Playing in Perú

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I've been putting in a lot of work time at the office trying to organize meetings in Europe for our Executive Director, Susana, and George. They left yesterday, and I'm still rushing to send emails and make phone calls to Finland, Denmark, Barcelona, and Madrid.

As a stress reliever, Annie (my roommate), our friend Edrina, and I took a bus early on Saturday morning to Ica. Ica is an oasis in the middle of the Peruvian desert. That's right...Peru has a full-blown desert complete with sand dunes, cacti, and scorching temperatures.

The only seats available on the 7:30 bus were First Class so we spent a wonderful 4 hours in spacious, fluffy chairs watching "Valentine's Day" and eating complimentary muffins. In Paracas, we switched seats to Second Class on the upper level (double decker). Small, sardine-can seats sans fluffiness. Remind me to always bus First Class.

We arrived in Ica around 1:00 and grabbed a taxi to one of the hostels listed in Annie's "Lonely Planet Peru" book. Coming out of the bus station, I told the driver the name of the place and someone behind me said "No existe." I was sure that he wasn't talking to me. Our driver cruised the street three times before we figured out that the hostel "no existe." Two years ago, downtown Ica was destroyed by a "teremoto" or "earthquake." The hostel was one of the building to go. Luckily our driver knew another "hospedaje" close to the city center and took us there.

We booked it to the city center "Plaza de Armas" to buy tour tickets for the next day, then took a cab to "El Encanto de la Huerta" or "The Enchanted Garden," a nice restaurant with delicious food, an outdoor deck, a garden equipped with tree-trunk tables and chairs and hammocks. Most of the patrons were local families ordering "chica" and plates and plates of whole "cuyes"...that would be guinea pigs...whole, staring-at-you guinea pigs.



We stuffed ourselves with "Arroz con pata" (Duck and a deliciously seasoned rice), "Ceviche" (specifically Peruvian dish of sea fish marinated in lemon), and a variety plate of meat and baked sweet potatoes. We paid and rested in the hammocks in the garden.



After our short siesta, we took a "auto-taxi" (the Peruvian equivalent of an Indian rickshaw) to the famous, Regional Museum of Ica, a collection of artifacts from several ancient Peruvian cultures from 2000 BC to 1500 AD. The museum included a one-room display of mummies and bodies preserved by the Peruvian desert. The collection included ancient skulls sporting decorative Incan hair pieces, shrunken (yes, shrunken) trophy heads with dismembered tongues (yes the tongues are still there), and skulls that had been aesthetically and purposefully deformed to become very oblong. I didn’t feel that those particular pictures would be appropriate to post.

We left the museum around 4 pm and took yet another taxi to Wacachina, a “laguna” and oasis nestled between sand dunes as big as mountains. Tourists could strap boards on their feet and speed down the slopes or take a dune-buggy and roar around kicking up a lot of sand.





Skip to Day 2 (Sunday) of Ica trip. The tour bus/minivan picked us up at our “hospedaje” at 6:45 am and drove us to Paracas on the coast. We were met by…



The hombre in the picture trained these pelicans to follow him around. He would feed them and then hold out his hat for soles. Not a bad deal really.

Next, we piled into a huge speed boat and took off toward las Islas Ballestas. On the way, we came upon a school of dolphins!



Next we stopped at the “Candelabra,” the design of a candelabrum drawn into the side of a hill 1000 years ago.



Finally, we arrived at the Islas Ballestas, a series of huge, bare jagged rocks off the Peruvian mainland. They call them “the poor man’s Gallapagos Islands.” The islands are monstrous, gorgeous, and covered with birds including “penguinos” and “lobos del mar” (sea lions). Almost every square inch of the islands are covered in birds. It’s incredible. It’s beautiful. It stinks! Think about it…thousands upon thousands of birds making poop. The smell will knock you off of your feet. Boats visit the islands every seven years to collect the guano for sale. See large mountain of guano.



However, you get used to the smell, and seeing penguins and sea lions makes up for it.









It was very cold on the boat though! Thankfully, we layered up.



The next leg of the trip was certainly warmer. The tour agency we used gave us a car and a tour guide, Guillermo, and we set off into the desert toward Nasca, Peru. Note: along the road we saw several “hermitas” which are small chapel-like structures in memory of those who died in traffic accidents. It was disconcerting, because there were so many!



We drove and drove through the desert.



Our first stop was not the Nasca Lines but the Paracas Lines. These small figures were drawn into the sand 2000 years ago.





The next stop was the Nasca Lines (at least three of them). Ok, so the Nasca Lines are HUGE figures (monkey, frog, tree, man, lizard, bird, etc.) drawn into the sand 1000 years ago by the ancient Nasca culture. It never rains in the desert and no one has lived there in over 500 years, so the figures have been well preserved. The Pan American highway destroyed at least two figures and a barrio of Nasca was built over several others. Annie, Edrina, and I saw “Los manos” (the hands) and “El arbol” (the tree).







We also did some trekking through the desert looking at some lines created 500 years ago by the Incans.



The final leg of our trip was to the “Acueductos” (Aqueducts) of Nasca (built by Incans a little over 500 years ago.) Guillermo (our guide) tried to explain the system to us. We googled it later.



We arrived back in Ica on Sunday night at 7:30 pm. We needed to get back to Lima so I could go to work Monday morning. Unfortunately, our reputable bus company that provided the comfy First Class didn’t run after 6:30 pm. We were forced to take a bus company that we were previously told NOT to take. We soon figured out why. The bus was dirty, the seats were built for midgets, and I was almost robbed while I was sleeping. Thankfully, I woke up in time to slap and wandering hand away from my camera bag. However, despite all that, we got back to Lima safely at 2:30 am with tons of pictures and cool souvenirs.