Relaxing in the Dunes and flying over the Nazca lines

Our Oasis
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We decided to head to Huacachina on a bit of a whim. We fancied doing something in Peru after splitting up with our group and had seen Huacachina, an oasis in the middle of the desert, mentioned on a few blogs - we also thought we may be able to visit the Nazca Lines from here so decided to take off from Lima for a couple of nights to check it out.

A four hour bus ride later and there we were. Decided to treat ourselves to staying at a decent hotel with a pool as this trip was meant to be a bit of a chilling out session so checked ourselves in at The Massone. The hotel is right on the edge of the natural lagoon and completely surrounded by sand dunes which made for pretty good views. The hotel also turned out to have a very old tortoise which we named Terry that wandered round the restaurant and gardens as if he owned the place and a parrot aviary. We had a quick cycle round the lagoon on the hotel´s free but very rusty bikes and then we hit the poolside for an hour or two - bliss!

About to take to the skies
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We waited until it was a bit cooler before heading up a sand dune with a couple of sand boards to try our hand at sand boarding. The going up was tiring. Mike managed to slip further down the dune with every step but eventually we got somewhere near enough the top, where we sat down to take in the sunset, one of the best I´ve seen in Peru. In the anonymity of the semi-dark we had a go at sand boarding. Everytime Mike stood up he went flying down the dune onto his ass whereas I didn´t seem to move and had to jump up and down vigorously to get going. Eventually it went completely dark and we had a policeman shining a torch at us, while blowing a whistle repeatedly which spoiled the fun, time to call it a day.

The humming bird from 170m up!
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We arranged a trip to the Nazca Lines for the next morning and got picked up from the hotel and driven to Nazca. This was all a bit confusing as the lady I arranged it with barely spoke English and I don´t know much Spanish. Anyway I thought we were going to fly from Ica to Nazca but no it tuned out we were going by car - only figured this out half way there. Anyway the important part i.e. flying over the Lines wasn´t lost in translation thank goodness and we were dropped off at a little airport with the smallest planes I have ever seen.

Terry the Tortoise
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We were sat down to watch about 15 minutes of some 1960s BBC documentary about the Lines before being bundled off into a little plane with 3 other passengers. This was a squash to say the least. I had to go in the back with an Italian girl as none of the boys would fit. Mike was left to sit next to the Italian girls boyfriend. This wasn´t ideal for Mike as within 2 minutes of take off the boyfriend was puking into a plastic bag. Luckily I was totally oblivious to all of this until we landed. To be fair it was a very little plane which did lots and lots of swooping. It practically nose dived twice over every one of the Nazca drawings to give us a good view. The drawings were really clear, I really liked the spider and the hummingbird and there were loads of extra patterns and lines everywhere apart from the main ones they tell you about. It was worth the trip but glad we were making it from Huacachina rather than coming all the way over from Lima just for that.

Sand Surfing
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After 35 minutes in the air we landed and headed back to our oasis for cocktails round the pool - can´t be bad!