Hi blog

I´ve just arrived in Nazca and finally have some internet access!! We flew into Peru on Thursday and spent a couple of days in Lima, which most people say is a dump, but we really enjoyed it. We stayed in Miraflores, the ´posh´ part but straight away noticed how less developed it was than Santigo. On our first night we found a bar and they let us play our Ipod over the speakers which was class! We then went to a salsa club with some of the others from the hostel and learnt some (and created our own) salsa moves!

The next day, after having scoffed 3 family sized pizzas between the 5 of us for breakfast, we went to meet up with our GAP tour group. Everyone´s really cool in our group, there are 14 of us all together. Our first stop was Pisco, which took 4 hours in a bus. A lot more remote than the cities we´ve been in and most of the town was destroyed last year in an earthquake and is relying on tourism to get enough money to rebuild everything. The locals drive round in tiny cars which only fit a couple of people in, and we were stalked yet again by more stray dogs - Jennifer (our tour guide) says it´s because they like tourists...obviously not pulling off the latin american look yet then. Back at the hotel we nailed some pisco sours - pisco with lime and egg whites (I know, brave), very top draw!!

Today we got up at 6am to travel to the Ballestas Islands - full of arches and caves, and thoudands of sea birds, including some penguins and sea lions which were amazing! We all looked uber-cool in our neon orange life jackets, haha. We then went for lunch at a place where pisco is made and had a tour of how it´s all produced (almost made up for the wine tour that we missed in Santiago). At the end we sampled different types of pisco and also bought a bottle for the road. Next stop was Ika desert, where we went sandboarding. This was definately the highlight of the trip so far!!! The best bit was driving round with 8 people on a jeep full pelt across the sand dunes, well scarier than any roller coaster I´ve been on!

A couple of hours later we arrived at Nazca. Driving past all the shanty towns it feels really uncomfortable staying at our nice hotel. It was night time by the time we arrived so haven´t had chance to explore properly yet. Tomorrow we´re flying over the Nazca Lines in the Nazca Desert, got another early start - half 6 this time. Will update this again when I can but now I need to go and empty the sand out of all my pockets ready for tomorrow!

Byyyyye