Cruising the dunes with a board and a buggy...

We didn´t go to Cusco in the end, we decided to go to a place called Ica, and then on to a tiny town called Huacachima which is an Oasis in the middle of a sand desert. There are giant sand dunes surrounding the town which is all situated around a little lagoon. We got off the bus at 8am and went to grab some breakfast in Ica before heading to the mummy museum, it was full off shrunken heads and perfectly preserved bodies that still had ears and hair. They also had a miniture version of the Nazca lines, old drawings in the sand which you are supposed to fly over to get a good view... bit expensive for us so this was a nice alternative. We then got a taxi into Huacachima and booked into a hostel which gave us a discount for booking a sandboarding tour with them. The sandboarding involves a rollercoaster Dune buggy ride up to the top of the dunes where you sandboard (imagine snowboarding but on sand and with dodgy wooden boards and velcro straps) down and get picked up in the buggy again to take you to another dune. If you get bored of the traditional method it was way more fun to lie on the boards and go down on your front, this will all great until Drew got sand in his eyes and I managed to take a chunk of flesh out of my hand. Covered in sand and knackered by the end we watched the sunset over the dunes, it was pretty awesome, the sand dunes all turn pink just before the sun goes down. After that, headlights on we went for another crazy buggy ride before we were dropped back at our hostel. The next day we spent the morning in the small town chilling out in the hostel´s hammocks and walking round the lagoon before heading off to Ica again to catch our bus to Cusco where we had arranged to meet up with the big Bolivia group to do Machu Picchu. The morning was made interesting by two giant tortoises first fighting over lettice and then mating continuously for a few hours, it was quite painfully slow but very funny. (videos to follow).
We arrived in Cusco an afternoon before everyone else and productively slept for the majority of it. We found a relatively cheap hostel, the only downfall the disgusting smell of sewage, we checked out early the next morning and got ourselves a room in Loki, Cusco´s party hostel where we were meeting everyone else. This day was spent as productively as the last, after the morning spent hanging around to get our room, breakfast and a shower, we all decided to look around the city, this got us as far as the main square and a nearby restaurant. It was Georgie´s last night so we hit Cusco´s night life and got free drinks to last us through, this was great fun until 4am when the repetitive spanish songs got too much for us and we headed back. Monday was spent Machu Picchu tour shopping, another unproductive activity as after a few agencies we headed back to Loki and booked it through the tour agency there...