The Final Week

Nasca

After leaving Cusco, I was basically ready to be home. I mean I was still excited about seeing the Nasca lines and a bit of Lima, but mentally I was done traveling alone, done eating in restaurants, done having to be alert 24/7 to anything suspicious.

From Cusco I took an overnight bus to Nasca. Now normally Peruvian buses over the mountains are FREEZIING at night, so I would pack a sleeping bag. But this time around I was taking an expensive bus so I figured I'd be ok. Well I was wrong and when I got to Nasca I could barely feel my legs. I got into a hotel as quickly as possible, slept 4 hours and then went to the airport.

Here I flew over the famous Nasca lines, these gigantic geometric figures and animals etched into the desert floor. They're so big that you don't notice them from the ground, only 50 years ago when pilots started flying over the area did the lines get discovered. These lines are beautiful, but seeing them from the front seat of a tiny 4 person cessna was hard- I had to carefully balance looking down at the lines with staring at the horizon staving off serious air sickness.

Nasca the town, was really boring even though the Cusquena (a beer company) girls made an appearance at a little concert they were having. I took a bus at 6 in the morning the next day into Ica, where I stayed at a nearby Oasis. The Oasis, a little lake surrounded by palm trees admist giant sand dunes in the desert was awesome.

Ica

I stayed at a hotel with a pool and a pool side bar- here I ran into Mike and Bree who unfortunately were leaving that same day. We did get the chance to have a nice lunch and afternoon together though. I also rented a dune buggy to race up and down the sand dunes. The object was to scare the shit out of yourself. Which in a buggy that went 140 kph was easy enough to do. I would drive full speed up a dune until I was about to start rolling backwards and then turn around and drive full speed back down. It was way better than a roller coaster. I drove back into town on the main road where a cop pulled me over and told me only licensed tour operators could drive dune buggies into the dunes...whups. I had to pay a fine which was originally supposed to be 120 sols, but ended up being 20 sols. Wonder who's pocket that went into.

The next day I went on one of those sand buggy tours and while the driving wasn't nearly as fun, we did get to go sandboarding. Essentially snow boarding on sand, we drove up the dunes, and boarded down. Wiping out was especially painful, and all 5 of us on the tour, including the "sandboarding instructor" came back with cuts and bruises, and yours truly had a concussion. On the upside having the buggy we didn't have to slog back up the dunes, which would have been massicistic.

Lima

The next day sick of the pool, sand, and sun (what you say!) I went into Lima. Here I treated myself to 3 nights of a private room with tv! The first two nights I stayed in central lima, and the 3rd night I stayed in Miraflores.

In Lima central I walked around, saw the sights, including one actually phenomenal museum, ate well, watched some tv, slept a lot, and warded off 3 gringos trying to scam me into giving them money. The next day I visited a couple more museums, and then paid a visit to one of my favorite past times. The Black market. The Lima blackmarket was a little too legitimate for me though, they actually had real brand name stuff (just brought in without duty paid) rather than knock-offs. The one good thing they did have though was DVDs for about a dollar each. After loading up on these I went back and saw Mission Impossible 3 in theaters, the second time in my life that I went to the movies by myself.

In Miraflores, for my last night in South America, I stayed at a 4 star hotel- and it made me want to be back in a hostel. I mean this hotel was awful, it was a in a good location though. I played tennis on red clay with a tennis pro at the nearby Hilton, visited the Lacomar shopping mall, which is an open air mall literally carved out of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific, visited el Parque del Amor, walked around, again ate well, and perused the massive Indian Crafts Markets they have there. Unforunately I was sick of seeing the same shops with the same things all the time, so I was uninspired to buy much of anything. To celebrate my last night I went out with a taxi driver I had met earlier (he was 23) to his favorite discotecas, we drank pisco all night and had a great time. He agreed to give me a ride to the airport the next day for half price (I eventually paid full price anyway). I basically killed a day people watching in a few cafes, and then got to the airport to get into DC for mother's day- a day early  to suprise mom.