Guest Post by Ewa

After having spent two months on the Safari between Guatemala and Columbia I couldn’t help but come back to the fun. I joined the boys in Lima, Peru for the rest of the trip. After some good food and a bit of tourism in Lima my trip started with a drive. We were heading to Cusco, about 1100 km away, where we were to start the Inca trail in a few days. The drive started through the desert along the Pacific. I was surprised how barren the area just outside of Lima was.

We were told it was worth giving sand boarding a try so we headed to Huacachina, a touristy little town built around an oasis. There we grabbed dinner and signed up for a sand boarding tour. Kuba was right to opt for the ‘professional’ equipment that came at a premium. This entailed proper snowboards and snowboarding boots as oppose to wooden boards with make shift straps. Jono lucked out and was riding a Burton Custom, although it was probably from the 80’s. The boards were modified for maximum performance with a melamine base. We were ready to jump into jeans and long sleeves thinking we would get scratched up in the sand but our driver assured us that our beach attire was absolutely fine. Luckily I had shorts under my short skirt and we jumped in the dune buggy for an unexpected adrenaline rush.

The drive through the dunes was excellent and the video doesn’t do it justice. Our driver would launch us off the edge of sand dunes and we would go barrelling down vertically into huge bowls of sand. After we got pretty far away from the town and all we could see in either direction was sand dunes he stopped at the top of one of them and told us to set up.

We grabbed our snowboards, scratched some wax from the candle stick we were given on to the bottom of our melamine finished snowboards and stared down at the steep sand hill trying to figure out how far we might fall and how much it would hurt if we made a mistake. We soon got a hang of it and realized it’s best to skip the turning and just suck up the courage to head directly down with only some slight carving to replicate a bit of that amazing powder feeling we were all missing, having chosen to visit the southern hemisphere during our winter season.

At the bottom of the hill we would wait until the dune buggy drove down to pick us up.

Then we would rip across some more dunes and the driver would drop us off at the top of another long run. The whole time we felt a great feeling of being alone with nothing but fine sand all around us as far as we could see. We had a bunch of runs and by the end of it we were thinking of going pro.

Unfortunately the sun was about to set and the fun had to stop. We paid for some showers and headed off for what we thought was going to be a night of camping.  With the cooler full of provisions, we continued our drive in the direction of Cusco hoping to find some nice camping spot that would prepare us for a visit of the famous Nasca lines in the morning. Failing to find a nice plot to pitch our tents we chose an alternative to cheap camping: a very nice hotel.

In the morning we visited the famous Nasca lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines The lines themselves were a bit uneventful as they resembled somebody tearing up the rocks on a dirt bike in extremely straight lines.

The figures are usually viewed from a plane or helicopter that we decided not to take. Instead we paid 1 Sol (about 35 cents) to climb up a little tower where we could see two of the drawings and it enabled us to get an idea of what it’s about.

We continued with our drive in the direction of Cuzco knowing that there weren’t many towns in the stretch ahead of us as we drove into the Andes and that we would need to camp.   The drive itself was full of switch backs as we drove through passes with beautiful views. Soon we were at 4500 meters of altitude and the sun was going down so we pulled off the road to set up camp. Because it was raining/snowing we decided to cook in one of the tents. Luckily the amazing aromas of the wonderful food overpowered the smell of the burning fuel

Altitude is a tricky thing – it wasn’t just the cold keeping us awake at night. Considering we were so near the equator, our snow covered tents were a testament to how extreme our sleeping arrangements were.

In the morning we continued our drive to Cusco. We were happy to see vegetation for a change when we descended from the Andes.

Unfortunately, due to the rain, the road was a little bumpier than usual as rivers made their way across the pavement.

We made it to Cusco for our 6pm Inca trail info session with a little extra time to spare. We spent it cleaning the car to make room for Nina who was joining us after the hike.