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Published: August 6th 2007
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Travelblog.org is back online! Unfortunately, all our past entries are lost. Here´s one we´ve been saving... We´ve had a hectic past couple of days. Not hectic as in anything wrong, but
hectic as in we didn´t watch movies for 5 days straight. I´m sure you can
sympathize.
This leg started out in the little desrt oasis town of Huacachina, I suppose
you could call it a suburb of the bigger town, Ica, but if this is to be
considered a suburb it certainly takes the cake to Vaughn. The town is a
resort oasis. I literally mean oasis, The Laguna of Huacachina is surrounded
on basically all sides by sand duns the size of mountains. And when you get
to the peak of any of these dunes, all one can see is miles and miles of
fine grain sand. Neither of us have ever seen anything like this place. It
took adina two days to come to terms with the fact that she wasn´t in a
movie or a dream.
The town is set up for tourists, but seeing that this was Peru Independence
day weekend, most of the tourists we ran into were Peruvian. That was very
nice though to celebrate the independence day with so many proud independent
Peruvians - something you can´t really do at home.
The first night we got there we hired a Dune Buggy Tour of the desert. I´m
not really sure either of us had any idea what we signed up for because 3
minutes into the ride Adina yelled out "I think I´m over my fearof
rollercoasters!" Basically, these dune buggies (all very well maintained and
safe...mothers) scale these massive dunes and then turn on a dime and plumet
down the same dunes at ridiculously high speeds. It was a ton of fun.
Sometimes the driver would stop to let us (there were three couples on the
ride) go sand boarding on some of the best slopes in the desert. I tried to
ride the board as one would a snowboard and quickly failed - the picture is
attached. So from that point on all of us rode down the dunes on the boards
as if they were tobaggans or boogie boards. We all rode on our stomachs and
face first. One memorable quote of mine was: "OH MY GOSH!!!! IT´S STEEPER
THAN YOU THINK!!!"
The following day
we rode 2 hours south to the Nasca desert to see the
famous Nasca lines. These are lines that are etched in the Peruvian desert
(pampa) over 1500 years ago. The lines are amazing because a) they are
perfectly straight and b) stretch for miles and miles. What´s almost more
bizarre is that the Nasca people who are believed to have etched the lines
(though there are many theories) also etched these very geometric
compositions of monkeys, spiders, hummingbirds, and more. Lastly, what´s
even more bizarre is that to see the lines we had to hire a small prop-plane
to take us up to fly over the lines (again, very well maintained and
safe...) so to think how these people 1500 years ago were able to etch these
bizarre drawings in the earth, that are really only visable froma bove,
really makes you wonder.
As you can see...no movies.
Next we went back to Huacachina to our hostal to spend the day celebrating
"El 28 de Julio" The day Peru regained its independence from the Spanish.
Lots of Fiestas, music, bonfires, dancing, it was all very nice.
and then...from there we woke up that next morning to
go on a small
winery/bodega tour in the countryside surrounding Ica (apparently where the
best of PEru´s wines come from). The first one we went to was a traditional
old-fashioned wine maker. They showed us the pit where they hold grape
stomping parties, the 100 year old press, and the strange clay casks that
the wine is fermented in. This winery made sweet wines, piscoes (a
traditional peruvian brandy) and Cachina (a cross between wine and liquor).
Then we went to some bizarre winery museum where we drank from the
fermenting casks straight, using a hollowed out bamboo stick to funnel out
the wine. There were a lot of old people sort of standing around watching us
and everything was pretty dusty, but the wines and piscoes were very tasty.
By the way, Pure pisco is something like 43% alcohol, so at this point at
10:30 in the morning, we were both a little pixelated (I believe that´s a
polite way of saying drunk). Finally we went to a modern winery that looked
the way we both imagine one would look back home. Lots of barrels, machines,
and neat rows upon rows of grapes. They made some traditional merlot´s, some
sweet wines, and of course some Piscoes. We were drunk.
We took our drunken selves to the nearest bus stop and boarded it for a
small little town called...coincidentally...Pisco. The town is basically the
departure point for the Paracas Reserve and the Ballestas Islands, a series
of islands and a peninsula just off the coast. The tour is dubbed "The poor
man´s Galapagos." We were impressed (poor as we may be). The boat took us
out to a series of island where people are prohibited from living and we
cruised past 1000´s of birds ranging from penguins to boobies, to
carcaterra´s and Pelicans. We sayy sea lions in the wild as well as a ton if
different sea creatures. The island is the source for one of PEru´s major
exports, Guano (bird droppings), so the rocks we COVERED in...guano. It was
really neat though and Adina especially liked the distance that the boat
provided from the wildlife. From there we travelled on the reserve which is
a couple hundred hectares of untouched dry desert land that lines the coast.
The coast is all cliff though so they drive us to a couple dazzling views,
some lunch in a small little fishing part of the reserve and back into
Pisco. As far as pisco goes, they way I say it they had two main exports,
dirt and garbage. Our Hostal was very nice though with a nice old lady who
didn´t mind waiting for our late wake-ups to serve us breakfast.
Now we´ve had a travel day and are in the Andean town of Huaraz. The town is
seven hours northeast of Lima and is up at 3000 meters again. We´re
surrounded by glaciers and mountains and are amongst the highest mountains
in the country (the Cordillera Blanca). So we´re very happy to be here and
are really enjoying this final leg of the trip. Tis will be our second last
stop and then we head to the beach.
Hope everyone is well and we´ll write again soon.
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