DAY 5: NASCA

A relaxing day at last!!!

Today most of the people went on an airplane ride to see the Nasca lines, which are a series of drawings scratched on the desert and have been preserved for over 2,000 years since there isn't any rain around here. I decided to skip it since I get extremely sick in little airplanes zip zagging in the air but it was highly recommended by everybody!

Instead, I slept in and caught up with my journal and then joined the other for some lunch and a city stroll.

We even tried a new fruit

At night we had a traditional Pachamanca dinner. All the food was cooked underground and the cooking took aproximately 3 ½-4 hours. The food was cooked by placing really hot stones at the bottom and top of the food, covering it and placing sand/dirt on top.

We had a little ceremony where Sam (representing a woman) laid some leaves on top of the mountain of sand covering the food  and asked Pachamama for good health for all of us. 

Jason (aka Jackson by our guide) poured some purple chicha (drink made of purple maiz) on top and asked the Gods for good weather and warm nights in the Inca Trail. 

Then, they proceeded to uncover the food; they had cooked potatoes, cheese, tamales, pork, chicken and lima beans.

Dinner was actually really delicious and the conversation at the dinner table was actually the best part of the night! So much laughing!!!

 

DAY 4: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

Finally... My birthday!

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!!! :-)

DAY 3: PARACAS

At around 12 we left the hotel to go to the bus station to go to Paracas. We ended up waiting more than 2 hours so we decided to go grab stuff at the grocery store to eat for lunch. I gathered a group of people and headed to the store. I find it extremely funny how everybody on the group turns to me to ask how to say something in Spanish or to describe to them some kind of fruit. First, I had to explain what a granadilla was and I simply said "it's a little bit like boogers" haha since it does look like it and decided to get one for everybody to try. The funniest thing was when one of the guys was saying my name very loudly at the grocery store and I asked what was going on and he just said "how do you said cutlery?" It was beyond funny, he seemed lost and I thought he needed something important but no! All he needed was a fork! Haha

On our way to Paracas we saw a big change of scenery; to the right there was the ocean and to the left big rocky dunes. The journey really reminded me of Namibia! Also, there was a big change in the structure of houses and the poverty level. Many of the areas looked deserted but had some poorly made houses out of straws/ bamboo and it seemed like nobody lived there. We also passed through some towns that looked very poor and people were living in really bad conditions.

Our guide explained a little bit how the system works in Peru for houses and why we were seeing so many empty housing. He said that usually people invade the land and get to stay and some other times are kicked out so the houses are then abandoned.

It was funny to see a sign that read "Do not trespass, we have orders to shoot you!" Only in Latin America is that an appropriate sign to display!

We finally arrived in Paracas and since our bags were too heavy per Peruvian transit rules they decided to send them in the previous bus so they would be waiting for us. Once we arrived our bags were nowhere to be found!!! Since I understand everything I got the whole story about it and our guide telling the company that they are supposed to be a serious company and that they needed to find our bags. Finally, a couple of minutes later another bus arrived and some people went to search for our bags and there they were... Safe at last! 

We headed to our hotel and then had a great meal by the ocean. We got some complimentary pisco sour shots and that only unveiled the craziness of the pisco sour night!

After dinner we all went to a bar and order pisco sours like they were water! We had a great night bonding but some had just a little bit too much to drink!

We even got a shot of an "aphrodisiac" drink from the Peruvian jungle made from "seven roots" 

DAY 2: LIMA

This morning I checked out of my room and at the desk I saw a girl asking for a taxi to barranco and since I'm nosy I saw the hotel name and it was the joining hotel for our tour and she ended up being part of my tour and I invited her to join us for the day.

Our first stop was at Kennedy park which is well known for the many cats that live there. On Sundays people can come and adopt them. 

We walked from Miraflores to Parque del amor and along the coast line. Even though it was a little foggy the walk was very relaxing. Somehow it felt fancy for what I thought Peru was going to be like; I don't know why but most of the time I felt as if I was in Chile (I have never been to Chile) maybe because I think of Chile as being more refined. The park along the coast was very well maintained with playground, beautiful green grass and flowers all over. Also, they had police all over making sure everything was fine.

