Courtney emailed me some pictures from her recent trip to Peru. This picture was taken at Huacachina, which is known for its sand dunes. She climbed to the top of the dunes on her first night in town with some of the people from her bus group, so she could watch the sunset. It was a pretty tough climb up the sand, but she saw a lot of people climbing up over and over so they could sandboard down from the top. She went sandboarding the next day, but rather than climb up the hill, she had a dune buggy drive her up to the top.
This picture was taken at Paracas National Reserve. The whole coast is a protected zone for wildlife, especially for birds and marine wildlife. They had a small museum there, and she stopped to take pictures at this overlook.
This picture was taken at Pisac, a small town in the Sacred Valley outside of Cusco on the way to Machu Picchu. There are a lot of small towns in this area with smaller Inca ruins. Pisac is known for its terraces for agriculture and for its big weekend market.
This picture is the small six seat plane that she took to see the Nazca Lines. The Lines were made by moving the dark colored rocks and exposing the lighter colored ground underneath. They think the Lines were supposed to be messages to the gods. The flight was about an hour long, and she saw 12 of the figures, like the monkey, humming bird and the "astronaut".
These two pictures are at Machu Picchu. It was first thing in the morning, so there weren't that many tourists out yet. Everyone waits in line to get their photo standing on this rock overlooking the site. In the second picture, you can see the fog starting to move in. About 30 seconds after the picture, the whole place was covered in fog, and you couldn't see a thing, but then it cleared up again a few minutes later. It did that several times throughout the day. Also, in the background of the second picture, you can see Wayna Picchu Mountain that she climbed to the top of to see the view, except it was totally covered in fog when she was up there. Pretty impressive vacation.
