Cusco to Nazca and up the coast

Back in Cusco we tried to make the most of the painfully expensive Tourist ticket we were forced to buy and visited some museums, got a body massage then hopped on a bus to Nazca. Unfortunately the bus forgot to drop in Nazca (11 hours away) and carried on up the coast to Lima (further 8 hours north) where we damanded a hostel room and a return bus later that day. We got into Nazca at 8pm that night making a nice 32 hour trip from Cusco - nazca... and booked our selves on a flight first thing over the nazca Lines.

The Lines to be honest were good to see but not much different from photos apart from the nausea caused by flying over then banking steeply every 2 second so people on both sides of the plane could see. They dont know what the lines were used for - some think they were for water aqueducts, some about constellation and some that they were for rituals but there are about 400 animals or figures hundreds of feet wide, only visible from the air and the people who made them had no way of viewinf them. Better than the lines was the Necropolis in which hundreds of tombs had been found and robbed leaving a desert full of bones and rags in which archeaolgogists had reconstructed a few tombs with what was left.

After Nazca we went to Ica and admired a few trophy heads, mummies and other stuff then nipped off to Huacachina - a desert oasis in the middle of massive sand dunes. The place was idylic and we went zooming over the dunes in a dune buggy! It was wicked!! I even went sandboarding down the dunes - they were really steeep, but I have to say that I made it look easy gliding gracefully to the bottom at top speed and then nearly braking my neck again as I realisied I didnt know how to stop and flew off.

from Ica we went north to Pisco and got a boat out from the harbour at Paracas to the Islas Ballestas (a poor mans galapogas apparently) and saw thousands and i mean thousands of birds and sea-lions on the islands - there are so may birds here the government collect their poo (guano) which is 8meters deep in places to sell abraod as fertiliser. The Islands all look white until they get to the sea there is that much bird shit on them. We wandered off from here to the Peninsula and saw several dead sea-lions and many birds and went wandering over the sand dunes to a tiny port which was in the middle of nowhere - it was incredible.

From here we decided we needed a little rest before going back to Lima, so got a bus and a selection of little local collectivo buses to the tiny port town of Pucusana which turned out to be the best spot in Peru so far...