Ica, Huacachina, Nasca tour - tranquila, no te preocupes

When we last left off, we had just completed the first part of Alfredo's promotional tour.  He had said we would be going with a group of Belgians. We got off the boat to the Ballestas Islands and hurried back to our hotel room to grab our bags and meet 'the Belgians' at the van for 11am.

The plan was to go to Huacachina, an oasis outside of Ica, and have lunch there.  Then board the bus for a winery tour in Ica, where they grow the grapes for Pisca.  Then back to Huacachina for a walkabout for a couple of hours, and then head to our hotel in Nasca at 7pm.  And then I had booked a flight over the Nasca lines in the morning.

We get on the van.  There are two people from Saskatchewan and a family of five from Columbia.  Where are the Belgians?  We never met a Belgian the whole time, not even a Swiss or Luxembourgian.

We only had to stop and fix the engine once on the road to Ica!  Excellent.  Then, we stopped on the side of the highway and the Saskatchewanians were taken away.  We don't know to where but we hope it was better organized than where we went.

We finally arrived in Huacachina which is basically the Niagra Falls of Peru. A giant tourist trap around a water feature.  But we didn't find that out until later because all we saw of Huacachina that first visit was a back alley.  We asked our driver where were were supposed to meet after lunch for our tour of Ica.  Blank face.  Tour of Ica?  Yes, the tour of Ica that is part of this promotion.  Blank face.

Off he scurried before we could freak out.  He will find out. "Tranquila, no te preocupe" (Relax, don't worry yourself). Eventually a woman arrived out of an even smaller alley.  She called Alfredo and knows what is going on.  But no lunch in Huacachina because our driver has to get to Ica (Val overheard because the van was about to die and he needed to get it to a garage.  Excellent).  That took up our hour lunch break anway.

Ica is minutes away from Huacachina so we made it in our very shady van.  We were dropped at the next tour office for our 1:30 tour.  Nope.  It will start at 2:30 so go have lunch.  Ok.  Crappy lunch in the ugly Plaza (main square).  Ica is ugly, it never got prettier.  Ugly, ugly.  But we are going on a wine tour and wineries are nice, right?

At  2:30 we go to our tour office, a filthy room at the back of a icky restaurant.  2:30, we are here!  Nope.  Tour is delayed.  We eventually left at 3:30.  That's another hour of our day, waiting for something to happen.  The tour operators had grape insignias on their shirts so that's a good sign, right?  Nope.

Gross tour office #1

We loaded into a van with a couple from Lima (note, not Belgians).  We saw the church and the dump (unofficial) and then we had to visit a dulceria (candy shop) for samples but no one bought anything because the samples sucked. 

Then we went to the Witch's market.  We were excited about this since we didn't find the one in Lima.  Nope.  It wasn't a market, it was a park.  Apparently it used to be a forest where the witches hid during some sort of persecution.  But now it a trashy tourist stop with mannequins dressed as witches with heaving breasts, lost of heaving breasts.

Finally, next stop is a winery!  Nope.  We had a tour of disgusting, no longer used (thank god) tanks to show the process for making Pisco.  Then into the tasting room for the fastest sampling of various forms of Pisco.  Fruity, creamy, then plain.  I did buy a little bottle of white caramel pisco because I am a connoisseur of the grape.

We sampled all of these in about 7 minutes

Back into the van to look at a weirdly grown tree (seven headed, no less).

The seven headed tree.  

And then back to Huacachina to drop us back in our alley.  We finally got something promised, an hour to walk around.  We had a mango drink and did some bird-watching, and people watching.  It is very touristy but at that point, we were glad to just be on our own for a bit.

Those are people walking along the sand dunes

We had to be back at the next tourist office (the one in the alley off the other alley) at 6pm for our 7:10 bus to Nasca.  Nope.  We were waiting for two more so come back at 6:30.  Ok.  We come back at 6:30. Yes, you guessed it - NOPE. Another hour sitting in a gross tourist office waiting for something to happen.  I have to say, we heard "tranquila, no te preocupe" a lot at this point because we were getting very concerned. Eventually two German girls arrived (closer but still not Belgians!) and we headed out of the alley, into the road which was basically a traffic jam.  Would we mind hiking up to the highway to meet our cab?  At this point, anything to move this along.

Don't worry about our 7:10 bus (tranquila, no te preocupes), they leave every 20 minutes.  The two German girls got dropped at Cruz del Sur station, the nice buses.  We  went to, well who knows at this point, it wasn't first class, let's just say that much.  Our tickets for the three hour ride were s/10 (@ $3Can) so not a tourist bus.

By the way, is anyone going to pick us up and take us to our hotel, which we don't know the name of.  Tranquila, no te preocupe!  Yes, someone will be there, and might even know what is going on.  Amazingly, this turned out to be true.

