Desert Sand

I guess I had never really seen a desert. I know, we talk about Kamloops as being semi-desert and I guess I thought that the desert was just a little drier.  I also know, I have seen pictures of the Sahara Desert and camel's being jockeyed across them, but it is not the same as seeing it for the first time.  Seeing an actual desert is  a realization.

We think of sand as being inviting, relaxing, and soft.  However, the scene of a real desert is something quite extraordinary and absolutely opposite. It is barren, bleak, unadulterated, not a single bit of growth, not a pebble or a twig.

As we travelled from Arequipa north to PIsco and Lima, the Peruvian Desert announced it's advent by an increasingly dry, lunar type landscape of lava rocks and sand.  Finally, the landscape changed.  There was just desert sand.  We travelled through hundreds of miles of sand, just sand.  I guess I imagined roads through deserts as being flat and straight, like Prairie roads. Instead, the highway snaked around mountainous sand dunes, delivering a picture of winding roads snaking up into the mountains.

What a place of contrast, this Peru: rain forest, cloud forests, Amazon Jungle, deserts, Inca tombs, mummies, pyramids and canyons.  The vastness and the diversity have left us quite shaken.  We have much fodder in our minds to process. I hope this will keep my husband plastered and pinned to Canada for a while.

Goodbye Peru.  We fly home on Monday.  Can't wait to be home. I have begun a to do list of all the things that will need to be done when we get home.  Funny, most of the items seem to be on Bill's honey do list.