Pisco and Paracas, Peru – February 4-5, 2011

The first part of the day’s trip was leaving the city of Lima and details on that will come in the Lima blog, or at least that’s the plan. There are seven of us on the Peru portion of the tour: five females and two males, five from Canada and two from Australia. Our guide is from Lima. The small group size is nice and everyone seems very friendly so it should be a good journey. I’m not the oldest of the group but I have a feeling I’m second oldest and will be the oldest on the Lares Trek. One of the younger ones is not doing the trek as he didn’t want to hold everyone else up. I fear I may indeed be the person doing that!

What follows was basically written on the bus on the drive from Lima south to Pisco, Peru. Hopefully it makes sense. We basically followed the Pan American highway along the coast and the trip took about 3.5 hours by public bus. Three buses left Lima within 10 minutes of each other, all on the same route, and we picked up people and dropped them off all along the way. We had assigned seats and got on at the first stop so we were quite comfortable. The bus was not air conditioned but there were enough windows open to keep it very comfortable.

Beaches and big surf with lots of sand everywhere. The area gets little or no rain (2 mm per year) so the land is very dry and sandy looking everywhere. There is nothing growing as far as I can see right now and we’re on the bus heading south from Lima. Okay, now I see an orchard or vineyard off in the distant hillside. That must require a lot of irrigation. The houses are small and brick with lots of clothes hanging on the roof. It is literally colourless out the window except for the clothes. I can see dirt then sand and then ocean and low clouds and the buildings are all sand colour bricks. A lot of the homes do not seem finished so perhaps the rule is the same here as in Mexico in that you don’t have to pay taxes until the house is completed so they just never complete them. There is dust or sand blowing everywhere so even on the bus with the windows open I have to wear my sunglasses. Now the rolling hills are getting higher and we are obviously heading more inland as I have higher hills on the ocean side as well. You get really bad smells at times and we’ve just passed a feed lot and a chicken farm, which might explain the smell. There appear to be roads leading into the hillsides and some appear to end at solid walls so I don’t know whether it is mining or gravel or storage or what. Even the hills look like big sand dunes but I assume they must be rock underneath.

We just hit another flat stretch and there are very small wooden structures on it and I assume they are houses. Some have smaller structures which I assume are outhouses. Each one has a small plot of land with it. Now we’re into another clump of brick buildings and stores right along the side of the road. These are all pastel colours such as yellow, pink, purple and lime green. The other side of the road has trees again so I guess this area gets more rain. We just passed a river bed that was deep and wide and totally bone dry. I guess even if they don’t get much rain here they do get the run off down from the hills and mountains further inland. We stop along the side of the road from time to time and pick up more passengers. Some go short distances and some go a long distance. Once mother and child just arrived at the bus stop via a taxi that looks like an Asian tuk tuk with a motorcycle pulling a covered cart.

Some gated communities with nice looking 2-3 storey buildings along the beachfront; otherwise the beach seems to be a public one. There are not many people on the beach but there are a few. The surf seems to be quite strong but I only saw one surfer. The road is sometimes right on the coast and sometimes a kilometer or two from it. In some places there are wooden or sand brick or mud corrals with a few cows or other animals inside. There has been one river with lots of water but the rest is dry, dry, dry. We have passed some little outdoor eating spots but I don’t know how one could stand all the sand blowing around while eating. Another area of small shacks and lots of construction. Some cactus plants and small shrubs around now. Okay it’s now barren again with men every once in a while working on a road construction project I think. They are definitely working by hand (pushing wheelbarrows full or bricks or dirt/sand, shoveling, leveling, etc.) and it is really hot out there.

Lots of garbage at the side of the road and at the edges of the buildings and fences. I guess the wind blows it all into a few places but it certainly looks messy. In other places the garbage appears to just be gathered together and buried in the sand. We have now just driven through miles and miles of nothing but sand dunes on each side of the road – or at least they look like sand dunes. I suppose it could be very hard rock underneath for all I know.

We turned off the road following the ocean and started inland. There are now corn fields and other crops and nurseries and it is much greener. There is water in the small irrigation ditches. The homes are of brick again and the farmlands around the homes are much larger. The villages are still quite rustic but certainly livable. There always seems to be lots of construction and lots of empty shells or partial buildings. The bus stops along the road are often just posts with signs. We are currently sitting at one of the bus stops and it’s larger and open air and looks quite comfortable. The roofs of the homes have been tin, thatched, brick, tile and even mud.

These comments are added about the journey after the fact:

We hit fog at some point. We seemed to be climbing higher at that point so perhaps it was just low cloud, although we weren’t that high and it seemed to be drifting in from the ocean. We passed several very large oil refineries, or what we took to be oil refineries. I didn’t realize they had oil in Peru so this was surprising. There were chicken farms all along the way and some had dozens of huge barns. A lot of them were empty and appeared to be in ruin but some were full of chickens that were loose and some had chickens in layered pens, which we assumed were for egg laying chickens.

In talking to our guide after the trip she mentioned the almost 7.0 earthquake that hit the area in 2007 with Pisco as the epicenter. Hundreds of people died and many more were injured, and of course many of the buildings were destroyed which explains why so much of it looks like it is in ruins and other parts look like it is new or under construction. She also explained that the “new subdivisions” are really indigenous people who come in as a group and map out their own territories and squat there for 3 to 5 years until they become the owners. There is certainly lots of land to squat on but it seems like prime land to me, right on the beach, so I’m surprised they are allowed to do this.

