Peru

This afternoon, we went and did the number one activity and attraction that Huacachina has to offer (well, arguably number one): dune buggy riding, and sandboarding! After a super-relaxed day spent by the pool at Casa de Arena, our group of 7 (plus our driver) jumped into an all-terrain sand buggy, and roared off into the dunes, for a crazy ride in the buggy, and for some even crazier kamikazeing down the smooth, sandy slopes of the coastal desert.

Had the Casa de Arena all-you-can-eat chook-and-salad plus all-you-can-drink Pisco Sour / Cuba Libre deal tonight, for the second night in a row. It's a pretty good deal: great food, lots of it, plenty to drink, great crowd, and a low price tag. But there's only so much of that you can handle. Feeling really full-up right now, and I have a feeling that I'll stay full for a while. Might need to take a break from the barbeque tomorrow night, and find a regular just-whats-on-the-plate kind of restaurant.

I tried some of these delicious gourmet Ica chocolates on this morning's wine and pisco tour. They were so good, I just had to buy some! Got a few gift packages, to send home — to whom, I'm not yet sure. But boy, do they melt in your mouth. Clearly, Ica is the place to go, if you want all things nice and tasty from Peru.

Went on a little morning tour today — briefly leaving our oasis paradise of Huacachina — to some of Ica's famous wineries and pisco-making places, as well as to the city's much-adored chocolate factory. Can't really say we left paradise, because it was a pretty daym pleasant tour we had: it's a hard life when you have to spend all morning sampling gourmet chocolates, rich red wines, and perfectly-distilled piscos.

Even more than the massive dunes and the sandboarding, there's one thing that Huacachina is very, very famous for. I believe that its official name is Casa de Avinoam (lit: "House of Avinoam") — that's what the blackboard-scrawled sign out the front says, anyway. Most people refer to it simply as "The Israeli place". However, I think the most appropriate name for it would be Beit marijuana, because that's where it gets its fame from: at the end of every meal, the waiters at this bizarre restaurant will give you a small complimentary plate of not-particularly-legal herbs, and some paper to roll it up in. The cuisine is great here — but let's just say that most people don't come here for the food.

I've been noticing it more and more in the past month, but at tonight's BBQ buffet at Casa de Arena, it reached the point of being rather ridiculous. What's with all the French people around here?! All of a sudden, they're everywhere. At the dinner tonight, out of about 15 people, Chris and I were the only non-French-speakers around. Everywhere we've gone lately, we've seen massive French tour groups, of 20 or 30 Froggies, turning up at places all at once. Mon dieu, c'est ridicule! I mean, what's a French invasion doing in South America? Eh? None of your business!

Like most of the places to stay in the oasis of Huacachina, Casa de Arena is a very chilled-out resort-slash-hostel affair, with a nice swimming pool (a bit cold this time of year), a poolside bar, and a buffet BBQ every night (not only with all-you-can-eat chicken and salad, but also all-you-can-drink Pisco Sours and Cuba Libres!). Pretty good value, too — as evidenced by the abundance of (stoned) Israelis that stay there. Not sure when I'm going to leave this place, but it ain't anytime soon. :P

This morning, we arrived in Nazca from Arequipa, and went straight to the little airfield just outside of the city, to do a flight over the famous "Nazca Lines". This is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Peru: enormous lines that an ancient civilisation dug into the desert ground, and that are in the shapes of animals and of geometric figures, when seen from the air. As with many other tourists, my verdict for the Nazca Lines was not amazing: too expensive; hard to see the lines; and a really nauseating flight, in a teeny old plane with a crazy pilot. Something to tick off the list, but definitely not the highlight of my trip.

It seems that the recent troubles in Arequipa have cleared up a bit over the weekend, and that the roads in and out of the city are once-again open. For now, anyway. Not sure how long they'll stay open (it's still pretty volatile around here); but Chris and I seized the opportunity this evening, and grabbed a night bus to get us out of Arequipa, and over to the city of Nazca. Apparently, Nazca has been pretty much free of riots and roadblocks, so we should be fine there. Vamos a ver (lit: "we'll see").

This is probably news to everyone outside of Latin America, but for the past few weeks, the Copa América soccer tournament has been going on in Caracas, Venezuela. And everywhere that I've been lately — i.e. Bolivia, Chile, and Brazil — it's been the No. 1 thing on everyone's mind, and the one-and-only thing on every television in the continent. Well, this afternoon we finally had the grand final, between Brazil and Argentina: the way it turned out was that Argentina got slaughtered, and Brazil won the game 3-0.