On The Road - Lima to Nazca

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Well the tour that I am on left Lima and drove down the Pan American highway to the Puerto San Martin, for a boat trip to the Isla Ballestas. On the outskirts of Lima a shanty towns, which look to me like collections of one room shacks perched on the sides of hills.

As we moved into the desert there were even more shanty towns, this time the houses were made of sugar cane leaves woven together, some houses only had four walls and no roof.

Got to Puerto San Martin, and then on the the Isla Ballestas, birds, sealions, and guano ... will try and post some pictures at a later date.

Next stop was a Pisco Winery. Free Pisco tasting, and a chance to see the production process. It was interesting to find that part of the output from the process was toxic and instead of being sold was used as a disinfectant.

More time on the tour bus, more desert, and finally arrived in Nazca. Stopped on the side of the Pan American Highway and was able to climb up a tower and look at some of the lines.

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Comments

[anonymous]

What is Pisco?
It sounds so pretty where you are. Loved the shanty on the hills description, that'd do me for a holiday at the moment! What is Pisco and why are they using the toxic waste as disinfectant?? - Desert Rose

[Dreamer]

What is Pisco?
Woops, forgot to say that Pisco is a spirit, distilled from grapes. From what I remember from the winery, there are two types of grapes which originally came from Spain. Okay, so you havest the grapes, and squash the juice out of them, collect the juice in (ceramic) jars and let it ferment naturally by leaving the jars in the sun. Then you distill the resulting liquid. The output from the distillation process is divided into 3 parts, the head (produced first), the body (produced second) and the tail (which comes out of the still third). The head is toxic and so is the tail, the body is what you can drink as Pisco. Now Pisco neat is very strong, with a very high alcohol content. So the way you drink Pisco is in a cocktail called a Pisco Sour. Pisco, Beaten Egg White, Cinnamon, and Lemon Juice (I think). I tried Pisco neat at the winery, and it is very strong. I have also tried the Pisco Sours, after the first 2 or 3 I have no desire for any more ...

[Dreamer]

Toxic to humans ...
I guess that the part of the distillation output that cannot be drunk by humans must be poisonous to bugs and bacteria ...