Guano, sand dunes, sand-boarding and Pisco

ANDREI -  A cracking start to the tour with a spot of frolicking amongst the sand dunes at Huacachina.  First, we had a little trip to the Ballestas Islands - the poor-man's Galapagos Islands.  As veterans of Darwin's source of inspiration, we can confirm that, but it was pretty good value for money as it only cost us $10 each!  We saw more penguins here but there was no way of getting as near the wildlife, which includes gulls boobies and sealions.  There was also the little matter of guano - bird excrement - which coats the islands and is harvested every 7 years or so and exported.  Not as smelly as expected, but the good news was that none of our clothes collected any of the fresh stuff as we sped around in a motor-boat!

On to Huacachina and the dunes, including the tallest one in the world (which I somehow managed to miss.

..!).  We were driven around at crazy speeds in dune buggies then got to try out sand-boarding on progressively bigger dunes!  I was BLOODY scared at first.  I only went down on my front (so I could stay on the thing) but this meant you picked up a lot more speed!  My ample 72kg leant me superb momentum and allowed me to contribute to British mastery of the slopes as Mateo, Shashi and I got the most distance downt he slopes!  Funniest moment was  when Kerry descended the 2nd dune!  Her barrage of screamed expletives had us in stitches as we watched her!  What would her mother say?

To round off things, there was a big barbecue amongst the dunes with too much free Pisco.  Your's truly indulged in this heavily (along with driver Steve-o) and I soon crashed into a mess of vomit and annoying (to Kerry) half-sentences, etc!  Before the fall, there was much banter and a drunken game of limbo.  Those dune-buggy guys and their brethen seemed to delight in "getting close" to the drunken ladies in our group...  Nothing bad to report, though.  Only the edited photos for this blog seem to imply something different!

This was all rounded off by some sweet slumber under the beautiful starry sky.  If only I could remember that part...!