Viaje a Ica, Paracas, y las Islas Ballestas!

What a fun weekend! On Saturday, we left Lima and took a nice private bus all the way to Ica, which is this little city in the middle of the desert built around an oasis.  Some people ran all the way up the sand dune behind our hotel as soon as we got there:

I, of course, got less than half way up and decided to come down. But it was pretty cool nonetheless.  That night, we took dune buggies out to the dunes to go sandboarding!!!

The dune buggies themselves were sooo much fun! It was like going on a rollercoaster.  Then we went sandboarding, which is pretty much like snow boarding, except on sand. First we went down our stomachs and then we tried going on our feet. It was so amazing. These are what the dunes were like:

So that was fun for the first day. The hotel we stayed in was really nice as well. Very clean, modern, etc.  Until we changed our clothes and got sand everywhere.
So, today, we left Ica and went out to Paracas, which is this port fishing city.  Some interesting things around town:

This is one of those creepy hairless dogs. He was gnawing and biting the ankle of this man and the man was just completely ignoring it. It was pretty funny.
Well from Paracas we took a boat out to las Islas Ballestas.  On the way there, we passed by el Candelabro, which is similar to the Nazca Lines.  It was carved? dug? built? by a pre-Colombian culture but no one is sure which one.  It's dug into the sand.  It is in the shape of what seems like a candelabra, but no one is quite sure what it was originally meant to be.  The very coolest part, though, is that if you were to brush your hand through the sand, the sand doesn't change.  That figure has been imprinted in the sand for thousands of years and it has not once changed or gone away. Pretty neat:

But the islands looked more or less like this:

A lot of caves, cliffs, etc. And a LOT of birds!

And a couple penguins:

and...SEA LIONS!

And...then we went to Chincha for lunch.  Chincha is home to many Afro-Peruanos, who have a very distinct culture, food, dance, etc.  We ate at an Afro-Peruano restaurant that was incredible! The food was so good!

After we ate, 4 girls came in and started dancing. We had actually learned a lot of these moves on Friday in this little class we had, but oh my gosh these girls were ten times better than all of us!

Oh, also, our lunch was like this huge buffet just for us, so afterwards they packed up all the leftovers. We had like 10 boxes, it was ridiculous. So on our way out of Chincha, we stopped by a little group of houses that were, well, barely houses.  A family came out and we gave them all of our leftovers. They were sooo happy! So that was nice.

Well, what a fun weekend! I wish I could have spent more time there.