Time to chill!

Mancora was just what we needed – great beach, glorious sunshine, palm trees, tropical juices by the jug-load, cocktails etc. We stayed at a really nice beach bungalow, part of a surfer’s camp just off the seafront.

This inspired us both on our first morning to have ‘refresher’ surfing lessons in the aggressive waves conveniently located next to a very large cluster of rocks.

It was early morning, we were raring to go, it was just us and our surfboards taking on the mighty Pacific... and we got beaten...

Although I was managing to ride quite a few waves I fell off my board early on and slammed my right butt-cheek into a very hard rock (I’m still nursing a large purple/green bruise a week later). I then nearly decapitated Elizabeth with my board as I rode completely out-of-control, down a wave towards her. Then after just 30 minutes of surfing I was on the verge of throwing up with the amount of sea water I had already swallowed. I called it a day after an hour, happy with the waves I’d managed to catch.

Elizabeth however, persevered beyond the hour. This was a bad idea. She emerged (seaweed entangled) on the beach coughing and spluttering and claiming she had a “dislocated, chipped shoulder, with a torn tendon” (dubious self-diagnosis) and a cut, bleeding knee (accurate self-diagnosis). She had also eaten “some dodgy fish the night before” and wasn’t feeling too great (we had eaten exactly the same dish and I was feeling fine).

After the excitement of our first morning’s surfing we just passed out on the beach for the next few days doing nothing but lying in the sun, eating at the local restaurants by the sea and watching the sun set and the amazing surfers every evening. It was just the break we needed.

































After a few days we decided to head down the coast for what was a painful 24 hour bus journey through the night and then most of the following day to Nazca. The Nazca lines are one of the main attractions in Peru and are very large, perfectly engraved images of animals and other things in the desert floor. They were created hundreds of years ago for some unknown purpose but possibly to act as messages of some sort to the Gods of the day (you can’t make the images out stood next to them but rather only from above). The best way to view them therefore is by plane so we took a taxi to the airport the next day, hopped into a Cessna with Fernando (our guide/pilot) and took off over the desert. It was cool seeing the lines from the air and I was also amazed to see how the Peruvians fly and interact with air traffic control - doing things that would probably have them banned from flying if they did it in the UK!

Everything was going fine and I was enjoying myself in the front seat when I turned around (smelling something suspiciously unpleasant in the air) to see Elizabeth throwing up into a sick bag. We’d been doing steep turns to get a better view and the higher g’s didn’t go down to well with her stomach unfortunately! There was a French girl with us as well who had gone a shade of green and was crouched over a sickbag for most of the journey.

Despite the vomiting incident I think we both really enjoyed it, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was a cool experience. Later in the day we bought bus tickets for Arequipa (a lovely, large Peruvian town) where we are now. The eight hour journey down the coast had some stunning scenery. To our left was the desert consisting of perfectly-formed, smooth sand dunes that had spilled onto the road (rendering a main arterial road in Peru to that of a dirt track, just half a lane in width) and to the right was the Pacific which was bright blue with huge, crashing waves. It was like having the ocean next to the Sahara and looked incredible.

Next update will follow in a few days...!

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