We finally got on the 8:20 bus and arrive in Nasca around 11pm.  Our driver picked us up and took us to Yemaya hotel.  Again, not first class to say the least.  But we were so tired, we did not care anymore.  But our driver had to talk to us before he could leave. So up to the FOURTH floor terrace.  Do we want a package tour of Nasca for tomorrow?  Are you kidding!  No, we want no packages ever again, thank you very much.

Our hotel is in there somewhere

What I wanted to know was, what time was someone picking me up to take me to the airport for my paid for flight.  Well, it depends.  Ok, on what?  Well, the weather mostly.  Maybe he will pick me up at 11.  Or earlier, or later.  Nope.  We are not sitting in our quarter star hotel room all morning waiting for him to show up.  Pick me up at 9am!  He finally gave in and said he would be at the hotel at 9am. I think he was getting scared of us by then.  Tranquila, my ass!

So, eventually, we got to go to bed.  Actually, really comfortable beds and I had a decent sleep.  We woke up early and it was raining!  In the desert that is so dry the Nasca lines have lasted 2000 years because there is no rain to wash them away!  Raining!  In Nasca!  Well, this is going to put a damper (ha! no pun intended) on my 9am flight.

Proof that it was raining

We went for breakfast where I had an idea.  Since my flight was clearly going to be delayed, and our driver will have to wait around anyway, why doesn't he just take us to some places we wanted to see.  He agreed.

So off we went to the aqueducts.  Which were super cool.  And a ruin.  And a look out over a rocky plane full of holes where mummies had been dug up by archaeologists and grave robbers. Two lines of blog post equals many photos:

Aqueduct 

Super cool well, there were several in a row

The sign for the viewpoint because I was never going to
remember the name (not that the sign helps)

Those pits are excavated graves of mummies!

Panorama of the desert and the river valley

A Nasca line, close up

The ruins

Val on top of the ruins

That perfectly round rock intrigued me. 

That took a couple of hours.  Then, at 11am, we get the call, the flights are on.  Get to the airport!  So, we got to the airport.  I was on a plane in 10 minutes.  It was the smoothest part of the entire 'promotion'.  Val didn't come with me.  I have a million crappy pictures of sand which may or may not show the Nasca lines.  We shall see when I can finally upload pictures (not here in our hostel in Arequipa which very slooooow wifi).

(next day, new hotel, uploading many many photos)

Sweaty is the new sexy!

Taking off

Swirl

The hummingbird

View from the plane

Line

No idea, looks like an ant

The root

The astronaut

That's the whale to the right, not sure what's centre

30 minutes in the air and it was over.  We landed safely (which I have read is not always the case) and we got passed off onto another driver for the next part of our day.  I think he was the fifth or sixth person in charge of use on this promotion but I have lost count.

This part was my real goal in Nasca, the Chauchilla Cemetery.  Pre-inca tradition of burying the dead and honouring them after death with elaborate displays of the mummies and their funerary goods.  It did not disappoint!  Plus, two cool (new) birds on the road in.

Burrowing owl

Peruvian Thick-knee

There were twelve pits, most with two or more bodies. I took pictures of them all but I will spare you some.  There was also a beautiful desert mountain overlooking the cemetery which I also took a million pictures of.

And then on the road  back, we stopped at the saddest graveyard. The driver said it was for poor Catholics, many of whom have been forgotten by their families.  It was such a contrast from Chauchilla where the dead are tended of with such care.  I walked around the graves with a desert wind blowing, it was so desolate and lonely, far from anyone or anything.

Eventually,we were dropped at our hotel and our 'promotion' was over.  We had paid a half day extra so we could keep our room until our but to Arequipa left at 10:30.  We went for dinner and packed up and that was pretty much the end of our day in Nasca.

I am posting this from Chavay (Yes, after all of that, we booked another tour but this one is good!)

Paracas - the vacay vibe is strong here

(We are leaving Paracas tomorrow.  I will get this post started but I know I won't finish  it tonight.)

We made it out of Lima without incident.  We were booked first class on Cruz Del Sur bus line.  Three hours in a cushy seat and we were both ready to get off.  We have some even longer ones coming up so those are going to be unpleasant but that's how it is when you want to see lots of places in a big country.

VIP seats

Paracas is right on the ocean so has a total beach town vibe. Lots of bars and souvenir shops and happy beach goers.

 But it is also right beside a National Reserve that protects one of the driest deserts in the world.

On our first day, we arrived around 4pm.  We took a cab to our hotel and the cabbie tried very hard to sell us a 'tour' of the park, with a bird guide.  But we would have to pay him to come along.  We had only just arrived so we said no, for now.

