Our first stop was the free walking tour. This meets in the plaza San Fransciso at midday ish and takes you on a three part tour of the city - some culture, history and gastronomy.
Next up we visited the llama and alpaca centre - they had actual llamas including babies!
We then walked down the river where our guide Beatrice pointed out the new town and some possible miradors for clearer days. Walking back to the centre we past the Santa Catalina nunnery. This huge centre takes up several city blocks, but currently only has a handful of nuns living there.
Finally we moved on to my favourite bit of the tour - the food! We stopped in a artisanal chocolate shop (yum!! Their pisco hot chocolate was to die for!) and then moved on to a restaurant specialising in Peru's favourite food - the potato! (They do have 5,000 types here!)
After the tour we headed to plaza de Armas - in Peru this is what the main square in any town is always called! The colonnaded square was very picturesque.
From Arequipa we headed out for a 2 day hike in Colca Canyon - see separate post here:
http://katiesyearoff.blogspot.com/2014/03/condors-of-colca-canyon.html
After this we hopped back on the bus headed to Nazca and the famous lines! Unfortunately these were a bit of a damp squib - literally as it was raining. Our guide Alexandra said this was very unusual as the lack of rain in the region is one of the reasons why the lines are still around after so long! Apparently an earthquake nearby 2 weeks previously had disrupted the weather in the area.
Anyway we managed a glimpse of two of the Nazca lines from the viewing tower (entrance included as part of PeruHop):
The hands
To see anymore of the lines you would have needed to get a plane ride - for $150 and guaranteed to make you throw up we decided not to persue this option early on. A good thing too - we heard from the rest of our group that the safety record is absimal....
So after stocking up on some bus beers our next stop was the desert oasis of Huacchina - a suburb of Ica surrounded by mountainous dunes.
Our hostel here was attached to a 1,000 capacity club and we got free entry - so the course of the evening was clear - drinks and dancing before crawling next door to bed! I probably wouldn't recommend the Casa de Arena as a nice place to stay - but free entry to the club is not to be sniffed at!/
The most important things happened the next day, Pisco tasting and the dune buggy/sand boarding (glad I didn't have a hangover!)
The pisco itself was very strong - apparently to make it go down better there is a technique:
1 swirl and smell the pisco in the glass (to prepare the body to drink!)
2 take a deep breath and hold it
3 take a mouthful of the spirit and swirl around your mouth before swallowing (stimulates the taste buds and the saliva glands coating your mouth with saliva and reducing the burn)
4 breathe out
I still felt the burn despite the instructions! We also tried their sweet wines and cream pisco liquors - not sure on the cream ones, but one of the sweet wines was almost port like - you know I like port ;)
The dune buggy ride was so much fun - we hurled around the dunes at fast speeds!
The sand boarding was less fun - after you've been hurled down an impossibly steep sand dune head first you don't need another 10 times to appreciate it! The boards was set up for 'boarding' rather than just sliding down - but some of the grips were loose or not there so only a few people tried to board - I wasn't one of them!
View over the dunes - it's raining in the distance
After Huacachina we hopped back on the bus headed to Paracas - this is a little seaside town a few hours south of Lima and the gateway to the Ballestas islands - known as the poor man's Galapagos.
We stayed at the Kokopelli hostel here and it was lush! I think possibly their newest hostel - cool pod dorm beds with your own light and charging point, beautiful murals on the walls, beachside access, bar, grill and a pool! We decided to hop off the bus here and spend some more time relaxing!
We had to do the jet boat tour of the Ballestas islands of course! This was 48 soles - but I think you could probably negotiate directly with the boat captains to get it cheaper.
On the way to the islands we spotted another Nazca type figure in the cliff - this one was easier to see as it was etched into the rock - so probably not the same era as the other lines...
As we approached the islands we commented on their unusual coloring - turns out it's the flocks of birds making the islands look like they are striped black!
The islands are home to a lot of species of bird - including the pelicans and penguins above. We also saw Turkey vultures (there to eat the dead birds) and the islands other well known population - the sea lions.
The islands are a nature reserve to protect the animals, but were very important previously as a source of fertiliser - they still mine the guano (bird droppings) and use as fertiliser - but now it's regulated - back in the day it was an important industry for the area. Now the main industry is tourism - lots of limenos (Lima residents) come here for the weekend.
Finally it was our last hop on with Alex to Lima - on the way we stopped at the hacienda San Jose - one of the largest colonial mansions in the area. Here Alex took us on a tour including the catacombs under the house. These were used to smuggle in slaves for the plantations and to hide/escape when the house was attacked. There are probably 20 square km of tunnels in the area.
Then all too soon we were saying goodbye to Alex & checking into Kokopelli Lima...
No comments:
Post a Comment