Hotel Ollanta Ica

... several kilograms of sand in my pants as I rode, nay, slid down on all fours. Renee meanwhile was continuing her on-going battle with gravity, with gravity taking the initial lead. We both made it bottom only to be driven to a larger, even more impressive dune. Some estimates put this sanddune as being taller than Everest, however standing at the top we can both attest it was several metres lower than the mountain. This time we did slightly better ...

... So far, I love Ica. Ate at a place called Anitá´s. Yum. Then caught a cab to Huacachina. Awesome! It is an oasis surrounded by sand dunes, with a lagoon in the middle. Our hotel is cool. Very pretty. There´s a funny loud parrot who seems to live by the pool. Looking forward to having a drink soon... Hi mom!

... engrossing--and a dubbed Taken), and did Bingo, with the winner getting a bottle of pisco (for those of you who don't know what that is, I'll explain plenty later). Ohh, and there was also Wi-Fi on the bus (this I didn't like--I'm of the belief that like in an airplane, buses should be to some extent a sanctuary from temptations to hectic communication, but I also didn't have my computer, so really, who cares?).

When we got off the bus in Ica we met up with these two ...

... open the door to the men´s when my ears were assaulted by this insistent and irate noise: "Eh eh ehhhhhh!" Jesus Christ. I looked at her and she angrily jabbed a one sole coin into my chest, evidently a primitive form of indicating the requisite payment. I handed her such an amount to satiate her disturbing noise-making ways; for this expenditure I was treated to a toilet that was actually an insult to humanity. Don´t have cubicles with no doors; I did not want ...

... Next step, a shower and seeral hours spent trying to get the sand out of my ears.

In the morning, I am up early for my trip to the Islas Ballestas. The last few days, I have been following Perú's gringo trail to the letter adn this is the last stop before Lima. I sleep on the ride to Paracas and then duck down as the boat speeds its way to the islands. My camera has consumed too much sand in Huacacina adn is no longer working, so I try to fix it ...

... your legs and ride it in a straight line down the dune. You can really get some speed up this way!! The first time I screamed, and then after I managed to get the sand out of my mouth I learnt to keep it shut the next time! Between dunes we were bombing around on the sand buggies and the dunes kept getting steeper and steeper and more daunting but we didn’t bottle out (although I wish I’d had the guts to!) in fact Steve won a lot of the ...

... from the UK. They couldn't have been more than 22 years old. We all got to talking while they set up their tent. That's right, they were trying to save some cash by camping at hostels that would let them or at dedicated campsites. Their plan was to scour Peru then eventually make it over to Bolivia. Both of them did not know a lick of Spanish. On top of that, they mentioned that their means of ...

... stuff on this trip other than hiking, hiking, and more hiking. Not that hiking is bad, but the two aforementioned activities would be a welcome change. We found the Hotel Curasi hostel (it's a hostel, don't know why they stuck Hotel in the name) with the help of the taxi driver since the one I originally wanted was booked. Part of our check-in process was signing up for the dune buggy ride ...

... up before realising that going down head first was much more fun! we were out for two hours before reaching a perfect high spot where we stopped to get the sunset acrross the desert! It really was the most perfect birthday present.

Later that evening we went out to dinner with Anna and Carl we met at our hostel. The restaurant was ...um... interesting, it was baisically in an allyway. the food was absolutly distugusting, I asked to go to the toilet which took me past the ...

... thing that seemed to be all you can eat was cucumber! So we just took advantage of the free rum and cokes to try and make up for the terrible Bbq.

The next day we went on our buggy ride. We had been told by others that the best driver was a old grey haired guy with a limp, rumour had it the injury had occurred when he had flipped a buggy over in the past! Anyway we arrived for the ride and were just put into one of the buggies, and as fate ...