After the first shock of my losses, it is time to write about the good things that happened so far. Most people don’t like Lima, but what I saw of it, especially the Miraflores district, was indeed quite pleasant.
Only the traffic is really terrible. It is a small version of the traffic in India, and even drivers in Munich could learn a lot regarding squeezing through and changing lanes without further notice. The honking is omnipresent.
When I arrived at the airport, the companies inside offered shuttle services for 80 soles (4 soles == 1 EUR), and this was way too much. So I just went outside and took one of the inofficial taxis. I arrived safe and sound at my hostel and only paid half the price.
Only later I read in both the travel wiki and the website of the Auswaertiges Amt that this should be avoided at all costs as it could lead to “express kidnapping” and other kinds of criminal acts. Who cares.
I was almost the only guest at my hostel and had the whole dorm room for myself. This also meant: No travel buddies to be met.
Peru was the home of about 30 cultures (like Paracas, Nazca, Lima, etc.) before the Incas took over the reign of most of the land (only to be extinguished a hundred years later by the spanish conquest). It is amazing how highly developed these cultures were, even 2000 or 3000 years back.
Directly in Lima there are some ancient ruins of pre-inca cultures. They had built a pyramid like temple thing (but not comparable to in Egypt) with bricks of clay, dried in the sun. Because it never really rains in Lima, most of it was preserved over all this time.
From my hostel to the Huaca Pucllana site it was only a few minutes walk and it was impressive to see this pyramid and buildings created with a huge amount of clay bricks. The english speaking tour guide gave a lot of useful and interesting information.
After that I wandered around Miraflores and had a nice cup of ice cream before I went back to the hostel to get some more sleep that I needed dearly after hardly getting any at the airport or the flight itself. As a side note, it only was my 8th flight within around six months of time.
During the next day I spent my time lazily in the nice parks with WiFi and walking along the coastline. It might be there close to the Miraflores Oval that my phone was snatched from my pocket (I remember somebody passing me, touching my trousers, but I didn’t check for my phone, as I didn’t use it since Rio).
There is this beautiful and poetic Parque de Amor, where lots of spells and expressions about love are placed in mosaic pictures.
After all the not really good food (except for the fantastic BBQ at Dudu’s parents) in Brazil I finally could enjoy some tasty food again and had both Ceviche and Lomo for an acceptable price.
I also used this day for organising — I still need to book three flights and fully plan my stay in North America. In the evening I enjoyed a good movie (“The Hunger Games”) in one of the many cinemas in town.
On the black friday, I moved from my hostel to the meeting hotel and took a taxi to the Larco Museum. This really amazing museum holds many pieces of pottery, tools, arts and crafts and weapons from all the cultures including the Incas.
I spent several hours looking at the exhibits and reading the displays, before I rested and had a really good lunch (Ceviche) at the restaurant inside the museum’s gardens.
This is when I asked one of the guards to call me a radio taxi. But even after ten minutes, the taxi didn’t show up, so the guard just led me to the road and hailed an unofficial one for me.
I only spent a quarter of the price that I had to pay on the way to the museum, but well, as I lost my iPod inside, this wasn’t quite a bargain. Later, when I swapped my SD card of my camera, I noticed that my phone was not in the place I supposed it to be. And it also wasn’t in my pockets. Great.
I’d like to use this moment to thank you guys for your supportive comments and mails, especially James, Chris G., Sabine, Lilli, Pit, Andi & Jutta, Moni, Axel, Yvonne, Malcolm, Christina and Sandra. It really helped me to get over with.
In the evening the participants of the G Adventures Inca Heartland tour gathered around our tour leader Neil. I am very happy that all of the people in our group are very friendly and a lot of fun to be with.
The average age I guess is around 30. Of the ten women and five men (including me) are four couples so that makes me A Single Man. This way I’m getting single rooms during the trip for free that other women paid 100 GBP for. And there are few nice single women left, too! Hehe.
After a dinner and a few drinks at a restaurant close to Kennedy Park with the bunch, we all returned to the hotel to have some rest. Tomorrow we would start travelling on the bus with our first station being Paracas close to Pisco.
There was not much planned for the afternoon, so we had a late lunch / early dinner enjoying Pisco Sours and the local dishes.
A beautiful sunset at the beach concluded the day (with some brilliant photos) and introduced the night with some more drinks and good music later at a bar in one of the small streets of Paracas.
In the morning, all of us took the optional boat trip to the Ballestas Islands (the “poor man’s Galapagos”). On the way to it there is the first glimpse of what to expect from the Nazca Lines as a huge sign has been dug into the sand at the side of a hill. Impressive and it also left a bit of an eerie feeling to what this was about.
The Ballestas Islands are literary covered with birds. I never have seen so many birds on the same spot. Never. There are supposed to be seven to eight million birds, just to get an idea. Lots of boobies!
And this place, it’s full of shit. So much shit to start wars over it. The guano is still being excavated as of today. We got splashed a few times (I wasn’t that lucky though) and the ocean around the island was slightly creamy and full of bird feathers.
We saw a few Humboldt pinguins, too. That wasn’t too impressive for me as I had seen pinguins so many times, including on the Galapagos Islands. There also was a very big sea lion (or fur seals?) colony, all with cubs and ramblings. It was an amazing experience.
Shortly after we took the bus to Ica, where we went for lunch, but not before taking a tour of Pisco making. One of the central aspects is: If you do it the traditional way, you don’t pay taxes. So they use this trick to save money.
And then the tasting. Oh my, we did drink a lot of drinks before we got our lunch. I had to change my order of a glass of wine to water, otherwise I would have been completely wasted.
After that we stopped for some of the greatest funs in my life so far (or like Tom said it: “The best thing with your clothes on!”): We rode onto some impressively huge sand dunes with our two big sand buggies.
Even more impressive when you go like free falling from the ridge down. It is like a roller coaster, but much better. My god, I can’t really express the absolute awesome experience.
And then, we went surfing down the sand dunes several times. God this was so much fun! Would do it again anytime. And for 50 soles, you can’t really argue about the value for money.
And the scenery was so lovely, especially with the sun slowly setting behind the dunes. You wouldn’t believe this massive sand desert in the middle of nowhere.
We went down about four times, everytime it was a bit steeper and longer. And what was left was just a tiny dot after each of us reached the end of a dune.
After an amazing ride back to the Oasis, we still had to cover a three hours distance ride to Nazca… so much for now. It really has been a splendid trip so far.
Of course, a few things were sub-optimal, but really, compared to the good things, it’s not significant at all.
