You Look Like A Schnitzel...
Greetings Loyal Readers,
We're coming atcha today from the capital of Banana-land, Quito in Ecuador. We've been here a couple of days now, and boy oh boy don't we have a lot of catching up to do! Where have you been, I haven't heard a lot from the outside world, but there's still a few of you out there who haven't forgotten about us (muchas gracias). My UK phone goes offline at the end of the month, so if you've anything that can only be said by text, then get in and get it sent...
So, we left you as we were about to head for Ica, on one of Peru's famous night buses. Once again we chose the fantastic CIAL, and managed to take a pic of Ana in
full reclining mode just to show you how we've been rolling these days. It was another great trip, sad as we were at having farewelled Anita and Mike (who just turned out to be mates of my former flatmate in London, the dear Liv), and we arrived in Ica first thing on the 23rd. A quick taxi ride took us out to our hostel in Huacachina, an amazing oasis surrounding by towering sand dunes. The local attraction here is sandboarding and dune-buggying, which we were signed up for as soon as we were out of the shower and freshened up after our trip.
So, we left you as we were about to head for Ica, on one of Peru's famous night buses. Once again we chose the fantastic CIAL, and managed to take a pic of Ana in
full reclining mode just to show you how we've been rolling these days. It was another great trip, sad as we were at having farewelled Anita and Mike (who just turned out to be mates of my former flatmate in London, the dear Liv), and we arrived in Ica first thing on the 23rd. A quick taxi ride took us out to our hostel in Huacachina, an amazing oasis surrounding by towering sand dunes. The local attraction here is sandboarding and dune-buggying, which we were signed up for as soon as we were out of the shower and freshened up after our trip.
The buggies are pretty hastily thrown together contraptions, with a 350cu Chevrolet engine in the front, about 8 racing seats (reassuringly with 5 point harnesses), then the whole shabang is wound in tubular steel. As rickety as it looked, it may well have been the safest vehicle we've been in to date! The village of Huacachina is very small, mostly hotels and restaurants clustered around the lagoon, the dunes rise hundreds of feet on all sides, so 
it was only a short blast on asphalt roads before the roar of our big engine took us shooting up the hill onto the dunes. There's no quietly easing into the ride, it's full throttle from the very beginning, and it was a good few minutes before I could loosen my white-knuckle grip and take in the fantastic setting. Once the town slips from view behind you, the dunes stretch on as far as you can see, looking like they've been trowelled smooth with lovely snaking ridges perpendicular to the prevailing wind. The sand is amazingly fine and quickly works its way into anything that's not hermetically sealed, passengers included.Over our two hours we blatted up and down dunes in various states of verticality and velocity, stopping along the way to try our skills at sandboarding. Now, having never done snowboarding I
can't really comment on the comparison, but don't let the picture lead you to think that I developed any skill at going down on my feet - we both spend the majority of our rides on our bellies! You really get quite a head of steam up going down the dunes, and this feeling is only accentuated by the fact that you're only a couple of centimetres above the scorching sand zipping beneath you. The Germans told us that it was the opposite to snowboarding, in terms of which foot you lend weight to in order to steer. Fat lot of advice that was to me, as soon as the nose pointed downhill I took off a little too quickly for my liking and very soon the natural relationship of my face with the sand was reestablished.Ana had her technique down, dragging the tips of her toes to steer and brake. I just pointed down the hill and let the law of gravity provide the kicks. Due in part to this reckless attitude, the steepness of the dune, and veering off course by only a couple of degrees, I 'bit in' at what felt like 70km/hr, tumbling in a series of ragdoll rolls down the hill, and ingesting significant quantities of fine sand in the process. Once the Germans made it down and we gathered at the bottom, I was told by them, "You look like a schnitzel". Possibly the funniest thing a stranger has ever said to me. Period.
