Desert Nights Youth Hostel Ica

... sleeping bags are more suiteable for freezing temperature so it was a hot night.. In the future we will investigate our room thoroughly before we decide to stay ...

Because we didn't want to spend a lot of time in our room we decided to have dinner and enjoy a glass of wine afterwards. In the morning we friendly refused the breakfast in our hostal (they probably didn't clean the kitchen for 3 months and there were cats everywhere) and we went to ...

... 1488;ת העיר, השוק, היכן לאכול ולהסת 93;בב) וכשהג 06;נו לאיקה התחלנ 93; את התהלי 98; מחדש.
ק ;ודם כל מבי ...

... to admire the stars from our ceilingless toilet.

The next day after being bitten to buggery by mossy`s in the night we opted to skip the mental buggy ride after a mad american girl waltzed into a restaurant nursing a golf ball sized lump on her head, and instead hired out 2 boards to walk up the local dunes, and try a shot at sandboarding by foot.

After a lung crunching wade up to the peak of the ...

... were a blast but we are trying to stick to ecological tourism, which would definitely not apply. Ica was a dump and their emolientes (the first of our trip, were a B- at best.) Awaiting better ones tonight, here in Arequipa... Tomorrow we raft and the day after we trek into the land of the Condors, Cabanaconde. We may scale a volcano, too, El Misti, if we acclimatize appropriately on our trek.

So we are finally back in civilisation (if you can call it that when the @ or spacebar on the keyboard don{t work properly and I have just been served raw fish for lunch!). Unfortunately the hotel we wanted to stay at in Ica (with its own airstrip!) was full but we have an adequate,much cheaper option along the road.

Have come to Huacachina for the day where there is a palm fringed lake so have been having a little swim and sunbathe,a much needed rest after a few ...

... the pricey side, but had a pool and was very clean, so small loss) and a dune buggy tour. The tour was super fun. The ride was like a roller coaster, because he´s able to go up and down incredibly steep dunes. We also stopped here and there to so sandboarding, which is actually pretty hard, since there´s no real edge to speak of like a snowboard. Thankfully I made it out unscathed, but there were some nasty spills, highlighted by one particularly nasty one where Luke ate a ...

... on your **** if you´re me) and then have to trek all the way back up again. Exhausting! I wasn´t very good and got pretty frustrated, having never really been taught any technique, I kept falling over comically when I got too fast. There were also some locals who were ludicrously good and kept boarding down the dune and doing jumps with ease. Grrr. I also foolishly decided to take my camera out with me; I got some lovely photos as the sun was setting, but the ...

... lines to be named after their civilization. Or at least this is my theory, as no one really knows why the Nazca lines exist.

What people who are given to studying these things have figured out is that the lines, over 1200 of them covering 500 square kilometers, were constructed between 100 and 900 AD. What thousands of tourists have figured out is that the lines make a pretty convenient stop over between Arequipa and Lima.

So I get off the bus ...

... have been 20 people staying there, of which we saw about four at a time. It was serene on its own but the sound of the calm ocean made it even more peaceful. I think we could have stayed there forever. The pictures don't do it justice--not even a little.

Once we got settled we took a walk along the bright green, kelp-covered shore and watched pelicans feed on small fish. We got back to the hotel just in time to watch the sunset. By ...

... I am, I held it in and ran across the sand to see if my little precious was okay. She eventually stood up with a **** load of sand in the face (grains jammed into every crevice from the eyes, hair, ears) and a huge smile, and at that point, I had to at least crack a smirk. She looked funny as hell! LOL Sorry Honey, but that's the truth. But more importantly, she survived and we went to do 5 more of these dunes, each getting ...