Nazca to Lima: Sand dune hilarity, desert cycling.

We left Nazca the following morning with 15 litres of water and a full bottle of sunscreen, armed and ready for our first ever ride in a proper desert. After leaving town and rejoining the Panamericana proper for the first time since Chile we cycled an easy 20kms through an increasingly dry landscape towards the area containing the Nazca Lines. Despite constant enthusiastic peering we couldn't see anything from the road so paid S1 each to ascend the roadside lookout where you could see a couple of small figures. The lookout itself wasn't exactly a picture of structural integrity so we didn't linger, but did purchase a useless keyring from the stalls below.

The Panamericana. No corners, no water, no worries.

We had counted on it taking two days to reach Ica, a major town and our next target and we were hoping to manage about 100kms that day before camping in the desert. Our plan had a hidden flaw (how unusual!) in that we thought the road would be perfectly flat, after all we left the mountains the other day, but it slowly dawned on us as the afternoon wore on that we appeared to be surrounded by large hills, if not in fact mountains, on all sides. We started climbing in the late afternoon before Ben got a puncture and we were force to stop and repair it, and have a chocolate mint biscuit break. Whilst we were snacking a woman and her son on a motorcycle stopped to see if we were ok and to generally be nosy about what we were doing. They were quite unbelieving that we had cycled there from Nazca, let alone Bolivia and they hadn't heard of Ushuaia. Before they rode off they said the hill-mountain looked worse than it was and it would only take us an hour to reach the top, fortunately for us they were correct. We rode down the other side and past a small village before pulling off the road and behind some sand dunes to camp.

Camp 100m from the highway, surrounded by dunes. Quite cold once the sun goes.

Camping in the desert was great, it was just like being at the beach but with no water. The sand was soft and warm and got everywhere, the stars were bright at night and we were fast asleep the moment the sun went down at 6:30pm. The next day we battled a headwind all day but made it to Ica where we celebrated our triumphant desert crossing with an ice cream from the first modern supermarket we had seen since February.

The oasis.

We headed 2kms out of town (only taking a single wrong turn) to the desert oasis of Huacachina, where we camped lagoon-side for two nights. The highlight of our stay was a dune buggy - sandboarding trip into the surrounding dunes. The buggy ride was hair-raising and we are flat out hopeless and sandboarding, taking a less technical sliding-down-on-our-stomach approach.

Ben amongst sand.

With the sandboard.

Sandboard in action. Frankly, this was terrifying.

Continuing north the following day we headed to Pisco, home of Peru's famous cocktail, the Pisco Sour. The town istelf was 80% destroyed by an earthquake a couple of years ago and some local cyclists and the Lonely Planet warned us that it can be a dangerous place. Despite this we decided to take an alternative 'scenic route' into town along the coast (turned out to be a row of fish processing plants) and  resulted in us getting completely lost in the wrong part of town. Out of desperation we went to the police station to ask for directions, he rounded up a couple of boys who had bikes and ordered them to escort us to the safer area around the CBD. Naturally we were standing out like sore thumbs in this neighbourhood with lots of people looking at us strangely so these boys thought it was the coolest to be:
a) asked to do something by a policeman, and 
b) be associated with the gringo circus freaks everyone was staring at.


We were worried they were going to rob us.


But they didn't and they couldn't have puffed their chests out any further or cycled any faster, at least 25kmph on bmxs, so we gave them a tip and stayed in the first normal looking hotel we saw. 

Adaptive reuse, or "LAUNDRY ALWAYS PERVAILS". Earthquake damage in Pisco.

After that experience we caught the bus to Lima the next day, after a unexpected taxi ride to the motorway junction from the bus station after it turned out the bus didn't come into town. We had 4 people, 2 bikes, a large spare tyre and all our panniers all crammed inside a stationwagon going 80kms an hour down a motorway. While we were waiting for the bus we were entertained by a large chicken-rooster which had taken up residence in the drivers seat in another bus. No one seemed to find this unsusal except us, we think it might have been the drivers pet. 

When we arrived in Lima it was dark and we had to bike about 4kms to the hostel we were staying in. Thankfully there was a great cycle lane and little traffic. We met a local cyclist on this route, he was very excited about us and said that the metal rods he was carrying was for making racks as he was heading to Ecuador tomorrow to go cycle touring. We think thats what he was saying anyway. After about 5 minutes of conversation Anna noticed he had a huge machete taped to the frame of his bike. She nervously asked him what it was for, he said he needed it for Ecuador as its very dangerous there, as are the suburbs of Lima. He then proceeded to pull a taser from his pocket and demonstrate it, all while cycling along. It was hard to tell what was more scary, hearing the Ecuador was dangerous enough to justify taping a machete to your bike, or that we were cycling though Lima in the dark with a stranger carrying a machete and a taser.....We quickly said our farewells, swapped facebook info whilst cycling and staggered into our hostel for a well earned rest.