Peru: The Nazca Lines

After a hard day of hiking the Andes and feasting on guinea pig, alpaca steak and cactus, quench your thirst with an Isaac Kola. Forget about beer folks this stuff hits the spot. For those that don´t know Katie´s surname is Isaac!

The big news to come out of South America is after 9 years of obstaining Katie is now a meat eater again.

Its true water spins one direction in the Southern Hemisphere and the other way in the Northern Hemisphere. Good old Corrilois was correct. I know this because our last day in Ecuador was spent at ´Mitad Del Mundo,´ the middle of the world or where the Equator passes through Ecuador. To celebrate my first time in the Northern Hemisphere a had a kiss with my beautiful girl friend, Katie in the Southern Hemisphere and myself in the Northern. What a lucky man! From the Equator to Peru, what a big day.

Tears roll down our checks as everytime our eyelids close grains of quartz stratch the outer membrain of our eyes. Calves are burning as we push to the summit of this giant sand dune. Alas we make it and what a view. In one direction sand dunes seem endless. In the other a mirage of a lagoon surrounded by palm trees, hotels and locals stalls. This true oasis in Peru is called Huacachina, a truely amazing place. However, the ascent to the summit wasnt all about the view, although that was bloody great, it was about SANDBOARDING. Candlewax on the base of the board makes for some fast down-dune action, and with a couple of turns and one massive wipeout we were at the bottom with sand in every orefice of the body. It doesnt get much better than this!

Next stop Nazca, famous for its mysterious lines etched into the dry, flat expanse of the Nazca desert, between a period from 900 BC to 600 AD. These lines can only be seen by air, perhaps made for the Gods of the Nazca. There is a monkey some 150metres in length, and a heron near 3oometres long, whilst the countless lines that mark the desert extend for kilometres. Unfortunately for the Nazca people they disappeared into the nearby Andes (due to lack of water- if only they had Isaac Kola) so no one knows exactly why they created these lines.

We took a 30 minute flight over them to really appreciate how amazing the feat of the Nazca people was. In the air the lines look endless, some of them meet on small hilltops, others take on triangular shapes and scattered amoungst them all are the distinct shapes of animals. Despite being a short flight, the 5 of us in the plane were feeling queesy, which was heightened by our loco-pilot putting the plane into some zero-gravity rollercoaster action at the end.