Peru be dooby doo

Trip Start Jan 30, 2008

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Peru Nazca, Peru
Saturday, September 27, 2008

From Riobamba we headed south sitting on the top of a train for nearly 8 hours as it chugged and puffed its way through the south of ecuador and down the "devil�s nose" mountain. A different way to travel and although it was pretty jammed packed full of tourists and a little bit chilly early doors we enjoyed the views whilst sustaining ourselves with empanadas along the way. Simon says he felt that he also had a Devil�s nose of his own as we had been sick as dogs and it had been blown raw. We never really thought that you could be so close to the equator and be so COLD!

We spent a couple of days in cuenca, home of the panama hat. Despite the repeated invitations to visit the hat museum we did not give in to the frankly overwhelming temptation... Next we headed down to Peru, crossing the border in the middle of the night, to a little beach resort town called Mancora. Here whilst sleep deprived and dosy we managed to drop Linz�s toasty sleeping bag off the back of a motor taxi and it swiftly got snatched away by a local scamp, however somewhat miracoulously it turned up later in the police station! Thumbs up to the local coppers! We spent a couple of days sunbathing (Linz- sunburning?) and chilling out here. Simon fell in love with a local street vendor who provided a new treat of baked potatoes stuffed with meat and salad for 1 sole (about 15p)

Next stop was Trujillo where we visited Chan Chan, an amazingly preserved mud adobe city with lots of carvings of fish and fishing nets and pelicans (you may have guessed its pretty close to the sea!!) which was once the home of the Chimu civilisation who came before the Incas! We spent a good day seing chimu sites in varying states of looking like huge piles of sand... We headed further south spending about 4 hours (enough!) wandering around Lima and then took a night bus to Nazca which is where we are now.

Nazca: dusty desert town, lots of hotels referencing lines, not a lot to do but look at the lines.

Chimu carvings

So thats what we did
This morning we took a half hour flight in a little cesna over the nazca lines.They seemed a bit smaller then we expected (but we were at 2thousand feet) and were quite amazing - perfectly clear pale outlines of various animals and symbols in the desert. No body knows why or for what purpose the Nazca created them but they are pretty cool. as the aircraft swept and banked left and right to afford the hapless tourists within unmissibile photo opportunities of the geoglyphs simon and lindsey�s stomachs turned and we very nearly added some more colour to the shapes below...