Travelled south from Lima along the coast to Pisco for a night, then into Nazca to see the famous Nazca lines. The thing that has amazed me most about Peru so far is the landscape....all coastal Peru seems to be desert. It isn't a desert with occasional salt bush like home or grasses and the occasional tree link around the Northern Cape of South Africa, it is a desert with rock, stone and nothing more. I expected jungles and mountains and it been like the Nallabour plane, beautiful but desolate.

From Pisco went out on boat trip to the Ballestas Islands which are just off the coast. These islands with an abundance of wildlife (all different types of birds,sea lions and apparently fish) are known as the poor mans Galapagos. The wildlife that I witnessed in such a short time just blew me away. With no predators on the islands the birds thrive and s***e every where, thus the only human presence is when every four years Peruvian workers come to the islands to harvest the guano for fertilizer - its five meters deep in some areas!!!

After the Ballstras and some further travel we reached an Oasis in the desert, which is now a little tourist town known as Haucachina. Went off into the dunes surrounding the oasis in some pipe cars to do some radical 4x4ing and some sandboarding. It basically ended up a pretty cool day in Peru.

Nasca was a bit of a tourist hole, very hot and very crowded with crappy hotels and tourist prices everywhere. I had been feeling pretty sick since Saturday night with, nauseous, vomiting and diarrhea, I was eating basically bread and water and had used immodium to survive the intervening bus journeys and activities. On our second morning in Nazca I also had acquired a fever. I managed to drag myself out of bed and got in a ridiculously small plane to go for an overflight of the Nazca lines. The Nazca lines and pictures were etched in the desert by the ancient Nasca people their origins and significant is still a bit of a mystery. The lines were okbut I enjoyed the scenery of the desert plain and mountains a lot more.

Spent the rest of the day fortifying myself with immodium and stoggy food for the overnight bus trip to Arequipa.