After the Ballestas Islands we continued our drive to Huacachina a tiny oasis town near Ica. The purpose of this was to go out into the desert. We piled into dune buggys which could take up to 10 passengers each and set off through the huge dunes. The drivers are well practiced at this and know the place like the backs of their hands. They took us over steep dunes and we hurtled down like we were on a rollercoaster, and all the time our driver kept looking in the mirror and smirking knowing a bigger one was coming up! They seem to enjoy hearing people scream but it was so much fun!

We stopped at intervals for some sandboarding - and this was just as much fun! You can do it like snowboarding and stand up but apparently it's not very fast, so we were happy to do it the way everyone else does - headfirst on your stomach!! The dunes were huge and we were slighty aprehensive but only for a moment. You have to wear sunglasses to stop yourself getting eyefulls of sand and you just lie on your front on the board, face first and go!! You can use your feet to steer or slow yourself down if you want but after the first go we were out to see who could go the fastest and furthest. Unfortunately they wouldn´t let us race side by side incase we all crashed into each other! We then watched the sunset and headed to our camp for the night and slept under the stars following a barbeque and a spot of sandboarding by moonlight! As you can imagine we had sand everywhere by the time we headed back to Huacachina the next morning for a welcome shower.

Our next stop was Nazca to see the Nazca lines. They are huge shapes found in the Nazca desert that are believed to have been created between 200BC and 700AD. There are hundreds of figures, some just simple shapes and some more complex like the hummingbird, monkey and spider. The largest are 200m across and so the best way to see them is from the air. We flew over them in a tiny 4 seater plane that threw us around and left us green and queasy after the 30 minuite trip! No one really knows how or why they were drawn as they can only be apreciated properly from above and some more controversial ´experts` believe they have something to do with aliens!