Lima, Huacachina & Paracas (Weeks 11 & 12)

---

I arrived in Lima about 4 hours before Jason and waited in the airport. It was so good to see him after 2 months apart! We spent the first day walking around the Miraflores neighbourhood which included a cat park, where there are dozens of cats hanging out and being fed by the locals; and nice restaurants, where we tried the famous pisco sours for the first time. That night we met up with a friend of a friend who lives in Lima, Christian, who showed us around some nice night time locations in Miraflores and the neighbouring Barranco. We had some more pisco sours, delicious burritos and tacos; and topped the night off with some heart, which is apparently the Peruvian equivalent of a late night kebab. On his suggestion, the next day we went to the pyramid which is randomly in the middle of Miraflores, which was home to the oldest civilization in America.

We then caught the bus to Ica, which is about 5 hours from Lima. The main attraction near Ica is Huacachina, which is an Oasis in the desert nearby. We went on a Pisco and Sandboarding tour which took us to a couple of pisco wineries, where we were shown the process to make the various types of pisco (pisco pure, acholado and mosto verde) and had unlimited shots of pisco and the sweet pisco wine. After we had marinated sufficiently in pisco and were feeling nice and confident, we went to the desert at Huacachina to go sandboarding on the dunes. It was quite fun - the best bit was flying around the dunes on the mad buggies. We watched the sunset and headed back to Ica. We also spent a night at Huacachina which was beautiful, but everything was comparatively expensive and the place was very touristy. We climbed up the giant sand dune nearby the oasis and gazed at the awesome view of the rolling dunes of the desert. Truly amazing!

After Huacachina, we went to Paracas, which is a little beach town about an hour or two away. Our hostel was right on the beach, which was really cool, but unfortunately it wasn't warm enough to swim. The nearby Ballestas Islands are known as the "poor man's Galapagos" and are home to seals, penguins and a whole lot of birds. We went on a boat trip out to the islands which was really nice, particularly at the end, when a swarm of hundreds of thousands of birds were flying off the island and we sped along with them in the boat. We saw a lot of seals sunbathing on the rocks and a little troop of penguins waddling to the edge of the island and diving in.

From there we caught the bus to Arequipa, my favourite town in Peru!

---