Sorry I’m running a bit behind but since we have started our tour things have been very go go go! I booked my hostel a tad last minute, but it turned out I accidentally booked a hostel only a block away from where our G adventures tour met up! The cheap side of me was very pleased that I could simply walk to my next hotel instead of having to pay for a taxi. Because its the rainy season in Peru, our tour group is smaller than average, with only six people. There’s one other Canadian, three from the UK and one from Germany. We went out for dinner and I very quickly found my new favorite dish of all time, ceviche. It combines raw fish and lime juice, making it slightly better then sushi. I found out that I am the youngest on this trip, but I am very much NOT the least mature. The rest of the group has accused me of being the responsible mother type figure several times since our tour has started.
Immediately Sunday morning we left Lima for Paracas. We arrived around four, still slightly too early to eat, so we wandered around town for a bit. We came across a restaurant, claiming to be in possession of a time machine (with a weeping angel poster to prove it), and decided to check it out. We ended up in a circular elevator that totated and went up and down in order to display various videos and diaramas detailing the incan history around the town. The best part was when the room went pitch black during transitions and several of our group members started screaming their heads off.
On Monday we wasted no time getting down to business and seeing the things to be seen. Some of our group did a boat tour of the local wildlife reservation (whose exact name I can’t recall, but it has been called the poor mans Galapagos),while the rest (myself included) did a quad tour of Paracas. We first stopped at the beach bordering the wildlife reserve and spotted some pelicans, flamingos and terns, then we bummed around some sand dunes for a bit (I got air a couple times) and finally taking a short break in front of a monument dedicated to one of the Argentinian generals who aided in Peru’s independance. After a quick dip in the pool and we were on to the bus to Ica to check out the Pisco distillery! Pisco is a Peruvian alcohol made from grapes, but distilled until it can be considered a hard alcohol. It also happens to be the main ingredient in two of my new favorite drinks (Pisco sour and chilcano). We got a short tour of the distillery, including explanations of how they made it in ancient times vs present. We very quickly moved on to the main event, the taste test. Six shots later we were back on the bus headed to the next town for lunch. We had the option of sand boarding, since the town was the only oasis surrounded by dunes, but our group elected to chill by the pool and eat our meal at a very leisurely pace. We set off shortly after our (late) lunch to Nazca.
We made a short stop at a road side fruit stand, bought a watermelon together and named him Walter (Walter will be important later on). For anyone who doesn’t know, Nazca is very famous for the Nazca lines. They are images in the desert preserved by the dry climate, made in ancient times. It is believed the lines were made by the nazca people (who came before the Incas), because many of the pieces of pottery found with Nazca mummies carried the exact same images (ex the monkey has nine fingers instead of ten). We stopped ten minutes outside of Nazca to climb a tower to view the Tree and the Chicken lines. Although archeologists are mostly sure the Nazca people made the lines, they have yet to find any tools that could possibly explain how the Nazca people made the lines. After viewing only two of the lines right at sunset, I can say, it is a very awe inspiring mystery.
I generally try not to eat western food much when I’m traveling , but when we went for dinner there was a hamburger that was just calling my name. The hamburgeusa doble, with two patties and a fried egg appealed to my inner carnivore too much to pass up. Three of us got one, but the other two ate theirs with a fork and knife, while I dove in like the proper Canadian cave woman that I am. Finishing that burger gave me the feeling of 1000 Spartan warriors raining death upon their enemy.
On Tuesday we had a fairly low key day in Nazca. In the morning we visited a Nazca cemetery called Chauchilla. The cemetery was pillaged by grave robbers between 1950-1980, who would dig up the graves, pilfer some expensive pottery, and toss the mummies where ever they landed. Archeologists came later and cleaned up the cemetery , placing mummies back into graves. They are many more dips in the land which are probably more mummies and artifacts,but there is no funding from the government to continue excavation. I think the most interesting part however, was that the cemetery was left in the same condition that the archeologists put it in, with the mummies sitting unprotected in their old graves and the occasional bone on the ground from when the grave robbers were less than careful with a mummy. Many of the mummies were still in remarkable condition, with dreadlocks and occaxionally visible skin tissue, thanks to the dry desert and the mummification process.
Right after Chauchilla, we visited a pottery shop run by the nephew of the guywho had rediscovered the tradiontional Nazca method for making pottery. The process involved minerals for the colours and specific heating times, meaning the colours will never fade and the pottery itself is supremely durable. Having seen some pottery left in the graves at Chauchilla, I can believe it!
The rest of the day we hung out at our hotel, waiting to board our night bus to Arequipa. So naturally we spent all day hanging out by the pool, maybe consuming some vino blanco. Now think back to several paragraphs ago when I told you about Walter. Walter the watermelon (or Waltermelon for short) was eight kg and eight sols (approx $3) when he came into our lives. We dressed him up with a hat, sunglasses and a lipgloss smile and he was our collective child for about 20 hours. I don’t know if you dear friends have ever had the opportunity to consumr eight kilos of watermelon between 5 people, but let me tell you,it’s most definitely a challenge. In the end I was so determined to finish off Walter I must have eaten four out of the eight kilos. It was for naught, for there were still three pieces left by the time we had to rush off to catch the night bus. I don’t quite feel as accomplished as I did after the hamburgeusa double, but I am still quite proud at the solid effort we put it.
My next post will start from Arequipa, and the beginnings of altitude sickness!
Ciao!
Alex
PS- listen Aurora Borealis by Griswolds to while reading this blog post
“other two ate theirs with a fork and knife, while I dove in like the proper
Canadian cave woman that I am.”
That’s my girl!
I LOVE that you are experiencing…
Miss Alex – your descriptions are awesome – makes a body feel like they need to go there for the experiences of which you write.
Wonderful that you’ve made some new friends and so happy that you are the responsible mother type figure. Good on you!!!
Grandma Vi