bus rides, feeling sick and PICTURES!!!!!

i know i said that i probably wouldn´t be updating or emailing or be online much - but when all you wanna do is chill out and talk about what you´ve done so far AND there´s free internet access where you´re staying...well, i´ve updated more than i thought i would - not that i think anyone´s complaining. ;)

first off, i want to say that i now understand what motion sickness feels like and i empathize with those of you who suffer from it (*cough*melyong*cough*). i was on the bottom deck of a double decker bus coming out to arequipa and while i´ve never experienced motion sickness before, the driver was going fast enough through the twists and turns of the road (and there were many of those) that i was sliding around in my seat. so sleeping kind of happened but it wasn´t very good sleep. or it´s altitude sickness. calgary´s somewhere around 3700 ft while arequipa is up at 7500 ft. either way, i feel gross.

and first-class bus rides are definitely first class bus-rides. blanket, pillow, food, drink, footrest, reclining chair, roomy (easily could have fit one and a half of me in that seat), movies. if greyhound or red arrow did first class like they do here, i´d definitely take the bus up to edmonton more often...

anyways, so pictures:

here´s the half the trench i helped dig on saturday. i didn´t get a picture of it but i also glued all the piping together to fit the length of the trench.

the kids i ended up playing with that afternoon while the rest of my team continued with the trench digging and pipe laying

the oasis that is the centre of huaccachina - the plaza/shops are built around this oasis

the dune buggy my group was in - our driver was CRAZY. i swear we were airborn a few times for a few seconds each time. SO much fun!!! and the driver just laughed whenever we screamed.

the sand dunes of huaccachina - it was very cool being surrounded by sand ALL OVER THE PLACE

my first sandboarding run of the afternoon. we went down about a dozen dunes - the last one being the biggest and steepest. i went down on my tummy and the ride lasted at least 10-15 seconds and i picked up some pretty impressive speed. the bump at the bottom? not so fun.

a few us didn´t realize we´d be driven to other hills to sandboard down and hiked back up this first one - it was ridiculous how out of breath i was. however, i´m saying that it´s the altitude (even though it´s not as high as arequipa) and NOT the fact that i haven´t been running regularly the past couple months.

oh, and i found sand EVERYWHERE when i took a shower that night. i was scraping it out of my ears. there was a small but distinct pile of sand on the bathroom floor when i was done...

we spent too long sandboarding and only caught the tail-end of the sunset but it was still pretty.

ok. pictures take FOREVER to upload. so i don´t know how often i´ll be uploading pictures from here on in.

í´m in arequipa now. gonna stay a few days and then head out to the colca canyons. there´s a mountain bike trek i can do - gonna look into that this afternoon. yay!!!!