Lonely in Lima on my last day in South America so thought I would write up my last week on this wonderful continent. The last week started with a morning in bed and finally some sleep, we had taken a night bus from Arequipa to Nazca and were all shattered so first thing was bed. We woke to some lovely hot weather. The first thing on the agenda was a trip to an Inca cemetary. I had from somewhere picked up the idea that we were visiting a cat cemetary which with full and genuine conviction I tried to convince the girls we would be seeing that day. They however were not persuaded although it did give them a good giggle. We drove down the Pan-American highway in to the desert to view bits of bodies that had been dug up and assembled in tombs (well, holes in the grounds) for tourists to look at. It was interesting to hear how the Inca´s lived and died but there was something not quite right about it. We were also taken to see a small museum where there were photos of the site being discovered and two mummies, one a child which had been preserved and encased in glass. All a bit morbid. We enjoyed the last rays of the sun back at the hotel, all looking forward to the flight over the Nazca Lines the next day.

I had been looking forward to the flight over the Nazca Lines for the majority of the trip. The people we had met on the Lares Trek had told us to be prepared for a dodgy plane, a reckless pilot and to feel very ill. Arriving at the airport we met our pilot who seemed completely fine and got introduced to the Cessna (very small plane) that we would be flying in. The pilot gave us a map of the Nazca Lines we would be seeing and explained he would fly left and right over them so we would all be able to see them. Take off was a bit hairy, speeding down the runway we wobbled a bit as we took off but after that we were all fine and despite feeling a bit ill when he went on the side no one lost their breakfast or their heads being too terrified. In fact it wasn´t as scary as it had been made out to be although the pilot tried his best by taking his hands off the controls to turn round and talk to us! Flying over the lines we saw the monkey (my favourite), the hummingbird, alcatraz, hands (also known as a frog), tree, parrot, astronaught and a few others. The Nazca Lines are amazing things, I have no idea how they came to be there or why or even if it is just some elaborate hoax. But whoever put them there was incredibly skilled, some of them are over 400m in length and the lines are so straight, making them picture perfect! There were more that we didn´t see but they seem to be all over the Nazca desert, the Pan-American Highway even cuts directly through one of them. You can only really appreciate the lines from the air and although it took me a while to spot them as some of them are quite faint it was wonderful being able to see these mysterious pictures.

The afternoon was spent walking around Nazca town and lounging by the pool in the sun before we set off to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere for a type of food called Hungi. This is where they cook the food in a hole in the ground heated by hot rocks, sounds strange but is in fact delicious! The next day was my birthday !! and the last day of the tour. I woke to find the girls had decorated the front of my room door with balloons and streamers and at breakfast they gave me a book on the Nazca Lines and a beautiful bracelet. Feeling chuffed we set off on our drive to Ica, stopping off at a lookout tower which looks down on the tree and the hands (Nazca Lines). It was good to see them up close, I have no idea how they are still there. Thousands of years old they can only be seen from the air so how whoever did them made them so perfect is a mystery and indeed as is why they did them. They also only just scrape the surface of the ground and the lines themselves are not that thick, we were told that they hardly have any rain and no wind in this part of Peru but it still seems strange that they have survived so long as the lines are so defined. But I am a terrible sceptic... I do really appreciate them for what they are and am very happy to have seen them.

After this stop off we journeyed to Ica for sandboarding! Very exciting treat on my birthday!! Ica and Nazca were both affected by the earthquake so this was the first time we saw any of the devastation, Ica was more dramatically hit than Nazca and we saw people living in tents and whole buildings reduced to rubble. It was very sad. We stopped off in a hotel in a small town which was built on sand, on either side were huge sand dunes. How these did not crush the town when the earthquake hit I have no idea. The sand buggies were waiting for us at the hotel so we jumped in very excited and off we went. The ride in the buggy for me was the best bit, like a rollercoaster we jumped over the sand dunes being rocked backwards and forwards, it was great! We stopped at the top of a dune and strapped on our boards (sandboarding is a lot like snowboarding) and we all summoned up the guts to take the plunge and go down... we all did and all fell over after the first couple of seconds. I couldn´t get back up again so proceeded to slide all the way down the dune on my bum. The sand was boiling!! Some of us were getting much better as it went on, predictably I wasn´t and was having far too much fun using the board as a sledge and going downhill like that. Cara, a girl in my group was getting really good, she was probably the best out of all of us. We were cheering her on when she did a spectacular fall. All stunned in to silence we were jolted back to reality by her screaming. She had hurt herself pretty badly so we headed back, carefully in the buggy and she had to go to hospital. Put a bit of a downer on the morning but thankfully nothing was broken although she is now in a lot of pain with her back.

Unfortunately after that we had to get a 5 hour bus to Lima which was not a fun way to spend a birthday but a late night meal at the end of it made it better. It was sad saying goodbye to some of the girls and Thad (who had been an excellent tour guide) that night, we had been together for such a long time and it had gone so quickly. Emma, the girl I was sharing a room with was staying one more day so we spent yesterday exploring Lima. We tired ourselves out walking round, mostly because with my complete lack of map reading skills mixed with no sense of direction got us pretty lost but we did get to see a lot of Lima. Throughout the tour people had warned me that Lima was a horrible place to go, that you shouldn´t spend longer there than you had to. One lady even told me she couldn´t breathe as the pollution was so bad... to be honest haven´t found it that bad. Its just a city, there is a beach, shopping and things to see and although the city is shrouded in what seems like permanent cloud with the pollution I´m still breathing! I maybe couldn´t spend much longer than this here though. We ended yesterday with a farewell dinner with two other girls from the tour and I said goodbye to Emma this morning which was sad.

Have absolutely loved Brazil, Bolivia and Peru and despite getting sick and never wanting to hear the pan pipes EVER again I would definately come back to South America, its a great place and the people lovely. Since everyone has left I am all on my lonesome waiting for my flight to New York tonight. Its strange being by yourself again after so long and I am nervous about the next stage of my adventure. I will update you all again once I have settled in to the city that never sleeps and have met my next group... until then xxx