Date: 22nd October 2006

Ballestas Islands at Paracas - Morning tour
Desert tour at the Huacachina Oasis - Afternoon/overnight stay

 We had a very early start today at 5:45 and headed off in Doris to a little town called Paracas where we caught boats to go on our tour of the Ballestas Islands. This was a really fun trip, we saw sea lions, pelicans and penguins and there was tons of birds flying around. On the way we also saw the Candelabra sign in the sand on the side of a hill, no one knows who drew it and it never seems to ever dissapear! We had lunch at a wicked sea food place after that before heading onto the Huacachina Oasis in the Atacama Desert.

We had a quick stop to get overnight bags and then off we went in sand buggies over the sand. Man this was so much fun, they were speeding along hehe, it was like fear and loathing in Las Vegas! After 20 mins of this we stopped and did some sand boarding on snow boards. This was also sweet, we went down about 7 different hills each getting steeper and even the first ones were huge. This was so cool and they even waxed the bottom of the boards to make them go faster. Rusty went so fast on one his glasses came flying off, luckily I legged it to where he came down and managed to spot them which was pretty flueky in the middle of a desert, Mel also left a few freckles behind as she came off her board and scrapped her arm. After this we were back in the buggies to a spot where we had a huge bbq with well nice steaks and kicked off by Pisco sour to drink. There was a big campfire we all sat round and drunk to about 3 in the morning, listening to big speakers, playing limbo and even some crazy night sandboarding. We then went off to find little spots with our sleeping bags and went to sleep under a beautiful sky which was completely unspoilt by city lights.