Nazca and Huaccachina

We reached Cusco bus station at 5:30pm and as luck would have it the bus was late so we managed to still get tickets for the 5:30 bus to Nasca- haha (similar to African time here in S. America). Now in Peru they give new meaning to travelling salesmen. On each of our bus trips in Peru we have started our journey with some guy in the front very passionately selling his special tea, granny's knitted mittens or sacred something. (did I say VERY passionately? Every 5th word was POR FAVOR senora! Translated is please madam...) Now these guys rant - in Spanish - for about 30 min to 45 min solidly before finally getting off somewhere with his bag of tricks. Now on this special trip a certain someone FORGOT the earphones in the hand luggage so we actually had to listen to this guy. Now just go and switch on your TV to a Chinese home adverts channel and listen to that on full blast for a while. It is SO irritating I was very tempted to start screaming SHUt Up! Just SHUt the Up! And throw anything we could at him, water bottle, coca sweets even our precious toilet roll!

*sigh* We eventually got to Nasca at around 7am and made our way directly to the airport, bargained down the fare and managed to get ourselves on a flight leaving in just 30 min with only 4 tourists! Awesome! ...Well about 2 hours later we eventually took off in our little Cessna. (maybe we shouldn't have bargained so hard! Actually we later discovered that the afternoon before was cloudy so they were trying to catch up flights)

There are in total 12 images in the sand. On about the 4th picture I was willing to pay the full fare to take me down. There was no air in the plane and the temperature must have slowly increased from about 35 to 45 degrees by the time we landed! (the temp on the ground was like 35 degrees, this place is an extension of the Atacama desert, Chile - the dryest desert in the world) The heat only added to the drops from the sky that made you loose your stomach and then of course the ... from left and right so the left side of the plane can see and then immediately afterwards the right side can see. Urgll! Please I don't want to see, stopped turning to the right! anyway the short trip took about 30 to 45 min so you don't have much time to click away at the 12 images, most were not visible as the lines are practically the same colour at the sand so here's a free tip, save your money and check them out on google earth! (unless you're a conspiracy theorist then you should definitely make the trip and meet up with your buddies who seemed to all be at the airport theorizing about it.)

Back down to earth we caught a cab back to town and managed to get a bus to Ica leaving straight away :) From Ica it's a 5 min cab ride to Huaccachina. This is a tiny tiny oasis in the middle of the desert. The only thing going for it is sand bording! Oh yes yes NByes! We signed up for sand boarding that afternoon along with 6 other Israelis.
It was such fun! Thankfully the dune buggies take you up the dunes so you just wax your board and down you go! The sand is so soft and fine guys were taking some serious tumbles (including me:) but no one was hurt. Before heading back we stopped to watch the sun set and then more dune boarding in the dark, a few collisions later we decided to listen to the buggie driver who had been screaming lets go for the last 30 min but we kept on running back up with our boards and riding down again and again. :) ( who's idea was that! Tsk! Honestly!)

After about 3 showers and still discovering sand in weird places we relaxed by the pool and heat for dinner.