Day 63 - Monday 3rd May

At 10 I joined some kiwis Brett and Mark who I'd noted on the hostel logbook had put their occupations as 'zoo keeper' and 'stone mason' (read lawyer and accountant, this concept I would soon have to adopt...) for a dune buggying tour with sandboarding thrown in for fun. It's a converted Toyota Land Cruiser and I take converted loosely. It bears no resemblance to the 4x4. A steel frame around a huge, noisy engine with even bigger tires, it sounds like an aircraft taking off. But it moved. Really fast. The best rollercoaster you've been on. So dangerous but incredible. Roaring across the sand at 80mph, driving straight at near vertical dunes is nerveracking to say the least. Riding down 100m high sandbanks was one of the highlights of my trip. So much fun. In comparison, the sandboarding was near-impossible and not great. Until you give up and slide with your stomach on the board. You reach up to maybe 40mph and right next to the ground with sand whipping past your face it was so so epic. Loved it. One of the best few hours of the trip.

For afternoon I joined the kiwis on a wine tour of the area (never a chore) but sadly were also accompanied by some Israeli girls who were ridiculously rude. At the first winery they had no English speaking guide but they apologised profusely and what can you expect, they speak SPANISH here! You can still pick up most of it anyway but after 5 or 10 minutes the girls started shouting at the guide about why she wasn't speaking english. REALLY annoying. The second winery was a similar experience but the range of desert wines and piscos made for a more pleasant experience!!

When we got back we decided to climb the dune to watch the sunset but completely misjudged how hard it is and how long it takes to walk up sand!! On tired calves it was a nightmare!! We missed sunset, just, but still got amazing views from the top, and got some epic photos of us running and jumping down the dune, landing thigh deep in sand.

We ate dinner next door at Arturos, waited on by the friendly Arturo himself but just before we were heading for the sack a couple we'd met at the winery turned up with a bottle of whisky. Good fun but I didn't last more than a couple of 'whisky and sprites'. A toilet break at 5am confirmed I'd made the right decision as two of the group were still up and most of the way through a second bottle...

Day 64 - Tuesday 4th May

May the 4th be with you. I hate saying that but with Dad drilling it into me at an early age I can't help it. Sorry.

A fairly uneventful day. Arturo had lured me back to his restaurant with the promise of real coffee - 'no instantaño' and he didn't disappoint. Real orange juice. And a real, strong cafetiere. It was amazing. A bit of skype and reading by the pool later and it became clear that Mark was in no condition after the whisky to travel and so Brett decided to go on without him! Thus after a quick lunch we headed into Ica for one of the local buses that depart every 5 minutes for the 5 hour trip to Lima. A bad, dubbed American Football high school league movie, my first view of the Pacific Ocean and a lot of blog writing later, here I am in Lima!

A crazily sprawled city, it seemed like most of the 5 hour bus ride was within the city itself. We taxied to the main district Mirafloris to another Point Hostel, got ourselves some dinner and stayed up with beer and pool in the Pointless Bar...