Roadtrippin’
This was written before the earthquake, I’ve just been very bad at posting lately. These won’t be the most exciting entries but I want to remember these places pre-earthquake. Everywhere we visited (besides Lima) has since been flattened.
It’s holiday time here in Peru. 28th of July is Independence Day and it seems the city has been preparing for it since we arrived 7 weeks ago. Everywhere is covered in white and red decorations and just about everyone is wearing Peru badges. From the homework I’ve been helping with, I get the impression almost every class lately has been about Peru and how they freed themselves from the Spanish. If I have to draw Simon Bolivar’s face one more time I may call the Spanish and ask them to come back to stop the torture!
Independence Day started slow and groggy for us as we had our introduction to the latin club scene the night before. We woke up very unsure of what we were doing. Our plan to watch marching with the kids was thrown out when someone decided it would be too hard to mind 8 small people on the busiest day of the year. So we tagged along with Kelly’s gang to the park. Our gang is now quite large. As well as myself and Michael we had new arrivals Stephen and Jenny and even newer arrival Aisling, another Belfastian. Aisling arrived the night of the Baptism to join us in Casa Hogar. Kelly’s crew consisted of her boyfriend Adrian, his cousin Eric and her two little sisters Samantha and Emely. We presumed we’d be sitting on a rug all day eating a picnic but were pleasantly surprised. Emely starting talking to me on the way there and I just about picked up every 10th word. I definitely heard the words for monkey and elephant. ‘The park’ turned out to be an incredibly well stocked zoo. Peruvians are very proud of their three different regions; the coast, the mountains and the jungle. The zoo was divided in four parts, one devoted to each of Peru’s regions and an international section. Each section was designed to look like the region and had the local animals. It was as cruel as most zoos are, the lions looked like depressed monkeys in their tiny little cage. Speaking of monkeys we saw some so small I thought they were rats for a while. Zoos are like Christmas; better when accompanied by children. We were glad the little ones had tagged along, and the day probably deserves it’s own blog entry but I’ve a lot more writing to do tonight so I’ll solider on.
After working six days a week for seven weeks we got incredibly excited about the idea of a long weekend. But being the beavers we are we didn’t have time to plan anything. I decided weeks ago that I wanted to go south for a while but was struck down with food poisoning on our week off. To make up for that I decided to head to Paracas the day after Independence Day. I mentioned it to Stephen and Jenny and they immediately jumped on. Then when Aisling arrived she said she was up for it too. Michael came back from Cusco on Friday and said he’d be more than happy to join us on Sunday. To complete our group we asked Kelly and she brought her boyfriend. My solo trip suddenly turned into a group excursion, and I’m glad it did.
The trip was so badly organized that about half an hour before we were due to meet Kelly, Jenny looked up from her Frosties and said “Oh, are we really going?” I said sure we might as well. This was my one Monday off for the summer so I was determined to go somewhere. We made a Plan B which consisted of sleeping in Lima if we couldn’t find our way out of the city. We decided not to mention Plan B to Kelly for fear that she wouldn’t come with us.
Once the 5 of us gringos met up with Kelly and Adrian we realized how badly we needed them. We looked around Tres De Mayo not quite sure of which way to go but Adrian led the way and we got one of the crazy mini buses to the centre of Lima. These are incredible little things with a person whose job it is to keep their head out the window and shout the name of their destination.
We made it into the centre of Lima and probably annoyed our Peruvian buddies by running all over the place when they were trying to direct us to the bus. We had to make calls, change money and visit the ATM but eventually trotted on to the bus terminal. It didn’t seem to be a terminal just a street with a load of buses but somehow Kelly and Adrian knew the right one. Must be a Peruvian thing.
When we climbed on the bus we made the most amazing discovery. One which made Aisling (or maybe it was Jenny) proclaim that it made their summer. Up where we were about to put our bags was a monkey. The most tame and friendly monkey I’ve ever met. Also the only monkey I’ve ever been properly introduced to. He was the best in-bus entertainment possible. He sat, stood, jumped, did all the unremarkable things that are suddenly amazing when preformed by a monkey. He sat on my lap for a while drinking orange juice from a cup and nibbled on my chocolate bar. After all the excitement he got up on his owner’s shoulder, leaned over his chair and fell asleep. This meant his head was about a foot from mine (I was behind the owner). 6 of us bombarded the guy with photos but turned off the flashes to let him sleep. He had a real determined look on his face when he slept. It’s now the background of my laptop.
First stop was Chincha, a tiny town two hours south of Lima. Jenny said the nicest thing I ever said to her was “You pee, I’ll pay” when we made it to the bus station toilet. That’s a completely useless piece of information I’m only writing to embarrass Jenny. After lunch we got back on a monkey-less bus. We had decided to get shorter, local buses to Paracas because the tourist ones went to Nazca and we would have had to pay full price for going on part of the way.
On the second bus we started thinking that we should sort out the whole accomodation thing. Paracas is an incredibly small place and finding nice, cheap beds for 7 people might prove difficult. We were told it was an two hour journey to Pisco, the nearest big town to Paracas. An hour and half into the journey we got Kelly to ring a company to make sure we could go sandboarding the next day (priorities first). The said we could and also set us up with accommodation and a boat trip. We were very happy with ourselves until the man asked Kelly to describe our surroundings. From what she told him he could tell we’d gone way past Pisco and were almost past the Paracas turn-off. God knows how he knew that from her description because it can’t have been more than “we are in the desert, now we’re passing sand, now more sand….”
So we leapt from the bus and stood at the side of the road waiting for the guy from the sandboarding company to come save us. He drove off with us in another direction with us until we reached the beautiful beach resort of Paracas. Our hotel (whose name escapes me) was delightful. After an awkward ‘do people share rooms before marriage in Peru’ moment we decided I should share with Kelly, and the boys should be kept a good distance away from us.
We had made an effort of be in the El Dorado district. Seeing as you could walk around the whole of Paracas in a few minutes we really needn’t have worried. The little town has no money machine, which was cute but damn annoying. It’s the poshest place I’ve been to in Peru. Everyone seems to have their boats and sailing seems to be popular. Some Peruvian kitesurfing champion does lessons there too which I might try sometime if I feel my wallet is too heavy. After strolling around for while, and Stephen posing like Horatio from CSI Miami, Kelly and I decided to turn in for the evening. That didn’t happen when the lads turned up with beer and Aisling said her now infamous “Sometime I just like to stand” line when offered a seat. We did eventually sleep early, ready for some bird watching the next day.
Tags: 2 - Peru
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