I arrived in Lima via the overnight bus from Cusco. I found the Flying Dog Hotel that Paul had booked us into, and found Simon sat at the bar writing his diary. It was lunchtime, Saturday 11th of April, and we headed across the street for a sandwich and soft drink.

We were staying in the Milaflores ditrict of Lima, which is quite posh and enjoys great ocean views. The rest of Lima is considered somewhat dodgy, so most visitors stay here on the adjacent suburb of Baracco. Simon showed me around and down to the the ocean front, and we enjoyed a couple of beers and awaited the arrival of Paul.

Paul is a friend of ours from back home in Brighton. He's been out here in South America for the last two years or so, latterly working as a tour guide in Patagonia. As the Patagonia season is at an end he has a few months off so we had arranged to hook up for some travelling around Peru. Eventually we met up back at the hotel and a mammoth session ensued, and the next day after that too.

Simon had contracted some kind of parasitical bug so we hung around in Lima for another couple of days until he felt up to travelling again. Once OK we decided to head south to the oasis resort of Huacachina, which is a mand made lake surrounded by small hotels infront of monsterous sand dunes (check the blog photo). Once the playground of the Peruvian elite the resort is now a playground for thrill seeking backpackers. If your idea of fun is a white knuckle ride over sand dunes in a souped up dune buggy, with sand boarding thrown in for good measure, then your luck is in.

Luckily for us that is our idea of fun, and we enjoyed the heart-stopping-turbo-charged joyride so much that we nearly did it twice. Instead we opted for the next two days around the hotel pool, with lots of excellent Peruvian food thrown in to boot. If you have not tried Peruvian food you really should, best food I've had so far on this continent!

So after Huacachina it was back to Lima to pick up any supplies that we needed before heading north up the Peruvian coast. Paul took us to a locals market out in the suburbs where you can buy all thwe clothing, media and electronics you could ever need at a huge discount on the high street price. We also hatched a plan to buy a car and drive it to Colombia, but after doing some research decided that there was far too much red tape envolved and shelved the idea.

So instead we headed north to the town of Chiclayo on the overnight express. We had a cultural day exploring the world class Museo Tumbas Reales de Sipan, which holds findings from the nerby pyramids of the Sipan civilization. After that it was time to head for the surf town of Mancora and a different type of culture altogether...