Pisco, Ballestos islands and sand-boarding

Trip Start Jun 03, 2008
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Trip End Aug 11, 2008


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Flag of Peru  ,
Sunday, June 22, 2008

On  Sunday we left Lima for Pisco. Pisco is named after the national drink of Peru and is famous for the 7.8 earthquake which almost completely destroyed the town in August 2007. Much of the destruction is still evident in the town with many buildings in the process of being restored and many of the inhabitants still living in temporary shelters.

Pisco was our base for our boat tour to the Ballestas Islands which are famous for abundant wildlife such as sea lions, penguins and lots of birds. We saw a lot of wildlife and the sceanry was excellent. The boat tour lasted two hours and can probably be best described as a poor mans Galapagos Islands.

After the tour we took a bus to the Huacachina Oasis. This was one thing on the trip that I was really looking forward to, sand-boarding. The Oasis is full of huge sand dunes which you can attempt to sand-board down. To get to the best dunes we hired a dune buggy with a professional driver. This was amazing, just as good as any roller-coaster and he sped up the sides of the dunes and over the top of them to a huge vertical drop on the other side. After twenty minutes we got our boards ready to attempt sand-boarding. Its a lot more difficult than it looks, but after a few spectacular falls(on sand thats much harder than I expected!!) I got the hang of it and it was a brilliant experience. For the last sand dune we all lay down on our boards and wend down the largest sand dune at incredible speeds. One of the highlights of the tour and would recommend anybody to try it.
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