The great Peruvian adventure begins ...

With a cancelled flight, missed connection in Miami and a likelihood of arriving in Lima too late to catch our pre-booked tour of the Nazca Lines and Ballestas Islands, Peru did not look like it was going to start off well for us … So we are still baffled as to how we found ourselves sitting in business class seats on a direct flight with Delta, arriving in Lima (complete with our luggage – the mystery continues) 15 minutes prior to the flight we should have been on, all at the expense of American Airlines. Absolute result!

After all that drama, we only had 2 hours to rest our weary cankles (I’ve convinced myself that even Kate Moss gets those after a day of flying) before our 3.30am pick-up for our adventures around the Peruvian “Galapagos Islands” (or the Ballestas as they are technically known). The 250 Km drive (most of which we slept, as our kind hosts had brought us pillows!) to get to the region was well worth it and it was hard to believe that less than 24hrs previously we were stuck in the sprawling metropolis of Atlanta.




After our tour of the Ballestas, it was a further 250 Km south to Nazca, home of the famous Nazca Lines. These are not only lines and geometrical figures, but also designs such as a dog, monkey, birds - one with a wing span of over 100m - a spider, a tree and an astronaut (!), which were thought to have been etched into the stony desert between 900BC and 600AD. The lines can really only be seen from the air - fortunately , we had the ‘luxury’ of a 5 seater Cessna to get the big picture!