Up the coast in 5 days

We left Cuzco in a night bus and arrived in Nazca in the morning. Finally we got away from the cold. It was the first day I could wear a shirt again since Rurrenabaque. We had mad a reservation for a flight from Cuzco, but when we got out of the bus we were met by the obligatory group of people yelling at you to sell you something. Well, one of them had a flight on offer, which was cheaper than the flight we wanted to take, so we decided to go with them. Once we arrived at the office it became clear that he actually wanted to sell us a longer and a little bit more expensive flight, but he did a good job convincing us, so we went on a 40 minutes flight with 3 other girls. To cut a long story short: I think a 20  minutes flight would have done it for me as well and probably for everybody else as well as we all got sick on the plane. In the end Flo was the only one who was still able to take pictures.

We didn't stay in Nazca for the night, instead we took a bus to a small seaside town called Paracas from where we would make our trip to "poor mens Galapagos", las Islas Ballestas. Unfortunately on the day we went the weather was not so nice, but that probably saved me from a sun stroke and we still got to see lots and lots of bird, seastar, sealions and penguins.

After two days we had to leave for Lima and were shocked when we arrived. Such a big and modern city. After being out of the modern world for such a long time, it was a bit stressful, but luckily the benefits of civilisation (junkfood) made up for it. We went into the city center one day and walked around Miraflores, the seaside neighbourhood where our hostel is, the next day.

This is my favorite statue. The order was given in Spain to put llamas on the head of the lady. Now this word does not only mean Llama, the animal, but also Flames, which was probably what they had in mind, but the craftsman didn't know that meaning, so not mother Patria is balancing a little llama on her head.

We also visited more ruins from yet a diferent culture, the Lima culture. It's amazing how each pyramid looks totally diferent to the other and how yet each culture developed diferent techniques for the same problem, ike earthquakes. I wish we had more time to visit more archeological sites.

Now we are waiting for our next night bus to Trujillo where we plan to lay on th beach, get tanned and relax. It has been a long time of travelling already without any real breaks and I think at the moment we need kind of a time out to recharge our batteries.