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Published: September 30th 2007
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Blog 26 September - Puerto Inca to Lima
We spent the night at Puerto Inca, a small coastal archaeological site with a hotel nearby. It is nice to be at sea level again; we ran up the stairs just to see if we get puffed. We stayed at a nice hotel, had a nice dinner and explored some nearby ruins. These ruins have been pretty much left as they have been found and no excavations have yet taken place. Lots of stone huts, full of human bones, also lots of stone pits in the ground, apparently used by Incas for produce storage. Here the Incas fished and stored and I guess dried/smoked the fish ready for transport to Cusco. We lost Tim whilst we were walking as he had gone off walking around. Sarah and I were quite worried for a while and went to search for him. He had taken an alternate route back; anyway he was in big trouble when we got back. We had glasses of Sangria and a fire last night which was nice, however now we all smell of smoke.
We are off to Nazca today and are doing the flight over the lines
this afternoon.
Tim is playing with his GPS and we are 14,100kms from Cairns. We did a confluence at 15 South 75 West (www.confluence.org) not uploaded yet, with the whole bus tour. Very windy and very dry to say the least.
We visited a pre-Incan graveyard which was a bit eerie, Chauchilla cemetery. Seriously well preserved mummies dated back over a thousand years, just sitting there in foetal position. Hair, clothes some even had skin on them. Obviously no dog, rat or insect problem here. It is just too dry. There are pieces of broken ceramic and human bones lying everywhere due to previous grave robbers. We just cannot believe how well preserved the mummies are.
Been on our flight and saw the famous Nazca lines. Tiny little plane (Cessna 206, 6 seats) and it was great. Sarah and I were a bit dodgy in the tummy for most of it, but we got through the 35 minute flight without needing to use the bags. We saw most of the famous/mysterious shapes in the pampa. Monkey, condor, whale, hummingbird, spider, astronaut (which looks more like an alien), parrot, etc and lots of trapezoids which were huge. Nowadays,
nobody is allowed on the pampa as it never rains here and new markings could last for a thousand years. Rachel was the co-pilot. She had a good view up the front.
We stayed in our hotel in Nazca for 2 nights as the next hotel in Pisco was completely ruined by the recent earthquakes. We were able to visit the Ballestas Islands which was originally cancelled from our trip due to the devastation. The girls loved the Nazca hotel, which had a pony, llahmas, 2 peacocks, trampoline, tennis courts, table tennis, pool etc. A real interesting place and it looked like something from the colonial days. Beside four other guests, we had the hotel to ourselves, however the next night the place was nearly full with 3 buses of French tourists. The art collection in the hotel was amazing with many Incan artefacts. They had 2 original pre-Incan (Nazcan) poncho decorated with parrot feathers. We understand that many of the artefacts were from the graves we visited the day earlier.
Whilst in Nazca, we were in the local parade. Our friend (amigo) Carly got us on some dune buggies and we were a part of the annual
Suz and sand across the road
This stretch of road between Inca Peurto and Nazca is continuously being cleared of sand. tourism parade. The girls (and me very quietly) loved it. Very exciting.
The highlight of the next day was the dune buggies and sand boarding. I was really reluctant, but went anyway and had the best time, although I was freaking out. Rachel too was scared but loved it in the end. Bit like a rollercoaster. The sand boarding was great fun. A few from our group, who had snow boarded before, stood up. They said it was pretty hard. We all just went on our tummies. It was great fun and very fast.
The Ballestas Island and Sangallan Island was fantastic. At Ballestas we saw so many birds, penguins, starfish, crab and also sea lion. Beautiful rock formations. It was fantastic. We had lunch back in Pisco in a restaurant where our tour leader and driver had set up our lunch. It is amazing how they organise these things. There we were having a picnic lunch in a restaurant, with the staff doing our picnic dishes. We bought some snacks there and headed off. We saw a fair bit of devastation with many of the mud houses fallen down or badly damaged. We also saw people getting
stuck into rebuilding. The earthquake, which occurred about a month ago, measured 7.9 on the Richter scale.
We arrived in Lima, which is a city of approx 9 million. Yes, traffic jams and smog. We have a nice hotel called Hotel Kamaha but it seems to be in a dingy area. Full on security at the front door and constant warnings from staff and other locals about not carrying lots of money and keeping camera hidden. So far so good. We feel ok walking around but are catching taxis at night. We had our last group dinner at ‘pizza street’ in Miraflores which is an affluent suburb in Lima. The girls got very excited at seeing the familiar McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, (the first fast food we have seen here) and even a department store. It is very busy but I like Lima. We have one more day here then, hopefully (staff travel) to Buenos Aires.
Ps we ALL ate guinea pig (ate, well tasted). Tim says it is just like rabbit. It was pretty gross though, little teeth, claws everything. The girls and I struggled a bit but we did it. I don’t think this is good
for their ‘Petite Pet Minding’ business.
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Mike Breeze
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Missing Husbands
Dear Auntie Suzanne (!), Uncle Tim was just helping you and the girls realise how much you love him. At least he didn't go to jail though (www.binningup.com/mt/archives/000003.html) - I was REALLY in trouble that day:) Cheers Mike