Back in August, my husband and I spent two weeks in Peru for our honeymoon.  During those two weeks, we visited Lima, Ica, Nazca, Iquitos and the Amazon, Cuzco and the Sacred Valley, including Machu Picchu.  Needless to say, we were exhausted by the end of our two week trip, but we came home with a ton of pictures!  Here are a few of our favorites photos from the trip – if you’re interested, you can see more of them here.

LIMA

It was winter time during our trip to Peru, which meant that Lima was mostly cold and gray and we didn’t take many pictures of the city:

{the Presidential Palace}

{Moorish balconies of the Bishop’s Palace next to the Cathedral}

{Spanish tiles inside the Cathedral}

{a newlywed couple taking wedding portraits at the Parc D’Amour at night}

{some of the very cool tin art sculptures that we saw around Lima}

THE DESERT COAST

After Lima, we headed down the Pan-American Highway along Peru’s western Desert Coast towards Ica and Nazca.  (Peonies, this is where I e-mailed you after your computer crashed).  Ica is known for some pretty impressive sand dunes, which I gave up climbing about halfway up.  My husband climbed all the way up one dune and was very proud of himself for conquering said sand dune.

{All of the hotels were nestled around a once real, but now fake, lagoon/oasis called Laga Huacachina.  It all felt very artificial and actually kind of creeped me out a bit.}

Ica is also famous for being part of Peru’s wine country and for its family-operated wineries known as bodegas.  But lest you think that this means something fabulously glamorous like Italian wineries, think again.  This is what we discovered:

I can’t even begin to tell you how much crap was piled up around the winery – I recall seeing several skulls that I’m sure belonged in a museum somewhere, a stuffed fox or at least the pelt of a fox, a preserved tarantula, among others. Here’s a photo that our taxi driver/tour guide took of us:

{We’re doing our best not to look a bit terrified}

NASCA

After Ica, we took another bus down to Nazca to see the Nazca Lines. Everything you’ll see below is a Line – from the long, straight runway-looking lines to the line drawings of birds and animals. The entire plateau, known as the Pampas de Jumana, is covered in these lines:

{Next up, Iquitos and the Amazon…}