Lima again.....with some interesting pottery!

So after a few drinks we`ll see how this blog goes! We had some drinks and a bucket with 7 shots in it for 2.50. Breaking the bank I know!

Getting to Lima with our Norwegian friends was a doddle, rocking up at a different hostel to last time but still in Miraflores. It was literally over the street though, not exactly exploring the city! We got in pretty early though and unsurprisingly our room wasn`t ready so they unlocked the tv room and let us sleep in there on the bean bags.

Knowing that the kebab place was over the road that we had visited on our first lima visit, we couldn`t be arsed to look around for food so went back there and ordered the kebab which was possibly the best kebab we have ever tasted! It wasn`t like English 3am kebabs, it was actually proper meat and it was lightly curried and it was just awesome!

Getting back to the hostel we met back up with the Norwegians we travelled here with and got involved with some drinking games that the hostel put on (which was just ring of fire). With drinking in full swing I found myself out of drink and was looking for a way to get some more alcohol. No one really knows how it came it about but the Norwegian guy bet me that I wouldn`t suck on his big toe for a long island iced tea (obvisouly didn`t know me well enough) so exactly that I did, and it wasn`t just a little lick, I got the whole thing in there and earnt my long island, much to the disgust of Jen who had to actually move away from the table as it made her feel ill! I didn`t care though, free long island iced tea. Bonus.

Toe sucking done with, we headed out to hit the club. Me being a little drunk I was in Maccy D`s mood so we strolled over the road to the 24 hour Maccy D`s at 2am only to find that the so called 24 hour fast food joint had actually just closed only to reopen at 10am. Being quite drunk I was absolutely disgusted and threw a little tantrum and Jen had to end up taking me home leaving the Norwegians to go out by themselves.

The next day I was oblivious to what had happened the night before and we took on the cultural activity of going all the way out of town to a museum which was actually pretty cool. It had a whole bunch of pottery and other cool stuff from Peruvian history including all the stuff which came before the Incas (which is actually a lot!), such as this shizzle below.

 

This crazy little thing which looks like a bunch of knots on some sting (which is exactly what it is) was the Inkans way of communication. Obviously not bright enough to come up with email, telephones or even the carrier pigeon back then, they developed a way of comminicating by putting dates and things in a sequence of knots on strings and then sending a runner for 120 miles a day to take a message. They still haven`t worked out what these knots mean to this day but still pretty dam interesting.

 

Different to pretty much all museums (as Jen pointed out, suppose that degree came in handy for something), is that they allowed you to go into their storage room where they had literally thousands or artifacts which didn`t make the display room which was pretty cool to see.

Finally we looked around the erotic section of the museum where they stored pots with massive members (if you will) as they valued the god of fertility mainly for their lands so that they could grow crops. Well that`s the official story, I just think they were somewhat horny!

 

 Fertility ehhhhh?!

 

 Hmmmmm......

 

 

The next day and being back in Lima I obviously had to go and check out more footy shirts so we went back to the big market and had a look around, much to Jen`s pleasure. She sure loves checking out footy shirts. She`s so used to it now that she can actually tell what most random shirts are!

After a look around the same old market, it was time for something new so we went to the catacombs located underneath the monastary in the centre of Lima. Getting there, we paid our entrance fee and waited for the English tour, with 3 Spanish tours going infront of us, we wondered if an English tour was ever going to happen after waiting for about half an hour. But finally us and one other couple were called for the English tour.

It was such a bizarre place when we finally walked around, with hundreds of human remains, the weirdest of which was this tomb where they decided to lay the bones out in some kind of circular pattern.

Coming back from town we swung by the famous world record breaking fountain park which was pretty cool. They had about 13 different fountains, all in different styles, with the water lit up in different colours.

They had a walk through tunnel fountain where it was pretty impossible to walk through without getting a soaking!

Jen was after a dramatic photo again and went for this one for the blog.

And this was the tallest of the lot, with the Allianz Lima stadium in the background (more interesting than the actual fountains if you ask me!)

Lima part 2 was finished after some interesting events. Time for our first flight since flying out to Rio, to Cusco this time....where we would meet Jen`s mates from home to take on the mighty Inka trail up to Macchu Picchu.

