Our bus from Nazca was absolutely fine, taking a mere two and a half hours to reach Ica. Here a taxi driver 'helped' us with our bags and took us the 5 kilometres to Huacachina. Huacachina is a little tourist trap; a very small place, filled with hotels, surrounded by sand dunes. We'd wanted somewhere to chill out for a couple of days. On the face of it, Huacachina seemed perfect. We'd read that Huacachina was in fact party central, and so had decided on a fairly brief visit before making our way to Cusco.

The taxi driver quickly started to try to sell us things, including a hostel and a trip to Islas Ballestas . Which worked, when he took us to a hostel and, after trying four different rooms, we agreed to stay in the last one. We did some research on Islas Ballestas which were highly rated, haggled about the price, and agreed to go on our last day in Huacachina. Our hostel was a little rough around the edges, and opposite our room was a building site. Huacachina appears to be expanding as this wasn't the only building site we encountered. After having a relaxed nap filled afternoon, we took a walk around Huacachina, admiring the dunes and Huacachina's lagoon. This didn't take long. The hostel had a swimming pool so we went for a dip in the pool as it reached sunset. Then we went to the hostel next door for good quality vegetarian food. Ours offered a barbeque only.

So far on our travels, we hadn't met any British people. Apparently they were all in Huacachina! The place was filled with the British, Israeli and Americans.

On Thursday 9th, we'd planned for a relaxed morning and afternoon . We booked to do sandboarding and dune buggy riding in the late afternoon, and relaxed in the hostel complex. It was very pleasant. The dune buggy and sandboarding is held late, to avoid the heat of the day, and before it gets dark. Our dune buggy was unfortunately 25 minutes late and then the driver had to refuel. However when we got going it was great fun, razzing around the dunes in the buggy. We were driven to the top of a dune, given a sandboard, and told to go down it. Unfortunately the boards were of poor quality, and the velcro that was supposed to keep your feet in place was substandard or missing. Even so, we had a great time attempting to ride down the 5 dunes we tackled; falling a lot, and occasionally making it to the bottom in style. As we were late in leaving, we missed the promised sunset over the dunes, though we did get a lovely view over Huacachina on the way back. Plus our dune buggy was red, not blue! Dammit! The dunes had quite a lot of rubbish in them, which was a shame, as the view was spectacular .

We badly needed a shower to get rid of all the sand, then we went for dinner in a restaurant, also next door to the hostel. The food was nice but took a long time, and we were tired and very hungry by this point. We went to sleep at a decent hour as we had to be up early the next morning, for our trip to Islas Ballestas.

At 6.45am our ride came, and we collected people from various points in Huacachina and Ica before setting off for Paracas. After an hour and a half in the bus, we boarded a boat, and sped out to sea. On the way we saw El Candelabro, a giant geoglyph representation of a cactus, or possibly a trident, dating from 200BCE. The Islas Ballestas are otherwise known as the 'Poor Man's Galapagos', though we struggled to draw the comparison. The islands are populated by thousands and thousands of birds, including blue-footed boobies and Humboldt penguins, guanay guano birds, tendrils, pelicans and any number of other sea birds. We cruised around the islands, taking in the wildlife, which also included sealions by the hundred. There was a 'nursery' with baby sealions, playing in the surf. They were very noisy. We saw several sealions in the water and birds diving for fish. There were a few penguins about but thousands and thousands of other birds. It was quite a spectacle. Our boat passed through an archway in the rock 'so that we can make a wish', and all too soon we were heading back to Paracas, and back on the bus to Huacachina. Sometimes you can see dolphins on the trip. We didn't see any, despite having our eyes peeled for them.

We checked out of our hostel and grabbed some lunch, before heading to Ica to get our bus to the next stop - Cusco!