I was woken by the bus steward around 8ish outside the town of Nazca. This is where the famous Nazca lines are, mysterious large drawings that can only be seen from the air and have been here for thousands of years. We walk out into the warm sunshine and go into a white-washed house to use the toilets. One of the little kids is really cute. She just looks like the little Indian baby in Ice Age(animated film). I bought some bananas and gatorade for the rest of the trip. The Peruvian woman I spoke to at the border recommends I try cerviche (raw fish marinated in lime/lemon juice). I told her I'd try it later and of course cuy (guinea pig). We then drove towards Lima along the Pacific coast where the land is scorched and the roads are dodgy. We drive up into the Andean highlands along windy roads cut into the cliff face. The toilet has broken and the bus is stinking. We drive through some shanty towns and eventually reach a petrol station. I buy some Inka corn and bread/jam. The Inka corn was recommended by the Peruvian woman and I loved the rock hard kernals although maybe a little salty. I liked them and the woman was looking for my reaction, I smiled and said "Que rico" which means delicious. God this country is so desolate, it's no wonder t's so poor. The most annoying thing is the most barren land in the south they lost to Chile in a war some time ago and that had all the minerals/ metals that Chile's economy has been based on like copper. The Peruvian elections are currently taking place and there are walls everywhere painted with the various candidates names. We drove further on towards Lima and stopped at the dusty town of Ica. We tried pisco and sweet wines. The sweet wine was nice and only 3 pounds. So I purchased one bottle. A curvy, attractive Peruvian mother (a mamacita!) sitting across from me asked if I wanted to play with her children. So I agreed but they were hard work. They started eating my biscuits, pulling my earlobes and wanting to play paper, scissor, stone. I then had a bit of banter with some older Peruvian women who took 5 photos of me! A little weird but maybe they don't see so many gringoes. We passed through the shanty towns surrounding central Lima. Finally we arrived at 6pm in Lima. I found a fairly trust-worthy taxi driver and asked him to take me to a hostel in central Lima. I would love to have stayed in Miraflores or Barranco the nice suburbs of the city but because I had to wait some days for my bus departure, couldn't fit it in. I checked in to the Hostel San Francisco and had a well deserved shower. There is someone else in my dorm, a French guy. He seems to be down with the flu, great. I opened my window and listended to the sounds of the city; stray dogs fighting, police sirens, traffic/peeping horns and brakes slamming. I had a walk around the hostel block and felt really unsafe. This is a dangerous city of that there is no doubt. It's getting dark so I head back to my hostel and fall asleep. I woke up at 1am with 2 itchy mosquito bites (damn shouldn't have opened the bloody window). I put the light on, shut the windows and hunted it down. I found it on the lampshade, huge due to being engorged with my blood. I hit it and thought job done but I couldn't find it. Later in the night as I was falling asleep I heard the unmistakeable "zz...." near my ear. So put the lights on and can't find it. This scenario was repeated until 3ish in the morning. Finally I gave up put my sheets over all of me and went to sleep. The French guy came in at 7am and was sniffling, coughing and sneezing. He sneezed 10 times in a row in his bed (surely some kind of world record!). I got up immediately as I didn't fancy hanging around getting his flu.