Sandboarding an oasis, lots of birds and rock legends!

Continuing the theme of visiting places with ridiculous names, I headed to Huacachina (pronounced wa-ka-cheen-a) with Laura (from Germany) who I'd met while trekking the Colca Canyon.

We got a good deal on a 12-hour night bus, or so we thought... Usually on these buses the driver cranks up the air con so much that you need a blanket to keep yourself warm.  We got on the bus armed with a sleeping bag and layers of clothes and were pretty warm when the temperature started to drop.  Then, for no reason at all, the air con went off and it started to get really really hot.  It must have reached about 30 degrees at one point.  I got about 7 minutes of sleep.  At least we saved 15 Soles (£4).

Huacachina is a beautiful oasis town (or village really, it is only about 1 square km).  It is the most oasis-like oasis I've ever seen, an emerald lagoon surrounded by palm trees and huge sand dunes. This is probably why it features on the 50 Soles bank note (nice bit of trivia for you there).

We found a room in an average guesthouse but with a great pool (priorities!) and headed up the nearest sand dune for a look over the town.  After 20 minutes of trudging through knee-deep soft sand we'd made virtually no progress so gave up and watched the sun go down.

There are two things to do in Huacachina, sandboard and ride around in rollercoaster-style dune buggys.  We did both the next day - it was great fun!  We strapped into a huge dune buggy with 6 other people and sped off to the dunes.  It really was like a rollercoaster - we drove up near-vertical dunes, flying over the crest and shooting down the other side at ridiculous speeds.  It was made more scary by the fact that our driver did it all one handed.  And possibly drunk.  We spent the rest of the evening slicing down the huge golden dunes on sandboards - great fun!

The next destination was the small beach town of Paracas, near Pisco.  The main drawcard here is a visit to the Islas Ballestas, nicknamed the poor man's Galápagos, which are home to a huge variety of wildlife.  Laura has the same guide book in German and, strangely enough, they have chosen to nickname them the small man's Galápagos - not sure what that says about Germans...  Paracas is inside a huge national reserve but you wouldn't know it as there are loads of factories and even a small offshore oil rig.  It seems Peruvians only do conservation properly when it pays...

Anyway, Paracas is a nice sleepy town with sandy beaches and a laid-back atmosphere (and far away from the oil rig).

We checked into the imaginatively-named Backpackers hostal and met up with Matthais & Fabian, the Swiss guys from the Colca Trek.  They had spent the day making the awesome sand sculpture below.  By now everyone had been taught the card game Shit Head and the evening was spent playing cards & drinking beer :-)

The next day we went to explore the islands.  I hadn't realised that you can't actually go onto the islands, you just cruise round it on a boat.  Those who know me will know that I hate boat journeys - lots.  But by then it was too late so I jumped on and we sped off into the sea.  We briefly stopped on the way to look at a large Incan sand sculpture.  It looked like the tracks someone would make if they slid down the sand dune on their ass.  I was not particularly impressed.  There was also an oil refinery on the same island.  Lovely.

What was lovely though, was the Islas Ballestas.  From a distance it looked like the rugged rocky islands were covered in huge black puddles but as we got closer I realised they were moving...  Each was a tight group of thousands and thousands of birds all squawking away to each other and looking for fish.  When a school of fish was located they all shuffled to the edge of the cliffs and jumped off, flying out into the sea to get some lunch.  The flocks of birds fly in fantastic lines, darting across the sky in perfect unison.

We saw Homboldt penguins, pellicans, sea lions, seals, jellyfish and hundreds of species of birds, all mingling around together on the islands.  They all seemed to be chatting away to each other and the noise was really something.  After about 2hrs I was feeling the waves and more than happy when we pointed the nose of the boat towards the shoreline and sped back to Paracas...

Oddly enough, there is a huge Hilton hotel in Paracas.  It is a nice place but it is in the middle of nowhere and there are not really that many tourists.  I cannot understand why there is a huge resort there - it had over 300 apartments and we saw about 20 people there (it also housed the only ATM in town...).  They should open it to backpackers...

The next day we headed for Lima.  The Swiss guys opted for the cozy bed bus which passed through Paracas.  This was the expensive option so, as we are hardcore backpackers, we opted for the much cheaper (but more ridiculous) route.  We took a collectivo to Pisco then a tuktuk to the highway and then a local bus for 4 hours to Lima.  Surprisingly, it all worked out perfectly and we arrived in Lima just in time to see the sun go down!

Laura is pushed for time so after a day wandering around she headed straight to Ecuador.  This involved a 36-hour bus journey - thankfully I don't need to do that!  Anyway, Lima has a bad reputation for crime and for being a bit boring but nothing could be further from the truth!  Myself and the Swiss guys had heard about a gig called "Rock Legends" where Gene Simmons, Glenn Hughes, Joe Elliott, Sebastian Bach, Matt Sorum, Joe Elliot, Billy Duffy, Duff McKagan and Steve Stevens all played on stage together.  I'm not a huge rock fan but I was really surprised they were all in Lima.  The gig was sold out but we went anyway and managed to score some tickets outside.  It was great fun but a bit tame for a rock concert, probably due to lack of beer...

