Quill's Tour - Lima and heading down south

Alright chaps

We´re in Peru now in a place called Nazca. South of Lima. Not much here apart from some crop circle type things that we couldn´t afford to see (50 dollars each in a plane)

We spent a night in capital city Lima before we met up with the group that we are spenidng the next 3 weeks with. Lima is rough as ass holes by the way and we were in the posh bit - a suburb called miraflores. we met up with our group, who are all nice but a bit soft and don´t drink. I thought if this lot are doing the inca trail, then I´ll be sprinting up it. the only other bloke on the trip is an older chap who is a professor in pottery and ceramics. you get the picture. one girl who is about 18-19 stone and can´t actually walk properly said she wasn´t doing the trail because she was worried about altitude!

Another girl from the group, a vegan called Gemma, had been out in miraflores (the posh bit, remember) that day and had two blokes smash the windows in the back of the cab whilst it was stuck in traffic, trying to get her bags and trying to rip rings off her finger.. blood everywhere from shards of glass.. geezers slashing their arms up trying to get the stuff... they didn´t get anything´but she was pretty shaken up. Anyhow, she was walking around miraflores later with a friend, went into a bookstore and the owners told her to stay in the shop because two geezers were following them. And this is the good bit of town.

Our peruvian tour guide is sound, likes a drink, and knows his stuff. I asked him if he thought miraflores was safe. "Yes", he said, "but downtown Lima?", then he just whistled and shook his head.

Anyhow. We all went out on masse in Lima that night, to a salsa bar in Miraflores (i don´t do salsa but i like cuban rum) and a couple of bars in a place called Baracca which is a more local type of area, lots of tasty looking mexicans (blokes). Couple of pitchers of beer later and i went for my first p1ss in a lima bar, not without some trepidation. Anyhow, sure as eggs are eggs, there´s a peru bloke in the toilet (he seemed alright to be fair) commenting on the smell (which was a mixture between strong weed and faeces - a common smell in peru, drains are not too clever.) So he pulls out a wrap of his finest flake and offers me some. I thought that didn´t take long. I declined (couldn´t tell you why), so he shrugged and starting caning into it, rubbing his gums and so on.

by the way, the vegan girl in our group.. whats all that about? you don´t eat meat, fish, cheese, eggs, milk. As Becky said, you come to south america where they eat pretty much anything, they´d probably eat themselves if they could... guinea pig, llama, monkey, cats... and then you don´t eat fish or anything else either. She´s not eating salad also cos its washed in dodgy local water, and they don´t really have much vegetables in peru, so what does that leave? Yesterday she basically had spaghetti and ketchup and then went to bed.

Yesterday by the way we had a good day, we went to the Ballestas island near a place called Pisco. Ballestas is like a mini gallapagos but as good.

Our El Capitan for the trip was a scraggy Peruvian called Luis. He was wearing a brown racing jacket with Panska racing written on the back. Old Luis smelt of p1ss and was a bit of a lunatic... I think he´d been watching too many episodes of Miami Vice, he was driving proper fast in this boat to get to the islands.

I must admit I got quite into these islands (pelicans, peguins, sea lions), I´ll probably end up buying the box set of Blue Planet or something when i get back! Quill Attenborough.

Later that day we went to the driest desert in the world (per millimeters of rain) and went sand buggying near an oasis called Huacachina.. brilliant.. we were in one of those off road open rally cars with just a metal frame around us, seatbelted in... our driver was another one like Luis.. we absolutely twatted our way across these massive sand dunes it was like being on a rollercoaster. The feeling of being in a desert, nothing but sand as far as you can see is a bit different, and when you get out you feel like you´re burning up.

And then to top it off we went sand boarding, which is like snowboarding but on sand. its the opposite to surfing in that you put the weight on your back foot to accelerate and front foot to slow down. I didnt really know how to turn so I just went straight and absolutely hurtled down this steep slope (big ant would have p1ssed himself).. I went flying at the bottom but you don´t hurt yourself. I ache today though. Walking up a sand dune for just a few minutes is exhausting. Becky gave it all a good go and was first down the steepest slope.

by the way, the beer here is surprisingly good. they have one beer called Cusquena which is as good a beer as i´ve ever had (outside of germany, belgium and prague i suppose).

Thats it for now. Laters

Quill