High in Huaraz (not like that!)

With our bus getting in 2 hours earlier than we were told we weren`t too impressed. Now you might think this was a good thing but when your bus is supposed to get in at 7.30am and we turned up at 5.30am it wasn`t so great, mainly as our hostel had arranged to pick us up from the bus terminal: Being 2 hours early though, we weren`t that keen on sitting around for all this time but in the knowledge that we had a transfer sorted, we hadn`t even bothered to write down the hostel`s address or even the dam name of the place! Our frantic attempts at going through lonely plant books, checking the map at the bus terminal to see if we recognised the street name, asking the local chap names of hostels, had all failed. All we knew was that it was up a hill!

Getting more and more annoyed at ourselves we took a taxi and told him the name of the hostel which he claimed he knew and after taking us to a place which clearly wasn`t it, we realised he had no idea where it was but just picked us up for a fare. We told him to take us back to the plaza we knew was withing 4 blocks and paid him a pound for his amazing services. Now being pretty dark, full backpacks on and not really knowing where we were, we didn`t really know what to do, but a helpful chap told us the general direction of the hostel. We nervously set on our way looking like easy bait if anyone wanted to mug the lost backpackers! Randomly walking along, I thought I recognised a road name from finding our hostel online so took Jen down it. Instincts kicked in and for some reason I lead us down another road and saw a minibus of people getting picked up for a days excursion which meant a hostel had to be nearby so even if it wasn`t ours they could tell us where ours was or at least give us a map or let us stay in reception til the sun came up. Fortunately it was our actual hostel and we had survived what was probably a silly idea of walking around a new town with no idea where we were going. Asking for trouble really but it`s all good as here we are about 6 weeks later as I catch up on this blog! The eye stye disappeared too if you were worried (as I know you all are!) (Jack has failed to mention my contribution of guessing we were going up a hill as described in their directions I vaguely remembered)

As we rocked up to the hostel though we saw these adorable little kittens (yeah I used the word `adorable`....and what?!) and checked in and went straight to sleep!

Waking up about midday we went for a walk around after actually receiving a map, not much to report there other than some chickens hanging up on almost every stall and also a market which had dried meats in which was possibly the worst smell ever!

Getting back after this peutrid smell we booked into some treks that Huaraz had to offer, seeing as it was already at 3,300 metres above sea level. We booked into a trek to a glacier at 5,000 metres the next day and a well known tourist trek called Laguna 69 the day after that. With my long hair starting to take shape the guy at the hostel said that I looked like Oasis, pretty vague description but I got the point. If it ain`t Pique it`s one of the Gallagher brothers.....not sure which one is better to look like but he didn`t pick!

With not much on that night, we chilled out and watched a movie called "Men of Honour" with Cuba Gooding Jr and Robert De Niro purely because of the clown bus operater on our way here. They had put this exact movie on in English to start with so I was quite excited as I knew it was a good film. About 10 minutes in though he put the Spanish subtitles on which was fair play, everyone can now watch. 10 minutes after that though is where the bus conductor gained his douche bag status, he only went and put the Spanish dubbing on as well as the subtitles so now it was no good to us! The clown had even managed to put the first chapter on repeat which we endured 3 times before someone went and said something. Even then he couldn`t fix it so a passenger had to. Anyway back to the story, we found that same movie in the hostels collection so banged it on.

After this I was excited to be offered a 5 a side game of footy but it was in an hour. So we ordered a pizza which turned up about 15 mins before I had to leave so wolfed down what I could and went out leaving Jen to watch some other movies. Shame it was pissing it down with rain and I only had my 3 pound primark plimmies as the most appropriate footwear, forgot to pack my footy boots. They didn`t put that on the essentials list at STA travel. Anyway off we went and I scored a bad ass curling goal about 10 mins in which made them all think I was pretty good....shame the rain came down harder and from there on out I couldn`t get any grip and fell over almost every time I got the ball. The new tactic was walking about which is pretty much my tactics at footy in England anyway!

The next day we went off on our glacier hike but along the way we were taken to some natural springs where the views were amazing.

We also stopped off at some 100 year old cactus type things. They were pretty massive as you can see.

