How You Dune?

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So long family-style living in our sweet Miraflores home, and hello Hostel life! At times it could be confused with "hostile life", but we've been pretty lucky so far, meeting lots of folks from all over. It was so nice emerging from the smoggy Lima air - it was so dirty at times that when we washed our clothes the water was a disturbing colour. Throw in some bird guano accidents and we were almost ready to ditch our clothes and start fresh.

When Nancy traveled in the UK a while back she took a Hop On-Hop Off type bus and loved it. At the spanish school we stumbled across Peru Hop, a similar bus tour company that is geared towards backpacking travelers looking to see all the sites but with flexibility to stay as long as needed at each destination. This is a company started up by two Irish blokes a few years ago, and is pretty budget friendly. So here we are hopping through south Peru. So far so good - it makes travelling much less stressful! There are definitely lots of young "Hopsters" on the buses but mixed in are a few more "seasoned" folks like us.

Our first destination, moving south from Lima to Cusco, was Paracas, a small coastal town on the edge of the Paracas National Reserve and the port to the Ballestas Islands, also known (a little over-enthusiastically) as the poor man's Galapagos. The pictures from the islands really don't reflect what we saw and experienced. About an hour's boat ride from the main land is a cluster of islands that are covered with literally tens of thousands of birds, maybe hundreds of thousands. Fraser's favourite bird of course was the Peruvian Booby, which is a key contributor to the Guano (bird poop) industry that Peru is apparently well known for. Boobies, what would we do without them? We somehow escaped being pooped on that day, although many of our fellow travellers were not so lucky. The guide was well prepared with a large wet towel. We spotted two of the increasingly rare Humboldt penguins amongst the massive flocks of boobies and cormorants. The cormorants were....well, everywhere, is the only real way to describe them. Amazing that there is enough local fish life to sustain all these birds. Did we say there were a lot of birds?

After the crazy bird islands, we took a bus tour into Paracas National Reserve, an enormous desert peninsula, it is miles and miles of sand, making for a pretty cool park, so very different from Canadian parks. We never realized how much desert there was in Peru! And right against an impressive coastline...such juxtaposition! Whatever that is. The next day we caught another hop bus and travelled a short distance down the coast to Huacachina - an oasis within the desert. This is a village that surrounds a lagoon (aka a somewhat swampy lake), only about 600 x 300m, nestled right in the sand dunes. The town subsists it seems only by taking visitors into the sand dunes on sand buggies of all sizes. This is no simple drive through the dunes, nor is it for the faint of heart. We were not sure if this was something we really wanted to do - we usually stick to the non-motorized sports, but... when in Huacachina... Not only did we get to see some incredible scenery and get deep into the dunes, but it also turned out to be a total thrill, or should we say shrill, ride. We had a slightly older gentlemen on our 12 person buggy, we were pretty sure he'd had a heart attack at one point, but he came around, fortunately. These are the biggest dunes in South America! We stopped every now and then, grabbed a decrepit sand board from the back of the buggy and slid down the dunes on our bellies. Each dune got progressively bigger (and scarier). Once again, we were lucky as neither of us wiped out and hence spared our various orifices from full sand penetration. Others were not so lucky. One girl managed to lose her cell phone on a descent, but miraculously it was quickly found...we couldn't help but think of Spaceballs --"Comb the desert!"

After a fun evening bbq and hanging with some absolutely hilarious Irish travellers (you know the deal, when your cheeks get sore from laughing), we headed back to our hostel, knowing that we were going to be rudely awoken by the dual pleasure of a) early morning road repair and b) heavy construction in the hotel right beside our room. Fortunately we'd thought ahead enough to drink a little too much so that the morning could be throughly enjoyed. It was worth it though.

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Photos

Looking for boobies.
Yup, milking the booby joke.

Zillions of birds.
All the black specks are birds.

Comments

[Chris]

AWESOMESAUCE!!!
You guys are incredible - I am hooked on this stuff. Keep on truckin'!!!!! (love the titles too lol)