Nazca Lines

it was worth the money... just to be in a little plane. but the rest of my nazca experience won´t remain with me for too long. the town itself is an absolute hole... and the lines which are amazing, authentic and do take your breath away because of their sheer scale... you have 15mins in a little plane to look at them through a tiny window, whilst struggling to get a photo of whichever animal you are flying over at the time...

there was some comedy... we had got to nazca in a combi (shared car) and the price before we had left was 15soles total... well the cheeky little peruvian had me on the side of the street at 12:00pm debating the price when we got there - he wanted 30 - quite intimidating if he wasn´t 5ft tall... i´d managed to use my limited spanglish to stop him threatening me... and jump in a seperate cab moments later. peruvians, by the way, are known as the thieves of the world.

after waking at 7 am to try to find a good deal (most flights leave around 8 or 9), we´d managed to get into a japanese tour bus that was just leaving... they´d quoted us 50US but no money had been payed. after the flight, we were left waiting an hour and still no tour bus... lets go.

we were doing a runner... very funny at the time. however, the story continues... we went straight to the bus station to book tickets for the earliest bus south (10pm). whilst we were in the station a guy came over with two names written down... they weren´t even close. i can´t remember the exact names he had but it was something like ´Snul Cratha´. well he left it at that.

we arrived for the bus at 9:50pm so that we could literally hop staright on, being peruvian it arrived at 10:40pm - within which time he had found us and used the threat of the police to make us pay up.

doh!

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Huanchaco

after leaving mancora, i knew things would never be the same again. this time i was travelling with two girls, which was hard enough to get my head round...
we stayed at a place called ´casa suisa´ - rude, expensive and not what people had told me. maybe my hostel expectations are a lot higher now.

it´s a pretty little surf town... which in a few years - could be a great place and on the ´must do´ for peru. as of now... it´s not quite there.



the best thing we did was visit ´chan chan´ an intense collection of inca sites surrounding the area. the first cultural thing i have done in a while... and it didn´t let me down. there was a lot of work going on when we were at chan chan... hope you can make out the workers on the wall...

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Mancora

Mancora is beautiful... I´d heard and read so much about the place but never expected to get lost in its charms for nearly 6 weeks. I´ve so many memories to take away from there, but for now there going to stay with me. The rest of South America better step up to the challenge... Mancora will be very hard to beat.

Long story short I worked there for 5 weeks, bought a pet pig called lucy, helped build some new huts using bamboo, met the funniest people i´ve ever met(maybe ever will), drove around in tuc tucs (normally on the roof), rented motorbikes, ate cerviche (raw fish in lime) at for weeks in a row, got violently sick, stayed horribly drunk, cooked tempura for 40 people... I will never forget it... and I will go back.

Grassy Arse to everybody who experienced it with me. long live ´the point´.

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