The next two days were spent wandering around Lima, partying, surfing and visiting the remains of a huge pre-Inca pyramid.

The pyramid is build completely from adobe (basically mud dried into a brick shape in the sun) using the "Bookshelf" technique).

There was also some tombs and a footprint that is apparently over 3,000 years old.  Apparently.

They also had a special breed of dog that evolved in the desert and therefore has no hair - if the devil owned dogs, he would have two of these!

I've just arrived in a town called Huaraz, right up in the Andes.  This town was made for me - it is surrounded by snow-capped peaks and you can go climbing, trekking, downhill biking and more.

Right, I have to go before I pull off one of my ears - I am currently sitting in the lobby of my hostal next to two people, a Frenchman and a German girl, who have been discussing honey for the last 45 minutes.  German Girl thinks that it is wrong to eat honey because of "it is wrong to enslave bees".  French guy only eats honey that comes from "happy" bees.  I can't understand how the conversation is still going on, but I'm going to escape.  Here are some more pics from the island.

Colca Canyon

Just finished a 4-day hike, time to do some more hiking!

Arequipa, the second biggest city in Peru, is surrounded by large Andes mountains.  Two of the most spectacular are Chachani (6,050m) and the cone-shaped volcano El Misti (5,400m).

The city is famous for its buildings made out of volcanic rock, which glistens in the sunshine.

Nearby is the famous Colca Canyon which, at 4,160m deep, is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon (I was told that fact by my good friend Will Capes).  I decided to explore the canyon by hiking around for three days with some other backpackers and a local guide, Juan Carlos.

 

We did not get off to a good start...  We were supposed to be picked up from our hostels at 3:30am (!) at the latest, but by 4am myself and Laura were wondering if we'd been forgotten....  At 4:15 the bus finally arrived and we hopped on.  I'm not sure if it was because we were late, or just because Peruvians are ridiculous drivers, but the driver was absolutely slamming it through the country roads towards the canyon.  We stopped off at the highest point of the journey (4,900m) and noticed that we had a flat tyre.  There was no spare, which seems to be a standard practice in this country.  Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) this did little to slow down the driver, who seemed happy to slide the back out around the corners while snaking through the mountain pass at 100kmph!

Anyway, we were dropped off on the side of the road and hiked to the edge of the canyon.  Every time I think of canyons, I always think of the Grand Canyon in the US, with sheer cliffs and mud-red landscapes.  Colca Canyon is nothing like that.  The drop down into the canyon is much more gradual and it is a lush green place with many different micro-climates producing hundreds of different kinds of fruits.  I have already fallen in love with the refreshing orange Granadilla fruit and tried Tuna (sweet fruit from the cactus), a plantain-type fruit and the "Colca Sour" drink (like a Pisco Sour but with cactus fruit instead of lemon juice).

The first day was spent hiking down to the village of San Juan, descending about 1,100m along the winding path.  Luckily, we made a good pace and got there quite early because it started pouring down right after we arrived.  Naturally, the afternoon was spent drinking beer, playing cards and laughing at the wet people who'd been caught in the rain....

The next day we got up early and hiked along the valley to a small town with a church (who's name I've completely forgotten).  There was a tiny one-room museum on how the locals live in the canyon.  We saw how corn is prepared with different stone tools, how ropes are made out of grass and a large stuffed skunk (a definite highlight).  We also tried some Chicha, a malty alcoholic drink made out of corn.  It smelt like tomato sauce and tasted like old boots but it really hit the spot - I was not particularly motivated for the next part of the hike....

We then hiked to the lowest point of the canyon, to a village called Oasis.  Surprisingly, this contained an oasis.  It was so beautiful down there - with colourful flowers and makeshift pools/swimming-holes everywhere.  I played some football, drank some beer and slept in a hammock - hiking at its hardest!

The next day was the hike up out of the canyon, along an extremely steep switchback track.

There was an option to pay 60 Soles (15 pounds) and ride a mule up to the top.  All the girls took this option and were therefore nicknamed the Mule Girls.  The Macho Men had to get up an hour earlier (5am) to start the hike up.  Our guide and I had been taking steep 'guide only' shortcuts along the way and he asked me whether I'd like to do another one that would involve a bit of climbing.  Obviously I said yes and we set off scrabbling up the steep path.

I won't lie, it was really tiring, but we made great progress and all of us did the 3.5hr hike in 2hr 10mins.  Even better, we beat the Mule Girls up to the top!  Score one for the Macho Men!

In the afternoon we visited Condor Cross, a lookout at the top of a steep cliff where condors tend to fly.  We were extremely lucky - lots and lots of condors were floating around on the thermal winds searching for prey.  It took me about 45 minutes and 200 attempts to take these fairly average pictures of condors so I hope you like them!!!

On the way back we saw lots of Alpacas, the volcano and the mouth of the canyon.  Most of us were wondering when the feeling would return to our legs, but it was all very nice.

I'm off to a real-life desert Oasis tomorrow.  I will probably spend about 10 minutes looking at it and the rest of the 2 days sandboarding down the dunes that surround it.  Can't wait!  Here is one last picture of the group (from left to right: me, Fabian & Mathais (Switzerland), Laura (Germany), Hannes & Lynn (Belgium) and Michelle (Canada):