Christmastime in Peru

So, I finally have some more pictures to post! I've been in Peru for about a week and a half now and it's been fabulous! The pictures in the post are from a trip we took to Ica, Peru. A large part of Peru is covered by a very dry desert with a lot of sand dunes. We stayed in a resort in Ica, which is in this desert. These pictures are from a dune-buggy and sandboarding tour we took from a small oasis town called Huachacina that is close by to Ica. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever been able to do! What happens is you go to Huachacina and hire a dune buggy driver (you'll see what they look like in the post). Then, the dune buggy driver drives you all over the sand dunes and high speeds, which makes for an experience similar to riding a roller coaster. The best is when they take you up these REALLY high dunes and then you just go sailing down almost vertically. Ex. At one point on the ride the driver had just been driving us around and he starts to get close to this REALLY high cliff type of dune. As we get close he says "this is the highest dune here" and we're all thinking "wow - that's great!" and assuming he's going to stop and have us get out and take pictures (we'd done that a lot), but all of a sudden he's just gone past the edge of the dune and we are flying down the side of it, looking straight down hundreds of yards. It was intense. Just feeling the wind blow through my hair as we drove through this lunar landscape was awesome in and of itself. The other part of the tour was the sandboarding. Basically, he'd drive us around for a bit and then stop at the edge of a dune. Then he'd get out the sandboards (they just look like snowboards) and we'd all lay down on them (on our stomachs), hold on and slide, face first, down the edge of a big steep dune (don't worry mom, it was safe). It was SO cool. You would get going REALLY fast (especially me, for some reason - because I'm small?). We did that quite a few times. I even ate it one time and flipped over, but was fine. After the trip, we had sand in our ears for days no matter what we did. I still find sand in my shoes. Ok - enough talking. On to the photos.

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3: Other tours.


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9: I obviously didn't take this - just thought it was cool. There's an even cooler one though that I plan on getting my hands on soon.


10: This is Tom jumping off the dune-buggy.


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