Safe. Sick. Happy.

Hola! Esto es Jen. So much to write about from the last two days! I´ll start at the beginning.

We caught a taxi out to the bus station to get our tickets to Paracas. That was an adventure (caotic traffic). Then we had to buy the tickets, from a woman who spoke no english. Luckily my limited Spanish from grade 10 came in very handy! Then we caught a local bus on the way back to our hostel. Oh yes. Wild adventure. But we are alive. And it was soooo cheap! Una soles, about 35 cents, and it was a great tour of Miraflores!

Then we walked up to some ruins, and there happened to be a tour bus going to Lima comming, so we hopped onto that, since we hadn´t been into Lima yet. The buildings are amazing and huge! There were so many people selling little knick-knacks. I couldn´t resist a pair of earrings (5 soles) and Joel bought a map (8 soles), and Eco-Ninja bought a pin from an adorable kid (see facebook pictures). We took the tour down into the Catacombes below a church. It smelt horrible, I was slightly clostrophobic and the bones creaped me out. Joel loved it. We weren´t allowed to take pictures, so we bought a postcard.

Then back to the hostel. We bought some dinner from the grocery store, and I bought an icecream. Bad idea. Everyone else at the hostel was eating icecream, so I didn´t think twice about it. But no - I´ve ended up with food poisoning. I spent yesterday from 4am to 8am puking, and I now have horrible cramps. I´ve never had food poisoning before, but (luckily?) Joel has, so he knows what I´m going through. It sucks. The 3 hour bus ride felt like 6 hours to me. And we have a 14 hour bus ride coming up tonight. Oh boy. I hope I can sleep through most of it.

Onto happier things. We took the Islas Ballestas tour today. AMAZING! Definatly the highlight of the trip so far, and it´ll take a lot to beat it. There were millions of birds. Seriosly. The islands are a cluster of rocky outcroppings about 10km off the coast of Paracas. We saw Humbolt Penguins, Commerants, Chilian Boobies, Turkey Vultures, Sea Lions, Seals (and baby ones too!), Pelicans and Bottle Nose Dolphins! It doesn´t get much better than that! Plus, the tour was 2 hours long and 35 Soles (about $10).

Paracas is beautiful. It´t not humid like Lima (which kills me), just hot and slightly breezy. It's a desert, with Massive Palm Trees, a beautiful coastline and friendly people. I´m starting to get a tan, but I´m keeping out of the sun as much as possible and putting on loads of sunscreen. Hopefully I´ll be nice and tanned for summer in Canada!

So tonight we head to Arequipa. Ugh. 14 hours on a bus. Good thing they´re way better than Greyhounds!

Oh yea, and I think we´ll be getting to Bolivia after all (sorry Millie if we´re messing with your life!). We´re probably skipping the Arequipa canyon hike to make it to Bolivia... because, we´ll be doing tons of hiking in Patagonia anyways.

We also have a ton of pictures to upload, but the internet in Paracas isn´t so great... so it will have to wait til Arequipa.

So that´s it for now!

Adios!