Hello again folks,
Checking in with you today from the sunny city of Arequipa, 2335m above sea level! The last few days have been hectic, exhausting, and very good fun. A quick recap...
Arriving in Lima, one thing quickly becomes obvious - any Peruvian with a drivers license seems to know two languages. First is Spanish (which I´m slowly starting to pick up), and the second is the melodious tones of the car horn. From what I´ve been able to gather, a quick honk on the horn can be a ´Get out of the way´, ´Do you need a lift into town?´ or even ´Check out the funky tunes my car makes when I press the steering wheel´... From 6am to 2am in the morning, this second language is a constant companion.
On Saturday, I met up with the tour group I will be travelling with for the next 3 weeks. Happy to report that it´s a great group - a mix of Aussies, Brits and Kiwis. It seems like I´m the youngest in the group, with Manfred being the oldest (somewhere in his 60s). There are a lot of couples on the tour, but everyone seems happy to do things as a group.
Although I found Lima quite interesting (with a number of fascinating museum exhibits, monasteries, and even catacombs), for me the real highlight of the trip so far has been Nasca. Up early in the morning to visit some pre-Inca archaeological sites, followed by a bit of a jaunt through the sand dunes in a dune buggy, topped off with a spot of sandboarding (yes, it is exactly what it sounds like). And that was just the morning!
In the afternoon, we went out to see the legendary Nasca Lines - enormous lines drawn in the desert. Only 30 cm deep, but stretching on for kilometres, some are simple straight lines, while some are shapes of people, families or animals. The Peruvians in the area almost venerate a woman named Maria Reiche - she devoted 50 years of her life to mapping and studying the lines, and today there are museums and observatories honouring her for her efforts.
One of the great tragedies of the lines is that because they are scraped into the desert surface, which is almost completely flat, it is pretty much impossible to see them from ground level. As a result, when they were building the Pan-American Highway, no-one knew they were there, and the highway bisected a number of the lines, including a large representation of the Lizard. However, a large number of the lines have been preserved, and some have even been restored. Our group used some viewing platforms to see some of the larger shapes and lines, although you would really need to see the desert from a plane to appreciate the figures fully.
Last night was a 9 hour overnight bus trip from Nasca to Arequipa - more comfortable than a plane, but still nowhere near as good as a bed. Thankfully, today seems to be a bit of a quiet day before we head off for Colca Canyon tomorrow morning. The trip up there tomorrow will take us to the highest point on the entire trip (about 4,900m above sea level), before heading back down into the canyon. And just for a bit of fun, I´ll be doing that downhill run on a mountain bike - about a thousand metre vertical descent over an hour. Can´t wait!
That´s probably all for now - apologies that I don´t have any pictures, but I´m having a bit of trouble getting them off the camera onto the site. I´ll keep trying, and hopefully have some up soon.
Until next time,
Patto