Bus Bingo

After the Inca trail we made it to Arequipa, and then took an overnight trip to the Colca Canyon (a canyon twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, apparently). On our way to the canyon our tour guide for the day decided to stop and show us pretty much everything they could find on the way. This included some green moss, some ´mountain ducks´ (basically standard ducks which happen to live in the mountains) and some ice. It was a gripping 5 hour journey. Things got better in the afternoon however as we took a trip to some volcanic hot springs. We made the amazing discovery that waiters would come over to you whilst you were in the pool and you could order drinks etc. Our group took full advantage, eating ice creams, drinking beers and a few even smoked whilst sat in the pool - it looked like a scene off ´Absolutely Fabulous´.

We took a night bus from Arequipa to our next destination - Nazca. After experiencing several night buses on my travels already I thought I knew what to expect. Usually they dim the lights on the bus, turn off anything noisy and let you drift off to sleep. Not in Peru. After dozing for several minutes I kept hearing Spanish numbers being yelled out very loudly over the speakers in the bus. For some reason the bus company thought it was appropriate to start up a late night game of Bingo (the grand prize was a bus ticket back from Nazca to Arequipa). Not wanting to win my passage back to Arequipa, I put my ear plugs in and tried to sleep. After the game of Bingo the bus company then decided to put on the movie ´American Gangster´ very loudly, which filled the bus with the sound of gunfire until the early hours. A few members of my group decided to stay awake and watch the movie, but unfortunately for them, the movie got switched off at 2am with about 15 minutes of the movie remaining, which didn´t please them too much.

In Nazca, I took a short flight over the famous Nazca Lines - bizarre lines and pictures drawn in the desert by some ancient civilization. The next day we continued to head north and stopped off at an oasis town near Ica. We spent a few hours sandboarding, but unlike the last time I tried sandboarding, we had a dune buggy to drive us around the sand dunes. When I first got into the buggy I did wonder why it had 2 inch steel roll bars and seatbelts which strapped both your shoulders in, but it didn´t take long to find out. Our driver set off by flooring the accelerator and took us flying up and down steep sand dunes - it felt like a rollercoaster ride. After a shower and swim in a nearby pool we set off to the town of Pisco where we would spend the night. Three quarters of Pisco was destroyed by a 7.9 magnitude earthquake last year and the place still looks a bit like Bosnia did on TV during the nineties. There are destroyed buildings everywhere, people living in tents and you´re advised not to leave your hotel because it´s pretty dangerous. Why our tour company still includes it on its itinerary I´m not quite sure!

I´m now in Lima, the last stop on my entire trip. On Wednesday night we had our last group meal and went out along the seafront, and the past few days have been spent sight seeing and souvenir hunting. I took a taxi earlier today to the centre of Lima and witnessed perhaps the wierdest sight of the past 6 months. In developing countries it is pretty common for people to try and sell you food and drinks when your car/bus stops at traffic lights. Usually it´s just crisps and chocolate bars. Cambodia took this a step further, with people selling fried insects and birds. However, there was a man today holding 3 dead rats by their tails and trying to sell them to passing motorists!

Flying home soon, which I guess makes this the last blog of the trip. One final thing, I discovered the other day that Paddington Bear was in fact Peruvian, coming from ´Darkest Peru´. Not quite sure how he happened to get to London but I guess he must have flown with Iberia to Madrid and then caught a connecting flight to Heathrow. I shall be following in his footsteps on Monday...