Oddly, they grow for 100 years, flower and then die and fall over...what a life. But it did provide for some entertaining pictures as you could get inside the base bit. I thought it would look like a good grass skirt but it wasn`t deep enough so looked more like a tribal pair of ankle reeds or something.

We were also promised ancient cave paintings which I was really excited about but another bus driver gained douche bag status as he slowed down for them but didn`t stop and as they were on the other side of the bus to what we were on, all I caught was a glimse. Very uncool mr driver.

Anyway, we got to the base of the glacier walk and set off through the mud, some people chose to take the mules to get up there but we were in Macchu Picchu training so walk we did. Was only me Jen and one other guy from the group who did walk. But we made it to the top after 30 mins and here`s proof!

The top however was not the end and we had a short hike to the actual glacier.

I suppose it might have been impressive had we not have walked on the mighty Glaciar Moreno back in Argentina. O well, it was still cool in it`s own little way.

Back down we came and chilled out again at the hostel and awaited our trek the next day which was supposed to be amazing.

The next day came and off we went on another bus and got to a stopping place for brekkie but I was more interested in the little swing of course!

They had a whole bunch of different sweetcorns hanging up, apparently Peru has over 300 different varieties.

Back on the bus and off to the valley where we would begin our walk, stopping at a beautiful lake at the bottom. If the Laguna 69 at the top was as awesome as this we were in for a treat.

Getting to the small settlement where we would start there was a cool river, and some animals grazing, very picturesque.

Of we set on our trek which was 3 hours up and 2 down but we were at altitude so it wasn`t as easy as you might think so we slowly plodded along, stopping where we could for photos, anywhere we could for an excuse to rest! This hut was a good enough reason.

The view from back down the valley where we had walked from so far.

And the ice capped moutains in the background, thankfully not where we would be trekking to!

After a very hard 3 hours of trekking we arrived at Laguna 69 at 4,600 metres. Sadly it was a bit overcast and was pretty cold and dingy so it wasn`t as impressive as it could have been. We both thought the lake at the bottom we stopped at was better, could have stopped there and saved ourselves some time and effort!

Time to come back down though after our sandwich break. This annoying cow decided he wasn`t going to move out the path however so on tired legs, we had to clamber over the rocks to the side. Cheers cow.

But back down we did eventually get, and strangely we were first which we didn`t think we would be as we were pretty knackered so I made Jen take a picture of me on our empty bus as proof we were first down!

I really fancied a thai for dinner so we went to check the place out but they had a sign on the door saying "shut for fumigation"! You`d think they might just put shut, but we won`t be going there that night or the next!

The next day was day of sport! Excited that Tigers were in the final I got up early and put on ESPN at 8am as the time difference meant that was when it was on over here. However, the ESPN channel was diffferent out here and had Champions League prep on. Not too impressed I went to the hostels computers and tried to stream it only to get a rubbish connection and purple players running around. Again not impressed but was saved by a guy with a laptop who knew a link and had nothing better to do so let me watch with him on there....legend. After warning my brother of Northamptons chances of winning the league 6 months ago (at the time he laughed but seems they almost made it!) I was pretty nervous, but then Dillan Hartley got sent off cos he`s about as clever as a fly trying to resist the temptation of a light bulb and had to go and say something to the ref...big no no in rugby. On Leicester went to win which I`m not sure they would have done so easily against 15 men.

Later I watched the Champions League final with a couple from Munich so I obvioulsy took the chance to support Dortmund. Didn`t help though. After a good old day of sport I was excited to see it continue with the offer of more 5 a side, this time not raining. Back on went the plimmies and the Leicester shirt and we set up a game between 5 Peruvians vs the rest of the world (as they coined it) comprised of two Brits, a Norwegian, that German guy I just mentioned and an Argentinian. On the way we came across a 4x4 which had backed into a ditch so all of us puffed out our chests and picked that bad boy up out of the ditch. If you are wondering.....yes....4x4s are extremely heavy!

We gave them a good old spanking much to their dismay as they always do these "rest of the world" games and normally win so they were slightly annoyed to be getting battered. At one point I even did a Haji and trapped the ball inbetween my feet and hoped between two of them and went on to score....footy fans will appreciate that!

