I've been celebrating it for at least 2 ½ weeks and it's finally here! I love my birthday and this one is kind of special since I'm turning THIRTY!!! But to be honest I feel 23 and have no idea how time has gone by so quickly!
I truly believe my 30s will be filled with lots of fun! ... As if I can have more fun than I have already had!... Hope I can travel more, get to meet more people, advance in my career, and be surrounded by good genuine people that make my life a little bit better!
My day started at 6:30 am to get ready to visit the Ballestas Islands in Paracas.
Paracas in Quechua, I believe, means rain of sand; it has sand dunes next to the ocean just like namibia! I found it interesting that I spent my birthday in a place that it is so similar to Namibia, which probably is my favorite country in the whole world!
Paracas is full of pelicans and all kinds of birds so we were advised to wear something to protect us from the pelican/bird poop!
We all took a speed boat to the islands and it was amazing to see the amount of birds in there! We even got to see penguins, sea lions, and dolphins!
My favorite part was when we were coming back to shore we saw probably about 200 sea lions so the boat stopped and then all swam towards the boat... So super cute!
Then, we got to see dolphins... How incredible is that? I knew it was going to be a good birthday :-)
Once we were done with the boat tour we left Paracas and made our way to Ica.
Here I am with my backpack leaving the hostel :-)
We passed a check point and we were stopped by the police!!! The bus driver had all the papers in order and the police kept asking for more, they even got out his first aid kit and sure he had everything. It turned out that our tour guide had to had a sheet of paper with all of our names with our nationalities and passport numbers written out but we hadn't filled it out yet so they were given the driver a 3,000 soles fine for it but after some talk they decided to pay 50soles to the police woman and they decided to let us go. Since I was seating in the front seat I got the details and even got to pay the 50 soles since the tour guide didn't have a spare bill with him!!!! Once again, only in Latin America!!!
Our next stop was a free tasting of pisco and wine!!!
We got to see how they make pisco the traditional way and the guide from the winery walked us through the process and explained in detail the fermentation, distillation and everything related to pisco! To be honest... I would have been fine with the tasting only! Haha
These are the sweet potato shaped containers where pisco ferments:
We tasted at least 5-6 different pisco/wines. The pisco sour mix was the first and one of the best in my opinion. The two plain piscos were extremely strong!!!! The 2nd one, made of green grapes (I think) was the strongest of all!!!! We all made extremely funny faces after it but it somehow had a very aromatic after taste that I didn't really mind.
After much pisco we went back to the bus and to our surprise the tour guide whipped out a bottle of pisco sour and we all had shots!!! The bus had turned into a party bus! It was so much fun!!!
Now it was time for my favorite part of the day... SAND DUNES!!!!!
We got to go in sand buggies up and down the sand dunes! It was SO MUCH FUN!!! In my buggy we were all girls and our screaming was beyond hilarious! We screamed the whole time and our driver went even faster because I think he was enjoying seeing all of us scream!!
Then we got to do sandboarding!!! This time I did it lying down to avoid any possible injury for Macchu Picchu! We started with a little dune and ended up in gigantic dunes having so much fun! I had so much more fun sandboarding here than in Namibia because we only kept going down and we didn't have to hike back up carrying our boards and sinking into the sand!
Y.O.L.O... You Only Live Once
Right before the end of the tour we stopped by the Huacachina Oasis, a natural oasis in the middle of the dessert!
After being covered in sand we had lunch and the tour guide had gotten me a cake for my birthday. He told everyone that the Peruvian tradition is to "bite" the cake but I'm from El Salvador and I knew better what his intentions were and after much time of me saying "no, you will push the cake on my face" another girl from the group said "I'll hold it" and she did. I took a bite and Ricardo, our tour guide, came from behind and pushed my face into the cake! Haha
We finished our cake and made our way to Nasca.
The view was once again very eye opening in terms of the poverty level of some of the places in Peru and in the other hand some places were breath taking beautiful!! The dry mountains and the sunset were simply beautiful!
Overall, it was a very good birthday! I'm happy!!! :-)
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