Next stop: Arequipa.  The best city we came across in Peru.

Arequipa sits at the base of the volcano El Misti.

Knowing that Zach liked caves (and hey, who doesn't?), we went on a day-trip from Arequipa to the Caves of Sumbay. The road was treacherous and we wondered if our car would make the trip.  

Once we got there, we began to have doubts about the existence of these caves.  There weren't any signs, and the "owner" sent his little son to lead us to the caves, which were a long walk away through the desert.  We joked about the caves being just a dent in the rocks, but when we actually got there, we were amazed to see that the Sumbay Caves were.....paintings on a dent in a rock wall. 

We faked interest.  Sure, the cave paintings were impressive for someone who likes that sort of thing, but we wanted caves, dammit!!!

We returned to Arequipa for more touring around and ate some fresh seafood at an amazing little hole-in-the-wall.  Everyone who knows me knows I'm not much of a fish fan, but here I was eating an entire fish, head, tail and all!

Steve, Zach and I parted way at this point. They wanted to go surfing, and I wanted to do more hiking and sightseeing.  So they took off to the north and I continued on to the Colca Canyon for a two-day trek.

  Here are my trekking mates at the top of the canyon.

A view into the canyon.

We hiked for several hours into the bottom of the canyon where we crossed the river responsible for carving the canyon out in the first place.

Me and some local flora.

We enjoyed a simple pasta meal...

...before turning in for the night on borderline comfortable beds.

But we were up at 3am to begin hiking out of the canyon.  It was a gruelling 2 hour upward haul to the top of the canyon. We got there just before sunrise, enjoyed a hot breakfast and got on the bus back to Arequipa.

We made a stop at the 'Cruz del Condor', a popular spot for condor watching, and apparently, souvenir shopping . We could see condors swooping in the distance, but of course, they waited until we were on the bus for the return to Arequipa before they soared above the crowd.

Back in Arequipa, I took an overnight bus to my next stop, Nazca, home of the famous Nazca Lines.  I jumped on a tourist flight to see the lines from the air.

My trusty pilot, Captain Oveur. 

It's kinda hard to tell, but the left picture shows a monkey and the right is a hummingbird.  There's no sense of scale, but remember that I took these from a plane flying several thousand feet in the sky. A person standing by one of these would be a dot.

My final stop on my Peru tour was the desert oasis town of Huacachina. 

I decided to splurge on my final days and stayed at the most expensive hotel in town, which still only set me back US$40 a night.

I met up with two American guys and a British couple to hit the dunes in a dunebuggy and do some sandboarding.

"They call me Dunerider"

Sure, it looks like I know what I'm doing here, but this was a setup.

This was more typical of my first rides. I was spitting sand out of my mouth for hours.

It's hard to smile when your shorts feel like they're lined with sandpaper.

Sadly enough, these were the result of only the five of us. There was no one else around.

Enjoying a fine martini at the pool bar.

Line 'em up, eh Becks?

We liked the dunebuggy so much, we did it again...this time at sunset.

Steve and Becky

Wally

Dean

Ready to carve some tracks.

Happy to get to the bottom alive.

The sun sets so fast near the equator that I almost missed this shot.

This is the sweet ride we were going to take to a winery tour the next day.

Steve, Becks and myself on the way to the winery.

Bah! Who needs wine bottles?

Sampling the goods.

A nice shot of the lagoon.

After these shots were taken, I had to jump into a cab to the airport in Lima.  Huacachina was definitely a great way to end the trip.  Even though the country is smaller than the province of Ontario, there was still so much I missed. I need to go back again someday!