Ballestas Islands Boat Cruise and Huacachina

South America Day 4

Ballestas Islands

We were woken at 5.30 by some noisy Spanish speaking locals in the room next door. They were not only making a ruckus packing their bags, but shouting at each other as well.
We got over it, had breakfast and boarded out trusty bus again. The route that day started off with a boat cruise from Paracas a few kms south of Pisco There's a small island group off the coast called the Ballestas Islands. It's a serious bird rookery as well as having a pretty healthy sea lion colony (more on those later).
We piled into the boat (as pictured) with our dodgy life jackets and headed out to the islands.

The first thing we saw on our cruise was a pelican rookery that also had some turkey vultures nesting near by. They were on a peninsular still on the mainland.
The next interesting sight was on the same peninsular. It's called the Cantelabra. The ancient Nazca people carved out this pattern on the hillside. Thanks to the lack of rain on the West Coast of Peru the pattern hasn't been washed away even after 100s of years. Top to bottom it's 180m.

On the way out to the islands, we were escorted by the pelican for a little while. They're quite the sight in full flight. Check the wingspan on this one. The Peruvian Pelicans are similar to the ones we saw in California, but have much more colourful markings.

We arrived at the islands after not too long. The closer we came the more a horrible rotting fish smell filled our nostrils. It's pretty much stock standard for seabird rookeries the world over.
The arch in shot has a couple of features. The rocky beach under it has a healthy sea lion colony. The top of the arch is packed with nesting seabirds. Spices include Pelicans, Cormorants, Boobies (Gannets), Turns & Penguins. They are all similar to their cousins throughout the world, but typically a more colourful variant.

These Humboldt Penguins are persistent if nothing else. They nest all the way up to the top of the island cliffs despite not being able to fly at all (they're not the most expert climbers either).

Incan Turns are probably the most interesting variant of the lot. The turns most of you would be accustomed to are predominantly white with a black head. These ones are far more interesting, particularly the little yellow and white eyebrows.

Check out this island. It is absolutely covered in nesting birds. It's wonderful to see wildlife so prolific in such a poor country. The temptation to exploit this natural resource must be irresistible.

There are a number of beaches like this one on the Ballestas Islands. The resident South American Sea Lions are as raucous as their cousins around the world.
The South American Sea Lions are also just as good at posing as their relatives.

Pisco Sour is very popular in Peru, Bolivia & Chile. It's an odd mix made with a liquor of sorts (made by distilling grapes) lime, egg white sugar syrup & a local variant of bitters. They also like to sprinkle cinnamon on top.
I took an instant liking to it because of my taste for all things sour. It's also very refreshing in the hot climate of coastal Peru. The only problem with it is that it's got quite a high alcohol content. Fortunately the lime is quite strong also which makes it difficult to drink more than 2.

About half an hour's drive from Paracas (where we set of for the cruise), we visited a Pisco vineyard. It looks like any other vineyard (well, more or less).
We were shown around the place & told about the process. It wasn't like the wineries in Australia with their sterile stainless steel vessels. These guys had small concrete pits that they stomp the grapes in during a festival. They used to ferment the Pisco in slender clay jars (Pisco Jars) but now are a bit more modern and use barrels.
After the tour they let us do some Pisco tasting. The first couple of lower alcohol ones weren't bad, but the rocket fuel versions (like all similar spirits the world over) were horrible!

I'm not too sure why, but for some reason the Pisco vineyard had this Beetle with the Herbie paint job.
So that was the last we saw of coastal Peru. From the vineyard we headed inland to the sandy desert & the oasis, Huacachina.
For more photos from Coastal Peru, click this link.

Huacachina

Huacachina (above) is an oasis of sorts toward the edge of a vast sand dune area. We were excited because of the promise of a dune buggy ride & sand boarding.

Woo Hoo! Dune Buggies! These things weren't at all what I was expecting. They were nothing more than a roll cage with an engine & wheels, a few seats & a steering wheel. The operators like to wring the necks of these things as well. They tear up what are some quite big & steep dunes. Loads of fun!

This is a bit of a funny photo out of context. Looks like we're all ready to make the final push...
The reality is that we were all lined up for sand boarding. I tried the stand up option (like snow boarding) but it didn't work so well. The board didn't have anything in the way of an edge so it was more like slide a bit then turn & fall down, then do it all again. By the last time, I was lining up on the ridge with the rest of them to slide down on my stomach.

