Dear Friends and Family,

First of all, thistime I write in English for my dear family and friends abroad. Second, thank you for all your nice messages.

Today I have left Lima and got thebus to Ica(south from Lima). The bus took almost 5 hours to arrive in Ica. Ica is acity inthe desert and it is bloody hot. Eventhough it is the raining season I haven´t seen one singe rain drop. Apparentlyit hardly ever rains in Lima not to mention Ica.In Ica I shared a taxi witha couple from Switserland to Huacachina,it only took like5 minutes and now I´m at the hostel Desert night or something like that. Huacachinco isan oasis in the desert. Seriously, an oasislike you see in the Walt Disney movies. It´s surrounded by dunes/duinen (don´t know if the spelling is correctly) which areused forSandboarding (It´s like snowboarding only than on sand)and are incredibly high. In the middle there is a little lake which is surrounded with houses. It is sotiny and very touristicthat I have to get used to it afterbeing Lima. I won´t stay for long tough, it is just a place to stay at as starting point for some excursions.

About Lima by the way.It was AMAZING!!!! The hostel was really cool,theowner wasso helpful(he even tried to help toovercome my fear of speakingSpanish, he said I knew a lot but that I´mto shy to speak)and I met some nice people.I was amazed howeasy it was to go wander around by myself. The areaof the Hostel, Mirafloreswas a wonderfularea torecover from my flight. It´ssupersafe and I mean really reallysafe. Maybe even safer than Eindhoven. There are copsand guards everywhere. It was very clear that the tourist industry had kicked in and that Limawants to make sure that nothing happens to the peoplevisiting the city. Beacause Miraflores is the rich part of Lima they can affort so many police. If you go to Barranco or Downtown then it is less safe.

Anywaythe firstday I went to thesea and I met a guynamed Pablo. He is anPeruvian livng in the USA.We started talking and heoffered me to show me Miraflores.It was absolutely the best first day I couldhope for. We went walking(for more than4 hours, I got burned terribly because I am sometimes a bit stubborn/eigenwijs

). I have stand inthe Pacific Ocean WOOOOHHH...and we ate the traditional meal Ceviche, which is fish coocked in Lime (they use Lime on almost everything), drank Peruvian beer and had a lovelyfish soup with crab. The place wherewe ate wasgreat, it was a harbour. Every morning the fishermen go out in there little boats catching fish. They bring the fish back and the men on the shore take the fish and place them in freezer truck. Which is not cooled by airco or anything but with real ice. We were there when they where working. So for lunch we had the fish that was catched that morning. Getting food more fresh than that is not possible.(By the way that is also thereason why people in Limaonly eat fish during lunch. Because of the weather it is difficult to keep it fresh, so instead of putting energy in that theyeat fresh fish at lunch, and in the evening it´s Carne.)Afterwards we spend the rest of the day on the beach and in the evening we had dinner in one of the restaurants near the Kenedy Park. There I drunk the Peruvian specialty Pisco souer. Which is a very fresh alcholic drink, with....you might guess it Lime.

The second day I went to the Huaca Puccllana which are Pre-colombian ruins (ruïne). I got some history lessons which was really interesting. I refer to Wikipedia if you are interested in this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lima. It´s to much to write here. What I found the most interesting part which I wouldlike to share with you at home is that before the period of theInca´sthere where many other tribes, with each there traditions, I never even thought of this. The guide compared the Inca´s to the Romains, they just took over everything. However they build on the knowledge of the tribes they conquered. When the Spanish came they destroyed many things because the Spanish like to show how much better they were than the Inca´s (he compared this with the Moslims...a dangerous comparison if you do that back home I think). The way the Spanish treated the indigious people was horrible and not really clever because some vital knowledgegot lost. For example the way the Inca´s and Pre-colombian tribes build there homes and temples. Peru is subject to earthquakes. The amazing thing is that the old structures of the old tribes all survive these earthquakes, while the people nowadays strugle to build structeres that can survive these natural disasters. The guide told that some renovated work had collapsed with the last huge earthquake in 2007, while the old structures remained undamaged. How amazing is that! At least I was very impressed. So many more things where told (like it will take another 20 year to expose the rest of the temple) but I won´t bore you with that.

I decided to leave Lima a day sooner than originally booked. The only interesting part that was left was the old town which I did yesterday. First time alone with public transport, that was a fear to overcome. But it went pretty well and I felt quite comfortable. I managed to get to the main square in Lima downtown with common scence and reading the map. I was pretty pleased with myself

. The square was busy with workers to clean up the mess from the Dakar rally. I walked around and then a funny thing happened. A Peruvian guy came up to me and asked me why I came to Peru and what I thought of Lima. We started talking and I asked him if he would like to show me his city (I noticed that Peruvian people are really proud of there country and really enjoy talking about it, so why not hook up with them to get a better insight of the city and country). Enricoshowed me around, how perfect is that! So I got to know Lima pretty well, we talked about the economics, the history, the future, the demonstration that was happening that day,and so on (all in English by the way, my Spanish is however in progress). We also went to Barranco which is the artistic area in Lima and we watch the sunset (not in any romantic way!!!) on the clifs in Barranco which was also pretty cool. The Peruvian guys are really gentlemens (at least the two I met), he walked me back to the main street of the hostel. A great last day in Lima.

So today Huacachina, I booked a tour to the islands of Ballestas for tomorrow (seals and piguins)andI will probably also go into the dessert with a buggy the day after. Than I will leave to go to Nasca. I´m a bit scarred about that because the plans are so small ieeeeeeeeek. But I just have to see the Nasca Lines, so I have to put my fears asight for just 2 hours or so. I will probably stay only one day in Nasca and take the overnight bus to Arequipa. This is the second city in Peru. They advised me to go there to get used to the high altitudes before I goup to Cusco. Arequipa lies on 2300 meter by the way.

So to finish off. Lima was a great experience I could tell so much more, about the traffic, the mini buses, the crappy taxi´s, the honking (toeteren van de auto) culture (I´m convinced they really have one! Our gouverment would be shocked how much they honk), that being blond means plenty of attention, the gap between rich and poor, how they treat animals, about the food, the annoying Americans all except one(sorry hadto say that), the nice Australians,the remains of theearthquakeand so somuch more. So many things that happened so many impressions. It´s really amazing and it gives me a feeling of self-confidence (is that proper English?)for the rest of my trip. Well I´m going to have some dinner and enjoy the evening sun, what´s the weather there by the way? Did the winter finally kicked in? Ow about the pictures I will try to upload some in the near future.

Adios Amigos,

Voor de mensen die niet zo goed in Engels zijn, check google translate. Voor een globale vertaling van dit verhaal.