Huacachina & Pisco
In typical Peruvian style, they built the Panamerica Sur highway right through the middle of the Nazca lines, and the road actually bisects one of the images! Handily enough, they then built a 20 metre high metal viewing tower, right next to the road, so you can climb up and see what's left of the image either side of the highway. Genius! We stopped for a quick look, but I decided not to go up the tower. At the base of the tower, there were people selling postcards of the Nazca lines, and stones engraved with some of the well known images. Somebody pointed out the similarity to the scene in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', where there were also people selling stones! 
We set off again, for the sand dunes and oasis of Huacachina, to the accompaniment of Tony singing "It's a long way, to Huacachina, it's a long way, to go...." which was really very funny, and a pleasant change from his usual rendition of 'The sun has got his hat on...'
We drove through more of the same dusty, rubbly landscape, then there would suddenly be a few really green fields, or olive groves, and even orange trees, then instantly, back to dust and rubble again. After about 3 hours of this, we turned left off the Panamerica Sur highway, and were suddenly faced with a vast Sahara-style landscape of enormous sand dunes, towering high above us in every direction.We all gasped in amazement - 'Where did they come from??'  - that's the thing about Peru, you learn to expect the unexpected! 
A little further on we came to the small oasis town of Huacachina, with a couple of streets of cafés and shops surrounding the palm fringed lagoon and rows of 'dune buggies' waiting to take us for a drive among the dunes. We weren't sure if we were going to try sand boarding, but for our Swiss friend, Sacha, who spends every winter with a snowboard strapped to his feet, this was the moment he'd been waiting for! He went to a shop to get kitted out with proper shoes and a serious sand board, unlike the narrow ones with Velcro straps, provided for novices. He asked if they had board wax, so they kindly provided him with a stub of a candle!
Five of us climbed into a dune buggy, behind a short, squat, surly driver who looked like Road Rage personified under his back-to-front baseball cap. I should perhaps of realised what we were letting ourselves in for when I discovered that the seat-belt went over both shoulders and between the legs, like a harness. But we set off quite gently, just having a nice ride through the streets of Huacachina, approaching the start of the dunes, then suddenly, as soon as we hit the sand, the driver slammed his foot on the accelerator, and with a great roar of the engine, we took off like a rocket!! 
Everyone was laughing at me, because I let out such a scream, but they had to get used to the sound, because I hardly stopped screaming for the next hour. It was like a massive sandy roller-coaster. We careered up and down the almost vertical slopes, banked round bowl-shaped craters like 'wall of death' stunt riders, and bunny hopped and dropped over big bumps in the sand. 
At the top of a huge pyramid-shaped dune, the driver screeched to a halt and started dragging the sand boards out of the back of the buggy. Most of us told him not to bother, as we didn't fancy the look of the precipitous drop, and he looked even more grumpy! He did give a little snort of approval as Sacha dropped over the edge and went weaving his way expertly down. While we were waiting for Sacha to clamber his way back up again, which was really hard work, as the sand was so soft and deep and the slope was so steep, the driver was still insisting that we should all have a go: 'lie down, lie down, no dangerous' he said. I said no thank you, because I was twice the width of the board, which looked like a ski, and explained I didn't want to get my mouth and pockets full of sand, and all the others shook their heads as well. Then, out of the blue, Tony said 'I'll do it', and before any of us knew what was happening, he was on the board, gripping the velcro, the driver tipped him over the edge, and he went hurtling head first down the slope, reached the bottom and just kept on going, sliding away across the sand! It was a classic moment, but unfortunately I didn't even have time to turn my camera on!
Sacha went down again, then we drove down to pick him and Tony up at the bottom. There followed more roller coaster experiences, as we found higher and higher sand mountains for Sacha to board down. Eventually we seemed to be heading back towards the oasis, but as we drove up the last steep sand dune, our path was blocked by two police quad bikes waiting at the top, with their lights flashing. The driver said 'out, out, photo!' So, a bit confused, we all got out and shook hands with the police officers, who asked us where we were from, and took photos of us with a small pink camera. So we took photos of them too, and I sat on one of the quad bikes, then off we went, back to the town for lunch.
We spent the night in the town of Pisco, home of the famous Pisco Sour cocktail. Unfortunately the town is still trying to recover from a devastating earthquake which hit it in 2007, and is not yet in a position to make the most of this claim to fame. Some of us decided to eat in our small hotel restaurant, and ordered some house wine, which when it came, was called 'Gato' (cat!) and came in a litre tetra pack carton! Tomorrow we head for Lima, and the last night of the tour..........Goodnight.