Parque del amor was somewhat funny, it had a huge statue of a couple kissing and it had benches decorated with tiles and had really cheesy love quotes such as "how much is your hand worth now that it holds my kiss?" Or "you on this side, and me on the other, like two oars" haha I found them extremely funny. The park somehow reminded me of Park Guell in Barcelona!

We then went to lunch at Pescados Capitales... so delicious

We started with ceviche de lenguado mixto

Then calamares a la parrilla

And lastly conchitas a la parmesana

At night I met up with the group and had to sit through a 2 hour orientation!!!!! The guide, Ricardo, was very well prepared with a PowerPoint presentation and everything. To be honest it was a little too long, even more so because I was expecting a 30 min get together and then had plans to go to Lima's water circuit but of course that didn't happen. After the meeting I decide to skip dinner with the group and went for a nice dinner with Kate at Picas.

DAY 1: LIMA

 I arrived in Lima at 2am in the morning and was picked up by my taxi driver. The whole way to the hostel the driver talked about Peruvian food and made some recommendations on what I needed to try and where to go. It felt so nice to be in a country where I speak the language.

The next day I woke up with no plans and met with Kate, a girl from Berkeley that I met on the GAdventure forum for travelers, w went for breakfast at the hostel and we decided to go to downtown lima and the Barranco district. I asked the cleaning lady how to get there by bus and they were extremely helpful! They all gave me detailed directions on what we needed to do and recommended to go to downtown lima first to see the change of guards.

Kate and I were very impressed by Lima's public transportation. The Metropolitano, their new local bus system, is pretty amazing! It has it's own lane so there is never traffic. Once at the station I double checked with locals to see if we were on the track and they made sure to put us in the right bus and check where we needed to get out.

We got downtown right on time to see the change of guards at the plaza mayor. It was a nice ceremony to see but unfortunate that all the gates were closed so we could only see through the bars.

After the ceremony we were walking around and saw a lot of people in a group and 2 guys wearing vests and it ended up being a free walking tour and we decided to join.

Kate and I were thinking about how "lucky" we were to have talked to the cleaning ladies and made it to the change of guards and then to randomly find the one free walking tour... Luck? Maybe... I think more of "perfect timing" and like my mom says "El tiempo de Dios es perfecto."

The tour was very good, we learned about Lima's history and visited many sites. I was happy to see a rainbow flag on top of the main building in el centro and even thought "yeay! They are pro gay" but shortly after I learned that the rainbow flag is the Cusco flag and that's why it was displayed in the building.

One of the stops in the tour was free pisco tasting... Yummm

Mid afternoon after the tour and getting lunch with the guide we headed to Barranco, another famous neighborhood in Lima. 

When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to learn that it was the celebration of "Inti Raymi" or Sol Dios (Sun God.) Inti Raymi is a festivity from Cusco to celebrate the winter solstice so we were able to see many folkloric dances and even a fashion show of all the different costumes from districts in Peru.

Being a foodie I had made reservations for Kate and I to go to Astrid & Gaston, a Michelin star restaurant, for dinner.

We started dinner with some delicious bread, a spectacular olive oil, olives, and some delicious nuts with currants.

I was so looking forward to some ceviche and this didn't disappoint! The ceviche was made with curry verde (green curry), mango, maní (peanuts), and langostinos fritos (fried shrimp). It was a interesting twist to the regular ceviche but it was AMAZING! Maybe my favorite dish of the day!

Then we had some Tiradito: aji Amarillo ahumado, parmesano, y alcaparras.

Our last dish was saltado de quinua: langostinos cristal, verduras crujientes, y naranjas... Yum yum yum!!!

Finally... DESSERT! The whole dessert menu was full of strange fruits from Peru, I had to ask what each thing was and after that had to rely on my friend google to really see what they were talking about! 

After much thought we decided to go with a Cachanga... Like a thin fried crepe with helado de zapallo (pumpkinish ice cream) and a whole lot of delicious fruits and edible flowers on top.... DELISH!!!

We ended the night with some maracuya pisco sours in "las pizzas" a bar street in the Miraflores district!

So far... A beyond awesome first day in Peru!