Here's the more popular way of sand boarding. Pictured is Kerri flying down the dune at full noise (full noise fast, and full noise screaming).
It got me thinking that I should build myself a sand board when I get back to Perth (still haven't BTW).

 

We couldn't go too far without a group photo. Our first for the trip. Sounds simple, but by the time everyone has handed their cameras to the guides & posed 14 times for the same shot, it adds up.

The crew from left to right:-
Roberto (the tour guide), me, Kerri, Smita, Polly, Mike, Special-K (AKA Karishma), Emma, Hina, Vixy, Gemma, Richard, Melissa, Nichola. (Missing were Nora & Vincent).

After our sand dune adventure, we returned to the Oasis. Of course there was the obligatory stop for photos.

After a hot & dusty sand dune adventure, we headed back to the oasis for some nice cold beers & a dip in the nice cool pool. In fact I did both at the same time. There are very few places in the western world that you are allowed to do that these days. Maybe a few resort pools where the bar is in the pool, but that's about it. Stupid health & safety laws...

After a hot & dusty sand dune adventure, we headed back to the oasis for some nice cold beers & a dip in the nice cool pool. In fact I did both at the same time. There are very few places in the western world that you are allowed to do that these days. Maybe a few resort pools where the bar is in the pool, but that's about it. Stupid health & safety laws...

It was so good to be able to immerse my whole body in water after a year & a half in Canada.

I wasn't the only one of the clan in the pool. Most of the tour group ended up in the pool at one time or other.

Eventually we were dragged out of the pool & back onto the bus to continue our journey. Next stop was to be Nazca.

After a bus trip from Huacachina, we reached a tower beside the highway. It's a lookout point for the Nasca Lines (I'll make the concept clear later). It was quite late in the afternoon and the light was fading so it was a mad scramble up the tower to get a few very dodgy photos (including this one). You should be able to make out the shape of two hands & a blob of a body.
We jumped back on the bus for the final 1/2 hr to the hotel in Nazca. I say 'in' Nasca. It was a couple of kms away, so we were left with no option but to eat at the hotel restaurant. It was rubbish! Meat & veg done very boring & bland. It was very disappointing after a very interesting dinner the night before in Pisco where we had all manner of seafood cooked in all sorts of new & interesting ways. Kerri had a seafood soup that was akin to an Asian seafood laksa but with a whole crab broken into it. Delicious! I had the 'Ceviche De Pescado' which is seafood cold cooked by citrus juice (usually lime). That was also pretty nice & it became a favourite menu choice of mine in the subsequent weeks.
After dinner it was off to bed & the end of a busy day, what was the first full day of the tour.

Travel to Pisco

South America Day 3

Pisco

The next morning we pottered around Lima and walked along the waterfront. Lima isn't really that interesting. It's just another big city & doesn't have that much for the tourists. I imagine it's a fairly nice place to live if you're a Peruvian.

Mid afternoon we all climbed aboard a small bus and headed south along the coast to Pisco. Fortunately the bus was nothing like the crazy local vans & was near new. The driver wasn't anywhere as nutty as the local cabbies.
We arrived in Pisco just on dusk. We had a bit of a wander around the town for a little while. There was some kind of parade going on. The locals were all very excited.
The recent history of Pisco is somewhat tragic. A year before we were there, an earthquake hit (8 on the Richter scale!) on a Sunday morning. Most of the town were in the church at the time which collapsed killing 200. (Pictured is the new church built since.) most of the town was flattened as well. You have to give credit to the locals who seem incredibly resilient.

Lima

South America Day 2

Mira Flores

After a bit of a sleep in, we went downstairs of the hotel for breakfast. We met a few others from our tour (Mike, Vixi, Nic & Polly). We decided to explore Lima for the day as a group more because we were scared little tourists in a strange land. Turns out that it wasn't so scary after all.

We wandered around the commercial district of Mire Flores where we were staying. That wasn't so interesting, so we headed for the ocean. Mira Flores sits at the top of a decent cliff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean (pictured). There's a very westernised tourist oriented shopping centre at the top. Our first Tourist Trap for the adventure. We had a cool drink at the garden restaurant (just next to Kerri's left elbow in shot).

