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Published: March 28th 2006
Hola mis amigos,
Wow a lot has happened in the last... ten days or so since I last updated the blog. After Huaraz, the town from which I did the Andean trekking, I decided to head to the coast instead of sticking to the Andes because I wanted to see the Isla de Pisco, what is known in the backpacker's world as "the poor man's Galapagos". Heading off with my Israili friend Ohad, we made it to Pisco on an overnight bus. Peru is a country easy to love, impossible not to dislike, and oddly simple to do both at the same time. The country is both wild and beautiful. Going to sleep in the Andes I awoke in the world's driest desert in a city surrounded by sand dunes. So, like I said, it is very easy to love Peru. However, totally unlike Ecuador, you get harassed everytime you leave your hideout - er, Hostel. Buy this, give me that, "mister mister", "amigo amigo"! It is really unpleasant. It seems this is what happens when a poor country is flooded with rich tourists all year round. It really makes you conflicted inside.
What I mean is, how do you
be rich around hard working poor people and feel like they are doing wrong by harrassing you? Or, harder, how do you comfortably say no to a skinny little girl who wants you to buy her dinner? When I did buy lunch for kids in Huanchaca one sat with the look on the face one can only get after thanksgiving dinner: he hadn't eaten that much at once in years. So how do you say no to these kids day in and day out? My friend Ohad has no problem. Speaking with a tone like a german version of the Godfather, he says "why should I give them money? They aren't poor, they just know tourists will give them whatever they want". And, in a sense, he is right. These kids are usually not the poor kind (relatively speaking, they usually get three meals a day). Other people are more unsure of themselves (but nobody, no matter how rich, buys people meals a lot and usually when they do it is out of guilt). I personally feel as though it is not human nature to be altruistic, at least not in this context, no matter how well you can reason
the gift. That being said, are we doing wrong when we bargain for the cheapest trip in town? Are we promoting an unfair market? I see guides everyday who are underdressed for what they are doing (while their gringos wear goretex) because their income simply isn't enough...
Anyway, back to Pisco. I was really put in a bad mood by the non-stop hassling. I felt like the whole town was in my private space, so I retreated to the hostel and let my negotiator Ohad find the best (in his mind the cheapest) trip to the Isla the next day. Doing so, we left early in the morning on my first real "gringo-trail" (touristic, basically) sort of excursion since I got down here, although it proved quite pleasant. With the world's driest desert behind us, the Pacific underneath us, and an island absolutely jam-packed with wildlife in front of us, I was again in awe over just how unworldly things can get down here. Just to make the situation even more alien, our tour guide, a native Pisconian, spoke fluent English... with a British accent. As it turns out he has never been to Britain, making him the only
person I have ever met who could immitate an accent like that... I was right in guessing that he was a very talented musician (perfect pitch, perhaps?).
A gazillion Boobies, a bird indigenous to these parts, were diving into the Pacific from flight like birds turned bricks, often bringing fish up in their bills, happily munching away. In front of us were maybe 500 sea lions packed onto a small beach at the base of the island making some serious noise. Along the edge of the island, some 15 meters above the sea lions were thousands and thousands of birds just doing what birds do, which apparently is poop. The 15 meters, in fact, was entirely made of bird scat! Apparently similar islands can grow 75 meters taller from the accumulation of dried bird shit. Suddenly I was glad we had to stay on the boat...
The sight was spectacular. It felt like I was on THEIR turf, their lives, their earth. The Peruvian james-bond guide explained, with gusto and obvious expertise, the various migratory patterns of the birds, which ranged from vultures to penguins! The gringos got a little bored of the narration (myself excluded) until Bond,
without much flare, pointed out a rock that looked like a face. The gringos hurriedly fumbled their cameras to their faces to make sure to capture the unforgettable experience of seeing a rock that sort of, but not really, looked like a face. Bond sighed. I laughed.
As the tour progressed we got close-up looks at many sea lions, including a mother teaching her cub to swim, and more birds than I had seen in my entire life beforehand. The second half of the day was a tour of the nearby national park that gave more views of more birds (spectacular) and a chance to get harrassed by a slew of restaurants that exist only because this tour exists. At one point a group of us gringos were huddled around a fossilized bird-crap nest with shaken-not-stirred giving a passionate speach about the need to preserve the nests against taxis and buses that recklessly drive off the path. One person asked "what if a paleontologist wants to put this nest in a museum?" to which I quickly replied "well then it's tough shit for him!", a joke that only 007 laughed at (and kept laughing at), just going to further
my concern that we aren't rich because we are better educated or harder working... Bond deserved to be at Oxford, not working for us clowns.
That night Ohad and a new friend Lidia and I made our way to Huacachina, a small town (more like one big resort) in an Oasis in the middle of the desert - Cool! - and stayed at a resort-like hostel surrounded by 200 meter sand dunes - SUPER cool! After spending one day just relaxing and swimming and eating and sleeping and swimming and relaxing, the three of us decided to take a trip to the desert for some dune buggying and sandboarding.
Leaving for the desert at 4 in the afternoon to avoid the midday sun, seven gringos and one driver piled into a dune buggy (more like a metal lacross stick's net with wheels and a V8) and weaved through the city streets and ejected ourselves between two giant dunes towards the desert. This was a day that my brother Adam would have loved... a lot. Although never actually jumping, to me (in the back row of seats) we were jumping over the tips of numerous dunes and weaving our
way between, over, and down these enermous waves of sand. Suddenly stopping atop one, the drivers unloaded dozens of sandboards (pieces of wood, usually shaped like a fat arrow but sometimes like a snowboard, with velcro straps for the feet) and simply said "practice time". You could immediately tell who had snowbaorded before (they leaned forward and tried to carve) but everyone was falling and laughing, both unavoidable. I still have sand where the sun don't shine. By the third and quite steep hill I was carving down the dune and loving every minute of it. I overheard a spectator say to a firend, about me "I bet he's Canadian". Oh Canada!
The next day or so we left for Nazca to see the Nazca lines. Nazca was an unpleasant place, first because it was so damn ugly. An earthquake demolished the town 11 years ago. Evidently no one had noticed or cared and the place looked unchanged since the day of the quake. However, the next morning was fantastic. The three of us hired a small plane to allow us to get a bird's eye view of the mysterious Nazca lines. The lines are of animals and strange
figures. Alone not that mysterious, but when you ask why and how a group of people thousands of years ago would make 100 meter wide shapes in the desert you can't help but scratch your head. There are explanations as crazy as "they made them for aliens" and as implausable as "boredom", but no one has a good answer. I know at least a thousand Peruvians who would says "for tourism", though.
Yesterday morning I arrived in Arequipa, a city of near a million, after another overnight, 12 hour bus ride. Ohad and I are planning on doing a five day hike of Colca Canyon, the world's second deepest canyon (trailing by only 60 meters or so; it is twice as deep as the grand canyon) as soon as my stomach illness clears up. From there Machu Picchu and then... Bolivia? Chile? Argentina? Find out later, I guess.
Ciao for now
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Daniel
non-member comment
WOW!
Absolutely beautiful. So glad you're sharing your trip!