Hola! I decided to start blogging about my trip to Peru with Everett and Evan so that people can follow our trip beyond the couple friends and family that I normally email.
We are now on day 4 of our trip. A quick recap - on Monday evening, we took a flight from Atlanta to Lima, where we arrived around midnight. Luckily, Evan is a crazy frequent flier, and all three of us got bumped up to first class, which was muy comodo... much food and drink for all. After landing in Lima, we took a 2 a.m. bus to Ica, and then a 6 a.m. bus to Nazca.
On Tuesday, we checked into our hostel, the Walk On Inn. Great location, very safe, pretty clean. At 11 a.m. we hopped in a cab and went straight to a little airport to see the Nazca lines via Cesna plane. It was quite awe inspiring, although the tight turns that the pilot took gave me a little vertigo. After a late lunch at La Taberna (chicharron de pollo) we wandered around Nazca, which is a very small quaint town. We took a well needed nap and set up our activity for the next day... sandboarding. Later in the evening we had dinner at La Choza (pisco puras, espogada de pollo) and stopped by la Naztica, a local bar, where our guide for the next day, Enrique, works.
Wednesday morning, we had breakfast at our hostel and then set off for a whole day trip hiking up the world's tallest sand dune with Enrique, two American girls, a Slovenian couple, and a Swiss girl. It was a grueling 7 k.m. up to the top, about half rocky, half sandy, and I was quite thankful when we finally reached the summit. The view was quite beautiful - we could see all the surrounding mountain ranges. Sandboarding was much harder than I thought it would be (we had to carry our own boards up with us) - the board is like a cheap snowboard made out of wood with plastic sides, but no metal edge, unlike a snowboard. You wax the bottom with candle wax. Our first slope was 60 m, where we got to learn some basics about going down. Then it was off to a 100 and 200 m slope, where Enrique took some amazing pictures of us. Everett and Evan definitely took to the sandboarding better than I did, but I somehow Enrique managed to take a picture of me that is so unbelievably flattering that I look almost pro. The last slope was 1000 m (1 km! for you non-metric folks), and by the bottom, my legs were about to fall off, and it was almost dark. We marched back an additional 3 k.m. in the twilight and saw beautiful constellations, the Milky Way, and a shooting star. Enrique showed us a nice echo trick in the mountains. Afterwards, it was a quick shower, dinner at La Choza (ceviche... raw fish cured in citrus.. delicious) and our overnight bus from Nazca to Arequipa. Luckily, the bus workers were not on strike, and we were able to leave Nazca.
Today has been a fairly low key day in Arequipa... we went to see the catedral in Plaza de Armas and we saw the frozen Peruvian princess Juanita, who was sacrificed by the Inca at the top of the nearby volcano. Otherwise, we have been enjoying the city, and gearing up for our trip to the 2nd deepest canyon in the world tomorrow.
More to come,
Matthew
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