Wednesday 9 May 2012

Day 47 - Paracas, Peru (4 May 2012)

Day 47 – Paracas, Peru (4 May 2012)

Today we wake up early.  The bloody rooster next door starts doing his thing very early.  Alberto didn’t tell us about this wee nugget!!!  It’s ok though, because we need to get up early so we can get ready for our 8am departure on the Ballestas Island tour.  We are waiting for our pick up and we get a call that it has been cancelled because it is too rough out at sea.  This is quite strange because it is a beautiful and calm day in Paracas, but apparently (and makes sense) it gets very windy out in the open ocean and we have to go quite a wee way out to get to the island. Alberto has been in this situation before so his organisation skills steps up and delivers.  He books us all on to the tour for the next day since we are staying another night in Paracas anyway.  In the mean time, Alberto has organised our national park tour to be brought forward since the boat tour was cancelled.  So we jump in the mini-van and drive to the Paracas National Park at about 9am.  This national park is not at all what Ann expected.  When Ann hears national park, she thinks of national parks in NZ, which are of course green with heaps of trees.  But of course, because we are in the middle of the desert there is no vegetation here.  This national park is just sand!  This desert begins 3,000 miles south down in Chile in San Pedro de Atacama which is where we were before we started our 4x4 tour (days 16-18).  In this national park we see some fossils and a lot of cliffs.  We are taken to one lookout point where you use to be able to see the cathedral which is very similar to cathedral cove in NZ.  However, in 2007 there was a magnitude 8.0 earthquake which destroyed this and now there is just a big rock left.  We then get taken to the beach with red sand.  I jump down and play on the sand, which is more like pebble stones which find their way into my shoes.  Another fella also jumped down with me but I don’t think he was beach smart as he went right up to the water as a wave was forming.  The wave predictably broke and this fella got caught in the water, his shoes and lower half of his pants were soaked.  Quite funny to see to be honest, lucky for him it was a warm day and the wind was blowing (I can see why they cancelled the Ballestas Island tour now).  They then take us to see the sea lions.  This part is ok, the sea lions are very far away and you can hardly see them, but the view was pretty good!  We then drive out onto the peninsula for lunch.  Ann and I sit on the beach and watch the pelican’s as we packed our lunch.  This is another example of a Peruvian tour taking you somewhere so the tourist can spend some money, that is probably the only disappointing thing about Peru tours.  We then start to head back to Paracas.  On the way we make one final stop to see the national park museum.  This museum is only a year old.  It is very modern, something we haven’t seen too much of in Peru.  This explains about how the Paracas peninsula was originally under water which is why it has no vegetation on it at all.  It also describes all the birds that live in this area.     After this it is time to head back to Paracas.  When we get back we decide to go to the market and buy some postcards.  While we are walking there we pass a lady selling chocolate.  She lets me try one for free.  It is nuts covered in caramel covered in chocolate and it is very nice..  We like them so much that we buy two packets of five.  She appreciates it so much that she even throws in another free chocolate.  We then head back to the hostel and talk to the others.  At dinner time we go back to the cheap restaurants for our last meal in Paracas.  For 15 soles each we both get the chicken noodle soup and the lamb saltado.

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