However, as the game went on, my fitness withered (to be fair we were at 3,300 metres) and Jen managed to catch this shot of me breathing out my arse, hands on hips were a constant for the last 15 mins!

After getting chummy with the Norwegian guy from the game as he was in our room, we went out with him and his Norwegian friend for a dead cheap Lomo Saltado, the national dish and then we all jumped on a bus together back to Lima as we discovered they were staying in the same hostel as us.... (more football shirt shopping here I come)

No surfing in surfers paradise, Huanchaco

Arriving in Huanchaco at the bus terminal I was disgusted to see the lack of originality in the following poster. I think big transport vehicles which turn into robots has been done already!

After getting over this monstrosity we grabbed a taxi and were dropped off right outside the hostel which was strangely seperated into two buildings but we didn`t know this at the time so we wondered into the reception area of the hostel which is also where our double room would be situated. Thinking that we had booked into the most boring hostel ever we had no idea that there was another part to it next door which had the dorminatories in it where we would later meet some people!

But without this knowledge yet, we strolled out on our own for a look around town. We found a nice looking place to munch some lunch on the sea front but after looking at the menu Jen decided we should find somewhere cheaper as we were trying to save a bit of dollar. We really fancied fried seafood though so set off on our mission to find it.

Walking along the beach was pretty cool though, as they had all of their reed boats propped up to dry out (im guessing thats why they were propped up).

Looking back where we had just walked, we could see the pier which was pretty cool and also a sight which made me chuckle to myself somewhat. There was a super fat bloke in a learn to surf school by the pier, just about squidged into his wet suit. As we watched the other people in the group successfully ride a little 2 foot wave we were waiting eagerly in anticipation for the larger gentlemans turn. His arms were frantically flapping around trying to catch up with the wave and as he didn`t seem to get anywhere with all his effort, he hopped up in all his glory only to fall over about 2 seconds later. It provided some amusing entertainment for me and Jen anyway, watching from the confort of the wall next to the beach.

Amusment over and done with, as waiting another 10 minutes for this bloke to paddle back was too cringeworthy, we continued our quest to find our fried seafood. We found a pretty nice place and sat down ordering what we wanted along with a beer only for them to come back and say they didnt have it after we had already started our beer. So drink up we did and set off in search off our meal, resisting the restaurants staff relentless attempts to sell us something else to eat. But off we went and found our meal down the road. Along with food they had an offer on 3 large bottles of beer for the price of 2, so I obvioulsy jumped on that bandwagon!

After walking back from lunch we tried to get back into our hostel but it was locked and there was no door bell or anything so we wondered what to do. Randomly walking up the road a bit we peered into next door and noticed our receptionist in there which is how we found out about the rest of the hostel next door!

Night time arrived so we grabbed a burger down the road and came back to the more happening half of the hostel.....by more happening I mean there were 3 people in there! We had picked up a bottle of rum earlier and had a few cheeky drinks with these guys. But inevitably these few drinks turned into a night of drinking games. These 3 guys were really sound though, 2 Danish guys and one American guy who was weirdly more into football than me and was a massive Man United fan (there`s a shock!) and he even knew who Leicester City were (slight redemption for the lad). As the night progressed, one of the Danish guys (called Miguel) got more and more liberal with his stories and told us about a Brazilian girl he got with and was worried that he might of got aids. So of course, lack of sympathy from me and out came all the jokes taking the piss out of a guy, even Jen got in on the action and was ripping him to pieces, I knew I liked that girl for a reason. After a fair few hours of drinking, we had every intention to go out to bars and maybe a club, but the 2 bottles of rum we got through caught up with us, and we had to give it up by 11pm and hit the bed, Jen a little worse for wear.

The next day was a mighty write off! Jen had a super hangover kick in whilst I performed my usual trick of waking up fine! Finally persuading Jen to get up around 3pm we ventured out in search of food and went back to the beach front place we turned down the first day and ordered up some fried calamari which was absolutely amazing! Super fresh and super tasty, all washed down with another beer (its good this travelling malarkey eh?!)

We couldn`t quite work out why they donned the olympic rings on a statue, I`m pretty sure the tiny little town of Huanchaco has never hosted the games!

