We took an overnight bus from Nazca to Arequipa and in the morning awoke to find that the flat desert of Nazca had given way to huge rocky mountains.
It was certainly an unsual sight to see an arid, sun-baked desert with a snow-capped mountain in the background.
Close to the town of Nazca is the ancient cemetary of Chauchilla. Many graves have been excavated but many more are thought to exist. 
The main occupant of each grave is always surrounded by the bones of sacrificial victims.
The buried people were all carefully embalmed. When the graves were originally excavated in the early 1990s the mummies were well preserved but unexpected rainfall later in the decade caused them to get wet and rot away. Remnants of skin and hair can clearly be seen on this skeleton.
The mummies were fully dressed and had many useful items and food buried along with them. They were not believed to be dead and so needed various things to continue their existence.
A selection of the vast variety of objects buried with any one mummy.
In a tiny building next to the open graves are two temperature and humidity controlled cases containing mummies in their original condition. Above is the embalmed body of an infant.
This fully grown adult male is an example of what all the mummies looked like before the disaster that caused their preserved skin to rot away.
After the cemetary we went straight to Nazca´s small airport to catch our tiny aeroplane for a flight over the world famous Nazca lines.
Excitment at the prospect of the flight to come and also because she had two seats to herself.
The other four in the plane also really excited (well maybe not the pilot).
The mysterious Nazca lines were created by removing dark coloured rocks from the surface of the desert to reveal the lighter ones beneath. What makes them so strange is that the people who made them would never have actually seen them since they are only visible from the air. Above is the outline of a condor.
Known simply as "hands".
"Astronaut", this human figure is markedly different in style from the other lines.
"Tree".
"Monkey".
"Spider".
"Hummingbird".
An unnamed spiral.
"Dog". Seeing the Nazca lines was a great experience although the pilots keenness to make sure nobody missed anything meant that we climbed out of the plane feeling decidedly queasy.
Just off the coast of Pisco lie the Ballestas Islands. On the slanted side of one of the islands is what is known as the Candelabra, a huge mysterious line drawing though maybe to be related to the Nazca Lines.
These rocky islands are famous for the thousands of sea birds which live and nest there. We were lucky to see this pair of penguins close up.
A huddle of penguins waddle along the cliff top above some of the thousands of boobies with which they share their home.
Everywhere we looked on the rocks was covered in birds.
Really covered in birds.
Alongside all the birds is a colony of sealions who were making quite a racket.
Further South towards Nazca we stopped in desert town of Ica, built around a natural oasis amongst the sand dunes.
We took it upon ourselves to scale one of the huge dunes although it turned out to be alot harder work than we had imagined.
Eventually, with aching calves, we made it to the top.
The climb turned out to be well worth it with spectacular views across the desert.
The incredibly crisp lines of the dune ridges make for great photographs.
A popular attraction in Ica is sandboarding which, to state the slightly obvious, is basically sledging but on sand. It was great fun despite the fact that the sand got literally everywhere.
Our bus journey from Lima to the town of Pisco took us through some of the driest desert we have seen so far.
Somehow in these extreme conditions people manage to live and survive.
Back in Lima we paid a visit to the well known National Museum. They had a wide and fascinating selection of artefacts including paintings by Peruvian artists.
In the museum were hundreds of pre-Columbian artefacts like this item that can only be described as a lobster pot.
The detail and paint on the pottery has survived incredibly well in many cases, at least partly to do with the lack of rainfall in many areas of Peru.
Gold artefacts are much rarer due to the fact that most were stolen and melted down by the Spanish and local grave robbers.
A selection of the pottery from one area was covered in these complex geometric designs.
Mummification was extremely wide spread throughout South America before the Spanish conquest.
This pottery figure was found still in the mould.
Being that the train back to Lima from Huancayo ran overnight for 12 hours we decided to take a six hour bus instead and enjoyed the views in daylight.
One of the most impressive roads we had been on, it ran right throught the Andes from one side to the other.
After our long train journey we took a day off and just wandered lazily around the town of Huancayo. There is not much of interest in the town although it does have the distinction that the locals are known as Huancas (bear in mind that in Spanish "hu" is pronounced the same as the "W" in white!)
Some of the pillars are really enormous.
You can climb where you like but you have to watch your footing on the extremely crumbly ground.
Adam next to the tallest of the free standing structures.
Torre Torre is half way up a large hill overlooking the town.
We didn´t count but there must have been well over a hundred pillars.
Having tried to climb some of the narrower structures this was the bravest Adam got in the end after realising that it was incredibly dangerous.
We did climb some steep paths but made sure that there were no steep drops anywhere near.
A view down into one of the perilously deep canyons.
Liz wasn´t half as brave (or stupid) as Adam.
Above and below are a selection of pictures of the pillars from different angles.
