Dune Surfing

Well the good news about sand boarding is that you don´t even need to stand up! For the first three pitches I went flat on my tummy and held on for dear life. It´s all fun and games until you get sand in your mouth and crunch on it for the next few days. As much as i wanted to scream doing the ¨belly down face first¨ method I quickly learned my lesson to keep my mouth closed! Another thrill of the dune experience was the dune buggy ride! It was similar to a roller coaster in that after we got out of the dune buggy I thought I might vom. So much fun! We met two nice girls on our dune buggy (8 person passengers) from North Carolina who have been traveling for three months. We are taking an overnight bus to arequipa tonight and we LUCKED OUT by grabbing the last two seats on the bus! I did read that some of the overnight buses get hijacked so wish us luck on this overnight adventure! Who knew buses can be hijacked???

Overall we are already loving it here! It is always tough to get used to the hustle and bustle of traveling, lack of excellent communication, unsanitary showers, bugs, and uncomfortable beds. However I have adjusted quickly, only two days! Arequipa is supposed to be beautiful and we are definitely going to check out and hike around Canyon de Colca. It is twice as deep as our Grand Canyon and we will be looking through binocculars trying to spot the infamous condors! I read that Peru actually encompasses 84 of the 101 ecosystems of our planet! It is very diverse for such a small mass of land. My parents gave me a NICE photographers camera for Christmas and I have already put it to use. Two days... two hundred photos.... UH OH! I will have LOADS of photos to share with you all when I get back to the States!