After finding Jen`s eye gunk episode in Colca Canyon amusing it was her turn to laugh at me as I randomly developed what we think was an eye stye. It was super itchy and hurt to blink or close my eyes but fair is fair and karma allowed for Jen`s amusement.

Walking back from town the sunset kicked in, with Jen determined to capture the perfect photo with some reed boats and the sea. I suppose she did a pretty good job.

Getting back to the hostel we found our three chums from last night with the other Danish guy looking worse than Jen did earlier in the day. Turns out after we crashed out, the guys left the hostel and a random drove by in a pick up and they all jumped in with him and went on to a club in the next town. Miguel met a Dutch girl that night and had arranged to meet up with her at the peer at 1pm the following day. Now of course about 6pm, that time had way past and the poor guy waited for 2 hours for her only for her not to show up. So what did we do. all take the piss out of the guy again! Seemed his way over it was drinking and he was a bit drunk when we rocked up. He did a cartwheel inside at one point and his feet wiped out a ceiling light and then later he managed to fall off his chair. It was too easy to rip this guy. But supposedly his lady friend was meeting him at the hostel at around 8pm. Of course 8pm came and no lady friend so again the jokes came out but around 10.30 she did eventually turn up, she was actually real! Didn`t stop us from ripping him infront of her though but she found it hilarious so it`s all good.

Getting in on the drinking I went out with Miguel to the shop round the corner to pick up some booze only for him to ask me what the Spanish was for Condom (seemed he thought his luck was in). Obvioulsy I had no idea what that was so he asked some randoms in the shop if they knew which they didn`t so he went for the pointing routine to the shop keeper. Turns out the Spanish for condom is condom if you were wondering.
After some more drinking, Miguel went off with his lady friend to her hostel so seemed his persistance paid off.

The next day we went out with the intention of surfing but after seeing some of these jellyfish in the water we thought better of it so Jen went for a spot of sunbathing whilst I learned some more Spanish from our phrase book. We randomly got offered some weed brownies from a rasta chap on the beach but we politely declined.

With surfing off the menu we had a little look around an aquatic museum which was weird as they had tried to preserve some fish and things but they had lost their colour so it looked like they had painted them to try and bring them back to life.

Following our fishy encounter, I fancied some fishing of my own so purchased the oldest fishing apparatus in the world, the old simple line and hook.

After getting a few bites, the little buggers were knicking our tasty mussels and not hooking themselves so with frustration kicking in I went for it one last time and hit gold. Well not quite gold, I don`t even know what it was but it definately wasn`t gold. Jen came close with an attempt at a descriptive by saying they looked like sea ravioli. All the same, I had caught something which is more than what the other 20 or so fisherman had caught so it was a definate success.

Fishing complete we headed back to the hostel after grabbing a "surfer burger" which was about 3 times as expensive as the burger the other night but it was super tasty so kinda worth it.

Packing up our things we jumped on a shoddy little bus on our way to the bus station in town, taking up the entire aisle with our backpacks whilst trying not to look like they were ours as locals struggled to get by. Between you and I tho, I think they knew they were ours!

Quest for football shirts in Lima

A quick four hour bus ride and we were in the capital of Peru....good old Lima. Staying in Miraflores which was the nicer area of Lima (as we`re snobby backpackers!) we had a cheeky look around with this pretty cool looking bull chappy looking over the small park there.

Knowing that we wanted a bite to eat for dinner, we walked around for ages and did our usual trick of not deciding where to go. So with Jen refusing to choose where to eat and getting annoyed we couldn`t find somewhere without faffing about, I took the role of the decision making man, a man who made the wheel (thanks Ron Burgandy) and picked a little Turkish joint as it had nice looking kebabs inside. However upon perusing the menu we decided upon some stuffed vine leaves as Jen`s mum cooks this up often as they are traditionally Cypriat and also had some lamb skewers. The food was bad ass. If you`re ever in Miraflores, Lima.....go to Taboush!

After doing not a whole lot that day, we went back to our hostel and grabbed some happy hour cocktails and chilled out.

The following day, I was keen to go football shirt shopping as I fancied one from each country. There was a mall kinda thing the other end of our area by the sea so we headed towards there taking a detour past the "park of love" seeing as it sounded interesting. Turned out to be a normal looking park but it did have a statue of a canoodling couple which is probably where the name comes from!

