to give it a frothy head. They are really tasty so trying not to think about the salmonella too much.