Vanessa Fun Day and Nasca Lines

For 8 and 1/2 months now we have been keeping our eye open for and

activity that would be worthy of Vanessa Day. Before we left, Andrew

promised his friend Vanessa that we would do something really great

and exciting in her honour. What we really wanted to do was to learn

Kite Boarding as that is one of Vanessa's favorite pass-times... but

apparently kite boarding is a little over our budget...

Finally we discovered the sand dunes at Huacachina and thought it

would be the perfect way to enjoy Vanessa Day. Huacachina is about

300kms south of Lima in pure desert. The cool thing to do is to go

sand boarding, and as this has been the first season ever for both of

us without hitting the ski slopes, we jumped at the chance! Even

though we didn't have skis, we thought we could still hack it with the

single planker.

Hiking up the dunes was a hot and sweaty affair, but we were confident
the ride down would be TOTALLY worth it.

It felt really strange to be holding a board wearing sneakers, shorts and a t-shirt!

The view of Huacachina from the top of the dunes... it was actually pretty steep!

Looking over the dunes toward the town of Ica... yes the white spots you see IS unfortunately garbage...

Road off into the desert wasteland

Andrew at the top, contemplating his line.

So to be honest... sandboarding was a little bit lame. Perhaps you can tell by the look on my face. After all that, it was impossible to turn and going straight you could only make it like 5km/h. Not exactly the adrenaline rush we had been looking forward to! It was only AFTER we returned the boards that some new friends we had met informed us that you actually need paraffin wax to make the boarding worthwhile... Ah well... Vanessa, we had good intentions for your day and even though it wasn't mind blasting, we still enjoyed our day in the sand!

From Huacachina we headed to the famous Nazca. Home to the Nazca lines.

We were too cheap to spend the money on a plane ride over the lines, which is the only real way to see the lines. The only other option is from this rather small viewing platform. You can just make out the lines in the desert. Im sure it would have been pretty neat from the air.

We travelled for a couple days with three friends from Germany. They were traveling in this old transformed German Army vehicle named Mops... although we dubbed it The Green Monster.

Enjoying a Gas station parking lot party with the germans

From there we headed back into the Andes and towards Cusco. Check back for that blog!