Following the park of love, we swung by the mall, which turned out to be pretty poo in comparison to some of our shopping centres. Expecting some sports shops, I was disappointed to only find an adidas shop so only had a limited selection of footy shirts, none of which I really wanted and were also pretty expensive!  

Onwards and upwards though as we swung back via a chocolate museum where we read about the chocolate making process from the cocoa bean. They also offered choccy making classes but they were pretty steep so we just settled for the look around.

After Jen was keen on a sandwich place she read in the lonely planet guide, we went and munched there which turned out to be pretty mediocre. O well, at least we got to eat in a place founded by the odd combination of 3 chaps from Peru, Spain and Scotland.

After wondering around aimlessly we decided it was time for the mandatory cultural activities so we went to a pre-Inkan archaeological site which sadly, the Lima folk had lost as they decided to build on quite a lot of it, nowadays they don`t really know how big it would have been. But anyway, it was still really interesting, seeing their method of building pyramid like structures using mud blocks, layed in a specific way to withstand earthquakes.

There was a mock up of a dude making the mud blocks and you can see the style of wall a little better in this photo. They also found some mummified bodies in the structures here.

Following this, we tried to sort out our visas after the douche bag border control guy only gave us 30 days, when we should have had as many as 183! after looking around for ages where it was located on the map, we finally found it hidden under a roundabout in the middle of the road where you had to go underground to get to it. Stupid place for an immigration office if you ask me. Anyway, after seeing the queue for it we decided to just risk it as we were told that it would only cost a dollar a day to stay over the visa period.

There were also lots and I mean lots of little market areas in Miraflores which sold all the usual tourist stuff. This is an example of just one of the stalls, with each market probably having 30 or so stalls and there must of been markets about 6 or 7 different market areas. And so it was back on the football shirt buying mission ....but the football shirt copies here were so pants that I wasn`t gonna buy one of those!

 

Getting back to the hostel we decided to munch there for dinner as there was an offer on for 2 courses and a drink for like 3 quid. Putting our orders in we waited for our food to come over a free cocktail. Didn`t think we`d end up waiting for an hour and a half though! To be fair, it was just one guy there running the bar and cooking behind there on two mini stoves. With the bar guy ran off his feet, the hostel owner had to come in and help out, who couldn`t even make a pisco sour, the nations drink! Everyone kept ordering them off the bar guy and refusing to order off the hostel owner! As it turns out the food was pretty tasty but not sure it was worth waiting that long for it!

After a good old sleep we headed back out into Miraflores the next day for a quick lunch which turned out to be their version of a fast food joint called Bembos. With me struggling to order in Spanish the clown behind the till put through our order of burger chips and drink meal seperately so we ended up paying loads as we had each item seperately. What a douche, even with the language barrier, why would we order it all seperately. O well!

After receiving instructions from our hostel receptionist as to where a cool museum was, we hopped on the metro bus and got off where he said. His instructions were "you can see the museum when you get off here, its a block away". Looking around there was no museum, turns out he sent us a whole stop away from the nearest stop, which we also discovered was then a 30 minute or so walk away fromk the actual museum. After 20 minutes or so with  no museum in site we decided to call off the search and instead head into Lima central for a look around. Getting to the main square we took some snaps.

...and posed in the throne-esc seat.

We also asked the guy behind the hostel reception where a supermarket was for a cheap dinner. Turned out that was a mistake as again he gave us wrong directions and we had to walk an extra two blocks to find it. Oddly I was craving a Dr Pepper which I never thought I`d find but this place had them. Result! Taking our pasta ingredients back to the hostel, we found that it had the worst kitchen ever, the oven burnt everything and there were only a few hobs working and it took about an hour just to boil some water. We drowned our sorrows over a cheeky beer!

