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Published: December 14th 2005
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Arrived in Lima, bang on time, bag arrived at same airport which was nice! Met some others from the trip within 1 hr of arriving at hotel - they started in quito, some are doing a full circuit all the way round to quito, but others getting off in santiago, rio etc...
Monday was first full day in Lima, no jet lag to speak off, so joined a city tour led by a local guy called Rudy who had picked up some interesting english phrases from previous tour groups and had us in stiches, probably he timed this to take our minds off the fact that we were driving down a steep hill in a bus with a sheer drop to one side....! This was on the way down from Cerro San Cristobel, which overlooks the whole of Lima, which sprawls for absolutely miles and miles...... mostly it's shanty towns, Rudy told us one district we could see had 3.7 milliion people in it...
The centre in contrast is very smart - clean and lots of beautiful colonial buildings. They really go to town lighting these up at night as well. During the day it can be quite grey
- they call it the grey city because of the smog that sits for about 8-9 months of the year but apparently it hardly ever rains. You can tell the really rich people because they wil bring out their raincoat or umbrella even for a tiny bit of drizzle, just to show they can afford to have one! Although clean and pretty in the centre, Lima is completely crazy in terms of noise and traffic - at one point I saw 7 lanes of traffic lined up at a junction (just in one direction!). And everyone uses their horn the whole time for no apparent reason!
Left Lima this morning and now in Pisco, where they invented the Pisco sour - a kind of brandy based drink with egg white for the sour. Talking of which I can hear everyone at the bar - think it might be time to go and sample one!!!
Well the pisco sour was very nice... but I did go back on the wine afterwards.... will come back to the pisco sours before leaving Peru tho!
Next day we left Pisco, stopping at Ballestos islands on the way to Nasca. Huge numbers
Lima schoolkids
Seems like we were the tourist attraction for them! of birds and sealions, plus lots and lots of "guana" which apparently gets harvested for 3 months every 4 years! Afternoon was spent at Huacachine Oasis in the desert, riding around the dunes on buggies (think Alton Towers!) and a spot of sandboarding. Not suite the same as previous sandboarding I´ve done, no special boots to wear and no bindings either, just a couple of velcro straps!!! Still, I got down in one piece (and didn´t fall!). No photo evidence of that one tho I´m afraid.
Camped in the grounds of a hotel at Nasca that night, and took a flight over the Nasca lines in the morning. The lines take the form of many shapes, monkey, spider, spaceman (?!)etc. and some are just lines and geometrical shapes which are thought to form some sort of astronomical calendar. The lines are thought to have been etched on the sands by 3 different civilisations at various times between 900BC and 600AD. I can only describe the flight as "interesting" - just 5 of us to a plane and very very bumpy! I couldn´t understand why the pilot was spending so much time on his mobile until he told us his
radio was broken so that was how he kept in touch with air traffic control!!! But we got back down safely, although a couple of us having lost our breakfast :-( The lines were smaller than I´d expected and fainter too, not very easy to take photos, but I sort of got one of the spaceman, see what you think!
Left the campsite and stopped at a pottery and gold museum where a character called Toby told us all about how the Nascans made their ceramics. Toby had only a smattering of English but kept telling us the techniques were "high-tech" and knew the word for spout in English, Japanese, Hebrew.... and I´m sure many others! Had a go at the gold processing in the same place, which involved rocking back and forth on a little platform on a big rock. Don´t ask me exactly how this gets the gold out, I missed that bit of the demo! And don´t worry the girl in the photo is not child labour, she actually cried when they tried to take her off the platform so she had to come back on with us!
Then to Chauchilla cemetery where lots of
pre-Inca mummies and bones are preserved and displayed. Wouldn´t have been my choice for a lunch spot, but that´s exactly what we did! I suppose there aren´t that many options in the middle of the desert. Camped at Puerto Inka that night, on the beach.
Yesterday was a very long day on the truck, 8am - 5pm. But finally arriced at Arequipa, which has absolutely beautiful colonial buildings. Had dinner in town and I got to try alpaca (like llama) and guinea pig, as I was assured they are pretty much free range and wanted to try some local food. Alpaca was ok but I probably wouldn´t have it again, and the guinea pig was a bit like chicken, but quite greasy. Not much meat on it! Various people taking photos and enjoying cutting the head off, then more photos.... I´ll stop there!
This internet place is playing Christmas music, which is quite surreal when it´s so warm outside!!
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jason
non-member comment
looks good
hi, i'm going on a Tucan from rio to lima later in the summer. your blog makes it look great, a nice little taster.