San Francisco Church 

Around midday, we jumped in a couple of cabs and headed to the San Francisco church near the Lima city centre. The cab ride was an experience and a half! The Lima drivers (particularly the cabbies) are nuts! They have no idea about road rules or courtesy lane markings are more of a guide than anything & I don't think I saw a speed limit sign. Most cars are bombs in complete disrepair & have dings & rust everywhere. Hardly surprising when you see how they drive. The idea of maintenance isn't exactly prevalent.

Eventually we arrived at the church after out eventful ride. It's not an overly intriguing church, but nice enough. There is one particular aspect that makes it a well visited church.

The Catacombes
This would be the reason behind the popularity of the San Francisco Church. Under the church is a labyrinth of catacombs where residents of Lima were buried for a couple of centuries. It's a bit odd because the display as it is today is as a result of archaeologists excavating what is basically a cemetery & arranging the bones in neat piles. Pictured is a well of sorts that was used when the catacombs were full. Again, the archaeologists excavated & re-arranged the remains. It's all very macabre. As it turned out, it was by no means the last church called San Francisco that we visited on our trip.

These became a familiar sight in Peru & Bolivia. They're the equivalent of you're suburban council bus. The difference is that they're in no better shape than the taxis & are driven by mad men! We were warned not to use then because of pick pockets & muggers. I was more worried about other more dangerous issues like deceleration trauma (vehicle accidents).

That night we met the rest of the GAP group we were going to spend at least the next 21 days with. We also met out tour guide for the first half of out adventure. Our 45 day GAP tour from Lima to Rio was made up of 2 shorter tours. The first one is called "Andean Discovery" (see map below). It's pretty much a lap around Peru crossing into Bolivia on the last day and finishing in La Paz.

After the little meeting we all went out for diner & got to meet everyone. Most of the clan were U25 English girls. Add Mike (the single guy), a couple (Melissa & Richard) from London, a school teacher couple from Western Ireland (Nora & Vincent) and us, & you have the group of 14 for the first leg of the trip. It turned out that most were going on to Bolivia & Brazil as well. More on the individuals later.

South American Adventure

<edit: By the time I had time to write about our South American odyssey, four months had gone but. I only hope I can remember enough to make it interesting. We did keep a diary for the six weeks, so hopefully I didn't miss too many important details.>

Above is an overview of our South American adventure. We started in Lima, Peru (left of map) and finished in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Day 1 - Travel to Lima, Peru

Today we set of from Calgary and being late in September when the leaves have already dropped off the trees. So the long brown of winter had started and it was getting a bit on the cool side. Our flight took us through Houston, Texas and over the Caribbean (unfortunately late in the evening by that point). We arrived in Lima around 11.30pm local time & were quite relieved to finally get to bed around 12.30am. That wasn't until after our first taste of crazy South American driving from the airport to the hotel (more on the crazy driving later). We'd been awake since 4am Calgary time (about 1hr behind Lima).
There's nothing particularly interesting to note from the day other than we confirmed that Texans are true to popular belief... They're huge (obese) people!

Montana & Glacier National Park

This morning, Sandra & Jim headed back to Calgary (and work) while we headed south of the border, this time by road into Montana. The plan was to drive through Glacier National Park and on to Whitefish. The photo above is just a random butt just on the US side of the border.

Glacier National Park

We drove out to Lake Sherbourne along the way. It's in the north east corner of Glacier National Park. There wasn't much to see, because the weather had turned straight out nasty! Apparently the wildlife around this area is prolific, but we were there a bit late in the morning and we weren't overly keen to get out of the car into the freezing wind.

Logan Pass

I did the research before coming down here and was of the understanding that the main park road 'Road to the Sun' would be open for us. Wrong. As per usual, the yanks fed us wrong information and started their roadworks a week early. We'd come all this way and decided to take the Road to the Sun as far as we could, which turned out to be to Logan Pass. At the summit, we could see a waterfall cascading down to opposite hillside.

Unfortunately the weather was so bad that we couldn't see much because everything was surrounded by cloud. The wind was joined by rain, then sleet, followed by snow. We had to drive back to the park gate and then drive all the way around the perimeter of the park adding about 300kms to the trip. Not happy!

Whitefish wasn't anything remarkable, but not a bad place to stay for the night either. It's close to Glacier Nat Park or the ski resorts near by. I can see the potential for Glacier National Park, but we need to visit a bit earlier in the year next time. Unfortunately it was disappointing this time around.
Tomorrow we make the long drive back to Calgary where we have to prepare for our six week South American adventure in a few days.