We was quite invigorated after that little episode, one of the more 'action sportsy' things we've done so far. I'd love to post the video I took of me pouring sand out of my shoes (unsurprisingly, it's too long to upload), but it'll have to wait until the family slide show. We retired by the pool (yep, we hit a luxury spot this time) got some washing don
e, and generally put our feet up after what felt like a very busy 24 hours. Resident in the grounds of the hotel were three parrots, two almost identical, and one very mentally unbalanced. We rapidly got friendly with one of the nice ones, and cruelly exploited it for a series of novelty photos - he didn't seem to mind. Actually, he grew rather fond of us, and after dinner managed to climb out of his tree (remember: clipped wings, no opposable thumbs, and certainly no ladder) and come visit us at our table. So fond in fact had he become that he nestled into Ana's towel-wrapped lap and performed what we could only surmise was a 'grown up friendly times' type of dance, cooing and spinning around. Anyway, he's on Facebook, so we're going to keep in touch...After the belly-induced delay waiting in Cusco we were all backwards - down in Ica when we should already have passed through Nazca, so through our hotel we organised a trip back 2hrs in the direction we came yesterday to fly over the Nazca lines. These ancient scribblings are truly mysterious, and there's really not a lot known about them. Plenty of kooky theories abound, but they're really just so fascinating simply because they're a series of very beautiful abstract figures, which could not in any way have been seen by the people who made them. Not only are there the famous figures (such as the monkey, the hummingbird, and the controversial 'astronaut') but streaking across the entire plane are simple straight lines, perfectly set out and running all the way to the mountains.
Anyway, here we are in the back of our trusty bird, a tiny little early model 4-seater Cessna, just after takeoff. It was just Ana and I in the back, an Italian fellow up front, and the pilot. He'd clearly flown the 
route a lot, and was relaxed enough to take a call on his cell as we circled the first shapes. You fly a 30 minute circuit from the local airport, seeing 12 of the figures including all the big hitters. Some are harder to make out than others, some are criss-crossed with the straight lines I mentioned above, and the astronaut is actually scratched into the side of a hill rather than on the flat. It's a pretty bumpy ride; a tiny little plane, lots of heat creating turbulence off the desert, and very steep turns to make sure that both 
sides of the plane get to see each figure, so forgive the poor photos. These are only two of about 80 I took in 30 minutes! The monkey was one of my favourites, with his big curly tail, and the hummingbird (actually, all the birds: there's a condor and heron/flamingo as well) was particularly intricate and heavily abstracted. It's very hard to get a feeling for the scale, as there's nothing around them by which to gauge it, but for reference the hummingbird is 50 metres long from the tip of its beak to its tail. They really are awesome, and of course a World Heritage Site, chalk it up...The nervous part of that expedition over we landed safely (all smiles post landing, as you can see at
right!) and girded ourselves for even more travel to make it to Lima. This involved some aimless wandering, bad Spanish (so bad that I asked for a bus at the place that sold flights), and a trip back to Ica, where we'd started that morning. There are actually departures from Ica to Lima every ten minutes 24 hours a day, so given there wasn't too much of a rush we stopped in at 'Norkys', the local chicken restaurant in the area, where we stocked up on batter and cysts. It was another 6 hours down to Lima, and we needed the sustinence. It was getting on we we arrived, but we had a booking and were well received at good old Hostel Pukara, who had great beds and hot water in abundance. We didn't plan to do too much there, except catch up with Emma, a friend of the troublemaking Ms Bowey. She welcomed us for delicious lunch, where her two young boys ran us ragged before we headed back home very full, going out again for delicious dinner in Baranco.Lima, or at least the areas we stayed in and drove through, is FULL of security guards, literally on every corner. We didn't know if this means that it's really safe, or really dangerous, but it's certainly reassuring to know that you're never unobserved - beats the hell out of security cameras if you ask me.
So, now we're up in Quito, after a nice comfy (and scenic) flight up on the 25th. We're staying near the old town (much research was done to book a hostel after far too many reviews of places in La Mariscal complained about being held up at knifepoint outside their hostels), which is very lovely (WH Site, of course...), but spending quite a bit of our time up in the New Town as we go about our chores getting ready to head to the jungle (Thursday) and the Galapagos Islands (Nov 7th). We're planning to head up to the actual Equator tomorrow, where you can (apparently) see such unique feats as balancing an egg on a nail, and witnessing the opposite effects of the Coriolis Effect, depending on which hemisphere you stand in. Here's one of many videos people have taken if you're interested...
Big shoutouts to my Dad, who had his birthday this week, and there's a couple of you out there who I know have ones coming up. So, I saw this photo and really thought it was the best thing to leave you with. Clearly theft is a bigger problem even in our area than I thought. If it ain't bolted down...A
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