April 4
Up early for our 7.30am bus to Paracas - a great way to travel in Peru, we used Ormeno's Royal Class service. Nice new bus, secure luggage storage, snacks and videos. Interesting trip down the Panamerican Highway, admiring all the beachclubs to the south of Lima (abandoned on this Friday morning). A sign indicating that Arequipa (our ultimate destination in the bus) was 1,016 km (about 650 miles in real numbers) from Lima brought home just how big a country Peru is - Lima-Arequipa is not even half of Peru, and would pretty neatly cover Britain from Lands End to John o' Groats ! We arrived at the Hotel Paracas just as the sun broke through the low cloud at 11ish - sadly the Northerly wind which blows most of the day was carrying a rather unpleasant smell from the nearby fish factories, which would continue until the wind shifted direction at around 4pm. We went out for a quick lunch - about a pound of ceviche mixto cost $4 at the 'Cevicheria Jack and Jill' - very tasty ! The afternoon was spent relaxing in the sun, and swimming in the pool - the Pacific didn't look that warm (or clean), so we decided to postpone our first swim in it until later in the year, in Mexico.
*** Top Tip - the hotel bar makes
lousy Pisco Sours.
April 5
Another early start for a boat trip out to the Ballestas Islands - 'the poor man's Gallapagos'. Not having yet been to the real thing, we can only listen awe-struck to the seasoned travellers relating tales of seals chasing them down beaches like puppies
- however, after an hour's delay while the mist clears, the seals, penguins and sea-birds we see are impressive enough for me (sorry, I'm not a twitcher, so they were all sea-birds to me...). More lazing by the pool (it's the only one we'll see all holiday, so we're taking advantage) before picking up our 4pm bus down to Nazca. The driver has obviously driven this route a few times, since there's a lengthy delay before the video starts (Deep Impact - what a load of cr*p !), but it finishes about 2 minutes before our arrival ! We find our way to our pre-booked hotel, then go next door to the Bar Kanada to check e-mail and have a snack.
*** Top Tip - the bar Kanada makes
excellent Pisco Sours !
April 6
Up early for our flight over the Nazca lines, after a terrible nights sleep - Hotel Alegria was the cheapest on our trip ($25) but also by a far greater margin, the worst, and probably the only one to which we wouldn't return.
AeroIca, no flight number; seats 3 and 4 (out of 4 !), Cessna 182
We waited for about 40 minutes in the 'lounge', which was the reception area of the Hotel Suisse, across the main road from the airstrip, watching a video about the lines (for UK residents, it was a very old 'Horizon' programme). We were then taken out to the 'gate', which was exactly that - a gate from the path by the road onto AeroIca's apron, where we had another 20 minute wait. After a few minutes, a couple of nice ladies came up to take our 'airport tax', of 2 soles (about $0.60) each. We were then waved onto the plane, instructed to buckle in, and don headsets so the pilot could point out the lines properly. Noticed that the altimeter was showing about 1,900 ft above sea level, which tied in with our guidebook giving Nazca as being about 600-some metres asl. After a couple of false starts, the pilot got the engine running, checked the instruments, and then we were off ! Probably the shortest taxi possible (straight ahead for 20 yards and then a sharp right) put us onto the main (only !) runway, and the pilot just opened up the throttles for a rolling take-off ! 30 seconds later we had reached cruising altitude (about 300 ft above ground level) and were heading across the desert, as the pilot said something about 'the whale on the right'. I peered out of the window (muttering thanks that
Mrs Stewie Mac had made me buy some prescription sunglasses for the trip) but could only see a few vague lines in the dirt below. Feeling a terrible sense of anti-climax, I squinted hard and made out some vague 'big fishy' shape, and pondered briefly how it's possible to fool some of the people all of the time
And then about twenty seconds later the actual whale came into view, and it was clearly a whale !! Yippee - my faith in Maria Reiche and documentary film-making restored in a split-second
. The next twenty minutes were a series of incredibly steep banks (something like what you get under a ram-air square chute, for the sky-divers out there) punctuating great views of all of the designs and patterns that make up the lines. Fantastic !
To complete the trip report, we landed extremely smoothly (how come the smoothest landings are either in a 747 or a Cessna ???), and taxied quickly back to the AeroIca apron (straight back down the runway :eek
. Great flight !
We then went for a short tour out to a cemetery, which had a number of (restored) open graves, with mummified remains; as the temperature climbed, our guide explained that the Atacama desert in Northern Chile extends up into Peru - basically the coastal strip of Peru south of Lima (a strip of land around 1000 km long, and anywhere from a few km to a couple of hundred km wide) is the same desert, and has seen 'no significant rainfall since the last Ice Age'. We learnt lots of interesting facts about how the Nazcan civilization (one of the many pre-Incan civilizations which existed in Peru, and which no-on ever hears about) mummified people, of which the most startling was that after removing the main internal organs (and pulling the brain out through the severed neck !) the whole body was 'put over a low heat to dry it out' ! Cue images of a very large fire set to Gas Mark 1 !!
Back to Nazca, and we have until 10pm until our overnight bus to Arequipa... fortunately, the Hotel Nazca Lines allows non-guests to use their pool for $4.50, so we get an unexpected, unplanned but very welcome second afternoon by the pool
. More Pisco Sours at Bar Kanada, and onto the bus only an hour late.
April 7
We arrive in Arequipa about 7am, after a pretty good nights sleep (Ormeno's Royal Class Sleeper Seats are about the equivalent of old-style biz class - around 45" pitch, good recline, but no IFE or champagne
), and grab a cab to our hotel. A very pleasant day spent wandering around Arequipa, a very pleasant city, and a visit to the Santa Catalina Convent. Until about 25 years ago, this was closed to visitors, but as the numbers of nuns dwindled, about three-quarters has been opened up. It could be a little village in Southern Spain, even down to the alleys running through it, all named after Spanish cities. If you like pastries, then partake here, where they are excellent (look out for the 'pastillerias') - we could find nothing similar in Cuzco.
Next up: Cruz del Condor and Cuzco...