Paracas, Peru – February 4, 2011

We arrived in the small seaside town of Paracas about 6:30 p.m. Our hotel is on the highway but that is only two very small blocks from the beach. We dropped our bags in our room and walked to the beach and had dinner and our first Pisco Sours at a restaurant overlooking the boardwalk, which is really a large brick walkway and very impressive. It is of course all new since the 2007 earthquake and it is a lovely walk along the ocean for the distance of the town. The countryside around the town is very dry and desolate but there are green patches where there is irrigation (I assume). There is a large military compound between Paracas and Pisco, and a large oil refinery. I’m not sure of the distance but the trip from Pisco to Paracas took about 30 minutes along the beach road with a lot of very large speed bumps.

Paracas is not very large with maybe 2,000 people in the town and surrounding area. The main business is definitely tourism as there are small hotels (no 4 or 5 stars!), hostels, restaurants, shops and tourist agencies everywhere. The second largest business is fishing and there are lots of fishing boats anchored in the bay. The natural bay is large and well protected and the town is at the north end of it. There are beautiful palm trees and acacias and lots of smaller plants with colourful flowers. The fishing boats themselves are also brightly coloured. Most of our boats would be white but they have various colours so they look very bright and colourful in the water.

There is a long pier in the centre of the town. It was deserted last night when we were walking around but this morning it was very busy with long line-ups of people waiting to get on the speed boats and go to Ballestas Island. The three new people on our tour went for this optional boat ride. Those of us who just came from the Galapagos did not go as they refer to Ballestas as a mini Galapagos and we figured we had seen enough of that.

Last night was lovely temperature wise and very comfortable even with shorts and short sleeve top. There were no bugs around at all so the window in the hotel room stayed open all night to cool off the room (no air conditioning here). This morning even before 9 a.m. it was hot and you could feel the sun burning your skin if you were out for even a few minutes. I am now sitting on the covered roof top patio at the hotel and it is lovely. There is a cool ocean breeze blowing and that makes it very nice indeed. Some of the markets and shops were open when I was out walking. They don’t officially open until 9 a.m. so many of them were closed. It’s so comfortable here that I’m not sure I want to go out again just to check out the rest of the stores along the street or the stalls in the market place. We leave at 10 a.m. so I’m quite content to just sit here blogging and enjoying the view. This patio is also the breakfast room so breakfast was very enjoyable.

Once the group got back from Ballestas Island we piled into a van to drive to Nasca. The first hour of the journey was the flat dessert sand dunes with little vegetation. However, in places there was vegetation of various types from small shrubs to tall palm trees and with crops from garlic to grapes. Our first stop was at a pisco refinery and we took a tour through the operation and past some of the vineyards. They grow 8 kinds of grapes and I believe it was an even mix of what we refer to as red and white grapes. They do not make wine in the area because their growing conditions are not appropriate. However, they do make pisco for pisco sours and a lot of other drinks. The grapes are pressed by stomping according to our tour guide and that involves a lot of dancing people drinking a lot of pisco. The only press he showed us was way really old and only used at the end of the process for an extra press of the remaining skins after the stomping. The juice then runs through to another area simply by gravitation and it is put into pottery crocks for two weeks only. Each of the crocks weighs about 100 pounds when full. The juice then goes into a huge vat which is heated to 100 degrees. The ethanol rises first and goes out the top vent and down through the pipes which are submerged in water which acts as a coolant. The ethenol is collected in the next step and stored. The propenol comes next and is collected for the actual making of pisco. The methanol comes last and it is also collected and stored. The three gases are referred to as the head, body and foot of the process and each is produced at a separate temperature so they can be collected separately. At least I think that’s how it works. After our tour we went to the tasting room and had at least six if not eight, different pisco samples that ranged from straight pisco to a tangy tangerine blend to a milky almost kahlua like blend. That last one was my favourite as it was very smooth and tasty. The alcohol content ranged from 17 to 43% so some of it was very powerful stuff. I was amazed that we all, myself included, drank all the samples because they were quite generous as samples go and the stuff was quite powerful. However, we did all manage to walk out so all was well.

About another half hour down the road through a lot of sand and some incredibly high sand dunes, we came to Huacachina Oasis, which truly was just a small lagoon surrounded by palm trees and a few buildings (restaurants, hotels, etc.) in the middle of high sand dunes that towered above everything else. We had about two and a half hours here and it was very relaxing. Well, it was very relaxing for some of us who sat and had lemonade (not pisco sours) around the lagoon then went for a swim and at the end had our lunch. For the rest of them it was a bit more hectic as they went for what we heard was a really wild dune buggy ride over the sand dunes and then sand boarded down about four of them. They came back very hot and very sandy but no one had any serious injuries so that was good. They also had some incredible pictures.

From there we drove for another hour or so in sand but could see hills in the distance. Suddenly we were driving through the hills on incredibly winding u-turn roads and then finally we could look down on incredibly green and lush valleys. It was such a contrast after driving through so much dessert. I hadn’t realized that Peru had such a large dessert area. According to our guide it is the second driest dessert in the world with about 15 minutes of rain a year. Anyway, that’s where I’m stopping this and I’ll pick up the next part under my Nazca blog as that is the day’s destination.