Peru part one - Lima to Nazca

I´m travelling again! This time doing a trip from Lima down to La Paz. I started off in Lima with a daytour of the city and the Pachacamac (?) ruins. Lima is an okey city, not as bad as I thought it would be. I stayed in a hotel in Barranco, about 20 mins from downtown. On the citytour we visited Barranco, Miraflores and the downtown area, saw a few parks, lots of beautiful colonial style houses in lots of different colours, and the San Fransisco church with the catacombs underneath.
I met up with the group later that evening, they all seem very nice. Mostly English people, a couple of Germans, a couple of Canadians, a Kiwi and an Aussie. I´m sharing a room with Maxa, one of the Canadian girls.

The next day we headed down to Pisco where we spent the night, and the next morning we went on a speedboat trip to the Ballestas Islands. They were quite amazing, thousands of birds (mostly Cormorants and Peruvian Boobies, and some pelikans), sealions and penguins. After that we visited a Pisco factory, where we were shown how they make Pisco, which is the Peruvian spirit. We also got to taste quite a few different varieties...
In the afternoon we headed down to Ica where we had lunch, I tried a classic Peruvian dish, Ceviche. Ceviche is basically raw fish marinated in lime and onions, served with sweet potato, normal potato and corn. Quite good actually! Then it was time for sandboarding! You wouldn´t believe it, but Peru has some of the biggest sanddunes in the world! We drove around them in a buggy which was so much fun! It was like being on a rollercoaster :) And the sandboarding was great also, we slid down huge dunes on a board that looked like a snowboard, face first on our stomach. Great fun!

Next stop was Nazca, where we went up in tiny 6-seater Cessna planes, to get a good wiew of the Nazca-lines. Nobody knows who made the lines, what they mean or why they are there, and they depict a lot of figures only visible from the air. Fascinating! We all felt a bit sick after the flight, so it was nice to just chill by the pool the rest of the afternoon. In the evening we went to a traditional Pachamanca seremony where we got served amazing food cooked underground.

More to come!