Huacachina
Huacachina is a little oasis in the middle of the desert near Ica, it's one of those places that doesn't feel real. One night there was definitely enough, there are 2 activities to do there. we did a wee tour of local wineries where they make pisco and wine and such things. The first winery was really interesting, and the second one was just this man pouring us shots of different wines out of big jars with a bamboo stick. After that we went for a buggy ride over the dunes and went sliding down them on boards (lying on our fronts because standing up would have been really hard). We had heard loads of stories about people breaking their noses and their chins from it, and all was good until a guy in our group fell off his board on the last dune, he was fine, just a cut lip and flattened ray-bans, and also just his trousers fell down and he lead there for ages without noticing... Then we watched the sunset on the dunes and it was beautiful!
 |
| The press in the winery |
 |
| Beth boarding down a dune |
Paracas
After spending ages deciding where to go next, we settled with Paracas, a tiny town on the coast next to Pisco, where Peru's best liquor comes from.
It was so nice to see the sea again! We spent most of 2 days just looking at it drinking beer on a blanket, we made friends with a little girl Rocío who tried to plait my hair and also met a fair few strange men.
We also took a boat trip to Las Islas Ballestas, after waiting for the fog to clear up for ages. Have a look at the photos, islands covered in birds and sea lions and penguins...
Huanchaco
We were only planning on staying here 2 or 3 nights, but in the end we stayed about 6. We found the nicest hostel (Hostal Sudamerica) where we made some great friends, had philosophical debates over one of the best breakfasts, all had dinner together every night just like a wee family, played lots of Jenga and cards, enjoyed the sea and the sunset ever night and really chillaxed...
 |
| Everyone's favourite french ladies (apart toi maman) |
 |
| Pauline's birthday party |
 |
| The board of family members |
 |
| Jenga creations with a future architect |
 |
| The breakfast club |
Trujillo
We made a little stop in Trujillo for the day, where we visited las Huacas de Moche, the temple of the sun and of the moon from the Moche era. A huge temple for sacrifices and ceremonies, every 100 years or so they would fill it up with bricks and build another temple on top, and now it has 6 floors and the paint is still almost intact from many many years ago! Trujillo has a lot of beautiful old houses to be visited and a cracking plaza (where we always spend a lot of time sitting and watching the world going past in the places we visit).
 |
We made a short stop here just for a day, arriving at 5am we went to the Incan thermal baths with a herby sauna as there really is nothing else to do at such an hour, it was such a nice way to start the day! We then went walked for an hour to ´las ventanillas de Otuzco´a pre-incan cemetery which was basically just a huge rock with a lot of holes in it where all of the important incas were buried. The walk completely tired us out so we spent the rest of the day walking round being tired, Beth spent a while figuring out exactly how many llama key rings she needed to buy before going home, and we made a cup of coffee, a pizza and a beer last about 7 hours. Then we hopped on another night bus to Piura right up in the north where we changed to Máncora...
Máncora: Beth and Emily's girly holiday by the beach
Máncora was made out to us to be this crazy touristy part town where there's not enough room to lie down on the beach, but luckily there are not many tourists at the moment so everyone has a reasonable bit of beach to enjoy. We have definitely been enjoying it for the last few days, getting very brown, eating lots of fruit and fish, meeting excellent people, dancing a lot and going swimming at dawn.
 |
| Midnight swim |
 |
| And I don't think I have ever had so much sand in my hair and face |
And so next on the agenda is saying goodbye to Beth sadly and heading up to Ecuador on Tuesday!
No comments:
Post a Comment