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A 12 hour bus trip transported us from the mountains of Huaraz to the dunes of Huacachina, a small oasis town set on the edge of a massive range of sand dunes which exists purely for tourists. Along the way we picked up an extra friend, Maayan from Israel , who joined the Aussie contingency in an afternoon of fun! We took a dune & sand boarding tour, where we were loaded into a large dune buggy with 6 other people and went hooning through the sand dunes. It was so much fun as the dunes were so steep it was a bit like a roller coaster ride (though more unpredictable). Unfortunately the sand boards were pretty crap, so we struggled to stand up on them, and instead used the board as a toboggan to go down the sand slopes head first. The slopes were so steep you picked up some serious speed ... and not to mention sand in every pocket & crevice!
From there we headed to Arequipa, a lovely city with a beautiful plaza surrounded by colonial buildings (and if it wasn´t for the locals you´d think you were in Europe). From here we ventured out on our next trek to the Colca Canyon for three days. The canyon is over 1km deep (twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and the second largest in the world), so it was a tough walk down & then back up again the following day. The landscape was so different to what we´d seen previously in Peru ... very dry & dusty, loads of cacti, and then an oasis at the bottom of the canyon with swimming pools to cool down in.
Back to Arequipa for a couple of nights then we all overnighted it to Cusco in the most uncomfortable bus so far.
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