Our last day in Lima and I was determined to find a football shirt, so foolishly I once again returned to Mr poo directions behind the hostel reception and asked where I might find one. He told me about a big market called Polves Azules and said it was in the centre by the big government building. After loosing my trust I decided to google where it was which turned out to be in a completely different district of Lima, but the douche had at least highlighted the right market.....it was bad ass. Jumping on a minibus, we got to the actual place and had a look around a park which had a museum fair on which excited Jen. But we werent there for that, it was footy shirt time. After crossing the most crazy road we had come across (a cross roads which didnt have an actual crossing or pedestrian lights so we had to time our run between two sets of traffic coming through) we arrived at the market and I was in footy shirt heaven. Shirts everywhere. I had to purchase a Allianz Lima shirt which oddly looks like the WBA shirt, and also a Santos shirt with Neymar on the back (who has since annoyingly moved to Barcelona). Jen also bought some amazing fake Ray Bans for about 2 pound 50 (cant find the pound sign on these crazy computers). 

After my giddy excitement at finding all the football shirts we went out for a super awesome meal and it was then time to say goodbye to Lima (for now - as we would later have to return)....next stop Huanchaco.

Huaca`fuckin`china

With Arequipa explored we set off to the bus terminal to go to our next stop Huacachina. We went through their customs area and the douche bag took my half drank bottle of 2 quid rum (Ron in Spanish) much to my displeasure. Apparently he thought I was going to drink it on the bus or something. O well, 1 whole English pound down the drain. The annoying thing was that we were sat in a waiting area for an hour where I could see my former friend Ron just aroud the corner, and with the security guard leaving his post, I was super tempted to go and take what was rightfully mine back but was dissuaded by Jen. 

Anyway, with an hour passing whilst being taunted by the sight of Ron on the other side of the glass panel, we were surprised to see our friends Rory and Fi who we had shared a cabin with us on the NaviMag boat back in Chile about a month ago. Funny how you bump into peope whilst travelling. We even saw another couple who were on the boat as well but we didn`t know them so well so just did the mandatory head nod and went about our ways. However with Rory and Fi now with us, we discovered we were going to the same hostel in Huacachina and agreed to share a taxi after the bus journey.

And share a taxi we did, which turned out to literally be the Peruvian equivalent of a Fiat Cinquecento and this is no easy task with 4 grown adults (if you can class Jen as one, don`t hurt me when you read this!) who all have 15k backpacks with them. So in we squished with 3 backpacks in the boot and I pulled the lucky straw with my backpack on my lap, with the other hand luggage squidged into any gaps we could find.

We finally got there anyway and strolled into our hostel which was pretty cool, a swimming pool as you first walked in, with a bar in the middle and a massive chill out area with sofas, seats, hammocks, beer garden-esc tables and brollies and all this with a view of the lake and massive sanddunes out back.

With us arriving too late to book any tours or do too much, we booked into the hostel (as it turned out we were in the same room as Rory and Fi) and grabbed some munch from a local restuarant aptly named ¨Huaca fuckin China¨ (excuse the language but that was genuinely the name of the place!). Following that we had a stroll around the town which was literally a small lake, with some buildings around it, surrounded by sanddunes, nothing more and nothing less.

We could see the sand buggies coming back down the dunes, which got us a bit excited as we had booked onto doing this ourselves the following day with Rory and Fi.

After a short sleep followed by some sunbathing and a beer we ventured out with Rory and Fi to see if we could book some quad biking as both us lads had got quite excited about the idea. However, upon searching around various tour agencies we found that there was only one American lady with just 2 quad bikes even though loads of places advertised quad biking day tours to the coast. Seems they all lied. With our tails between our legs, we purchased a few litre bottles of Pisco for the equivalent of a fiver each. and heading back to the hostel for a few cards games and leisurely drinks.

We took advantage of the hostel putting on a BBQ and got into the swing of some proper drinking games. The BBQ included some rum and coke and with no one else out of about 20 having a BBQ taking advantage of free drink, Rory and I kept going up and bringing back plastic cups of rum to our table. Must have had 3 quarters of the bottle to ourselves. As the night went on and we were getting progressively more drunk, it was evident that Rory was doing a little worse than the rest of us, so we gave him drinks of pure coke (no alcohol) for his drinking penalties which he never noticed!

A while late we joined up with a table of American travellers and played a massive game of ring of fire (as you do) and got to know everyone. They were pretty sound and one guy was called Sage (important info for this story!). One of the rounds of ring of fire was something called `I have never` whereby you say something and anyone who has done it must drink. It was my go and with a typical British dry humour I came out with `I have never been named after a herb` to which the Americans found hilarious and of course, poor old Sage was left to drink on his own.

