After a night of camping in Nasca we headed to Chauchilla cemetery which is also in Nasca.. Over there you can see some mummies from the Nasca civilisation. Since it only rains 2 hours a year in Nasca the very dry climate has preserved the mummies very well... unfortunately 50 years ago grave robbers destroyed quite a bit.... but there were still quite a few interesting things to see like that people used to have hair ( in particular priests) which was 3m long given that people were only about 1.6 m tall... Warriors tended to keep the heads of their victims dangling as a belt around their hip... some interesting way that was done... I won{t go into details about brain removal and a rope being tied to the tongue... lets leave it at that.. From there we headed to Puerto Inca a little place on the coast and all you could see was desert, rocks, sand and a few cactus... Ever since we left Lima its just sand sand... some beautiful scenary though..
In Puerto Inca there was a cute little walk along the coast with the rock formations looking a bit like sea monsters ( like the bits that dinosours have on their back).. once again I did not know that I could get that excited about rocks... Camping was quie fun as well and our group meals have been pretty good. The group is really nice.. unfortunately once we get to Cusco and from there downwards our number goes from 13 to 21 ... But my friend Marieke will be joining me in Cusco until La Paz which I am very much looking forward to. :) The next day it was a really long drive to Arequipa 7hours... we were all quite tired... and you guessed right it was once again desert, sand and rocks and then suddenly you have a little green vally and following that desert again..
In Arequipa we have a 2 night hotel stay to recharge our batteries.. I had a quick wonder around town yesterday and we went for a group meal.. Today we went sight seeing and some silver shopping.. We also visited the local Monastery of Santa Catalina and the Cathedral which are the two key attractions here. The city is quite big and cute.. Its really weired to have a whole city flair as pretty much every city we drove though on our way here has just been little houses and shanty towns... We are all starting to feel the altititude as we slowly get higher moving towards Cusco.. haha the entire group is still with an uneasy stomach which I think will stay this way until we head Chile in a couple of weeks as Bolivia is supposed to be not too easy on the stomach either...
Tomorrow we are headed to the Colca Canyon where we will see the big Condor birds fly and apparently the canyon is pretty impressive too.