We settled into our room.  Small, no windows, no air.  Just two nights.  And then we walked back into town, we are much closer than I thought when I booked.

There is a beach walkway with lots of bars and restaurants.  But we had a mission, book a boat excursion to Ballenas Island and a bird guide for the Paracas National Reserve.  Two blocks up from the beach is the road with the 'tour companies'.  We were fresh meat so we were picked off pretty quickly.  We saw a place that looked not too awful (Flamencos) so we headed towards it.  As it happened, Alfredo approached us and asked if we wanted a tour.  He worked out of Flamencos.

Alfredo, who is good at his job

(I am SOOO far behind - I am about write about the tour we bought from Alfredo and it is already over)

Of course, for the bird guide, Alfredo knows a guy, Nico.  There was general consensus by the tour people that Nico was the best.  Great, we booked Nico for the next morning at 6am.   And we want to go to the Ballestas Islands.  Are we going to Nasca?  Ica?  Yes, we are.  Well, we are in luck!

He has a group of Belgians who are taking the boat to the islands in the morning (8am) and then at 11am, a van to Huacachina (an oasis) and then a wine tour of Ica.  Followed by a bus to Nasca with a hotel room.  All for only s/190.  Are we interested in this promotion?

The promotion does include everything we wanted to do in the next two days and more.  And we get to not plan for a day.  Yes, we are in.

Since we are going to be in Nasca, would we be interested in a flight over Nasca Lines?  Val said no but I said yes (this is your fault Rachelle).  We paid for all of  it (bird guide, promotion, flight) and that was that, what could go wrong, we were in good hands (foreshadowing!).

Then we spent the rest of the evening wandering around and eating seafood.  There is a strip of restaurants that are very aggressive in trying to convince tourists that they want to eat there.  We had to be bribed with free Pisco Sours and a view of the sunset.

Free Pisco Sour and the mixed fish fry

(now we are leaving Nasca soon... I have to start writing more, but that means doing less so probably not)

Our room in Paracas was very small and hot as can be, no windows.  So it was not a great night.  We got up at 5am for our 6am bird tour of the Paracas National Reserve which is right by Paracas town. Nico told us it is the driest place on earth.  I believe it.  There wasn't a plant or animal to be seen anywhere.  But is was beautiful.  And the desert goes right up to the ocean.

I have to be honest, Nico is not the greatest birder but he did know all of the places to find the birds.  If you want more birds, I created a separate post of just birds.  They were all shore birds.

That's a flamingo from a million miles away

Seriously, the desert was so amazing, here are a few more pictures.

We were back at the hotel by 10am.  We went for breakfast.  It was really good and only s/15 for eggs with ham and cheese, toast, coffee with milk and fresh orange juice.  I ordered a coffee later in the day and it was s/10! so I know our breakfast was a deal.

We had a fairly slow day (for us).  I know we had a nap at one point (we asked for a fan so our room wasn't quite so oven-like).  And we wandered around town and did some shopping, had a snack (yogurt and fruit!)

Paracas Cafe was great. 
Yogurt with fruit and honey hit the spot

This is for my anthropology friends. 
A coffee mug celebrating trepanation

A Peruvian Hairless dog.  The ugliest dogs in the world.

It was election day in Peru so the local restaurants weren't allowed to serve alcohol.  But, of course, they did.  But we had to sit upstairs on the patio so we didn't attract attention (with all of the other beer swilling tourists)

Val with her contraband beer at the speakeasy.

Early to bed that night.  And up early again the next day, although not as early as bird tour day.  We had to be at the Flamencos tour office at 8am for our boat tour to Bellanis Islands.  This was the first part of our 'promotional tour'.  No extra charges said Alfredo.  First stop, the ticket office.  Entrance fee not included.  It was supposed to be s/16 each but we made Alfredo pay half.  

The boat tour is about 90 minutes to the islands to see seabirds, one Nasca line (the candelabra) and sea lions. I was particularly excited to see the Humboldt Penguin,  I have never managed to see a penguin before. Here are a million pictures from the boat ride.  

Lining up to get on the boat

We were at the very back

El Candelabra

Penguins!  

Boobies!  (because I am a 12 year old boy)

An abandoned loading area from the days of harvesting guano

The harem

The mists arrive and the wind is up, time to leave

Val has pointed out that I have spelled the name of these islands three different ways, all wrong.  They are the Islas Ballestas.

I am going to end this post as we leave Paracas.  We liked this little town a lot.  And here is some more desert meets the sea pictures.  Because this may be the most beautiful place on earth.

This is a mummified fish.  You can see how far it is from the water

This is the 'cathedral' covered in Inka terms and Peruvian boobies

This is Playa Roja (the red beach)