Drinking games lasted all night and we eventually all slumped off to bed after a funny night. Later that night Jen and I woke up to some weird sounds coming from our hostel room. Turned out Rory was crawling around on the floor softly murminging his girlfriends name for help. Rory crawled his way to the bathroom as we had a shared on in our room, taking his pillow with him and spent a bit of time getting to know the toilet a bit better. Thinking he had just suffered the consequences of drinking the night before, we didn`t really think anything off it and went back to sleep. The next morning however, we bumped into Fi who told us that it wasn`t alcohol related and that Rory was actually quite sick (she is a doctor), so much so that they moved out of our shared room and into their own private, and also had to cancel the sandboarding which we would still go on.

Now just the two of us (other than all the other folk on the tour) we jumped onto our sand buggy ready for a day of falling over.

I wasn`t too impressed to see the seat belt system on board, which consisted off a belt conveniently placed between the crotch which had absolutely no give whatsoever. But strap in I did, hoping that there wouldn`t be any crashes otherwise they`d be no future jack juniors.

Onwards we went, taking it easy over the detereorating concrete roads, but as soon as we hit the sand, the driver uped the speed, but not before stopping for a snap of the town from the sand dune.

Getting over the first ridge, the driver let loose and rizzed the sand buggie around no end which was more fun that the sand boarding itself. He would get up to a blind drop, and then smash it down at a 60 degree angle or so leading Jen to grab my arm and almost cut the circulation off!

After 15 mins or so of what seemed like a rollercoaster ride, we arrived at our first sand boarding venue, which was literally a baby drop to get you used to it as most of us were complete beginners (other than our san pedro midnight sand boarding).

Obviously time for a few snaps before strapping into our sandboards......

.....the driver even let Jen sit in the drivers seat which she pounced on with the excitement of a 5 year old child. `mummy mummy, look at me`......that kinda thing! (Jack lies quite a bit on this blog if you hadnt noticed...does that sound like me?!)

Finally it was time to suit up, and we weren`t so excited to see that our sand boards were literally planks of wood with some velcro straps on them, not quite the equipment offered up on our first sand boarding experience.

With everyone strapped into their boards, we all looked at each other willing the others to go down first. Me and Jen obviously are bad ass at psyching others out as loads went before us and obviously fell over much to the amusement of everyone else. Inevitably we would fall over too, with the scene in the picture below all to common an occurance.

Jen`s velcro decided it wasn`t going to stick either so following a few attempts to fix it, she gave up and took the cheaters way out!

The bottom of the baby slope and we all trudged back to the buggy, bemused by our efforts.

Baby slope complete and with no one achieving any sense of confidence we were wizzed back off in the sand buggy to a bigger slope.

...with some incredible views along the way!

For some reason the guides mistakely had a sense of belief in us, or they just didn`t care! But either way, we arrived at our next slope, which was somewhat longer and steeper!

I tried to look confident for a piccy, luckily my newly adopted fringe was hiding my frowns, sunglasses hiding the terror in my eyes and the beard hiding the groan!

Still didn`t stop it from being beautiful though with the sun setting in.

This time it would be my velcro to give way and with my attempts to fix the situation on the side of the dune failing for 5 minutes, I gave up and lay flat on the board and body boarded down the rest of the dune.

With the sun light dying, we headed back down the dune with the lights on, racing other buggies out on the dunes. The driver stopped one last time at a viewpoint where we could see the small town lit up at night, highlighting the size of the place.

Job done we went back to the hostel and chilled, still no sign of the suffering Rory and carer Fi for the day. The next morning we got up and did see the two of them, Rory still looking rough and trying to convince us that the illness had nothing to do with alcohol.

Jen and I took one last stroll around town appreciated the unassuming beauty of the lake.

Still time for lunch in the hostel before leaving for our next stop, whereby we ordered some chicken and mushrooms in a sauce only to be given a plain piece of chicken with nothing else. Disappointing, and I`m not sure it was even worth mentioning but there we go.

Off we set on another bus journey to our next stop, Lima, which couldn`t be more different in it`s enormity to the quiet tranquility of little Haucachina.