Paracas lies south of Lima,
with the Paracas Yacht Club situated at GPS 14.02.54 S and 75.45.12 W. This yacht club is part of the Yacht Club La
Punta where Limbo has been since July 23.
The waters here are quite shallow so coming close to shore with our 6
foot draft would not be possible. We arrived
by bus and booked a two part tour to the Paracas National Reserve. The first part was a boat tour to Isla
Ballestas, a group of islands off the coast of Paracas. They are nesting grounds to thousands and
thousands of birds, the Humboldt Penguin, brown booby, Guanay cormorants,
pelicans, and terns. Swimming the waters
and lounging on the rocks were sea lions from huge bulls to babies. The occasional dolphin also surfaced to be
counted among the rest of the crowd. The
islands are also called the “Guano Islands” because they harvest the guano here
every 7 years using picks and shovels. (Very
nasty job I’d say) The islands start stinking on approach but the splendor of
so many birds in flight the closer you get makes the slightly repulsive odor
more tolerable. We have never seen so
many birds in one place.
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| Humbolt Penquin |
The second part of the tour was in the desert, supposedly
the “driest place on earth desert”. Once
a seabed, we found turritelas shells, fossils of a marine snail from 36 million
years ago. The main traveled road is
made of salt. Although a desert, it was
cold and windy. The name “Paracas” means
“raining sand” in Quechua, an Indian dialect throughout the area. Silica and iron ore littered the dry crusted earth. The reserve is on a peninsula surrounded by
lovely green jeweled ocean. It is spectacular
to see the waves crashing against variegated colored sand cliff. I stood pondering the vastness of the desert
surrounded by an endless ocean horizon only too soon to realize “water, water
everywhere but not a drop to drink.
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| salt and sand road |
Part of the reserve is the famous “El Candelabro” also
called the Paracas Trident. It’s a giant
candelabra carved into the sea cliffs facing the Pacific Ocean. Some speculate it’s of alien origin, some say
it’s part of the Nasca Lines, some say it was used for navigation. To us, it looks more like the cactus plants indigenous
to the area, than candelabra.
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| candelabra |
We ended our tour with a delightful lunch in
Legunillas, a small fishing village located in the reserve. They were there before the park was
established in 1975 so they have been allowed to stay and continue to make
their living fishing the rich protected waters.
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| net mending |
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| fishing village |
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| one of my favorite birds |
What a diversity of sites we had in the two tours, land
and sea, ancient and living. The day not
quite over, we boarded a bus to Ica and then a taxi to HUACACHINA, a desert
oasis.
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| As I had seen on TV a pond in the middle of the desert! |
We checked in at the Carola Hotel
and on the way to our room a bit after dark, we were greeted by a Saint Bernard
and a rabbit. What an odd combination of
friends that learned how to share the small patch of grass in the otherworld of
sand. Up early, breakfast at Desert
Nights which was one of the very few places in our travels since leaving Panama
that served brewed coffee instead of instant.
A super treat. We walked across a
dirt road to another hostel called Bananas.
There we booked a 10 a.m. dune buggy and sand board trip. This area is a popular spot for the young
20ish crowd from Europe and Canada. Most
of the kids we talked to had anywhere from 3 to 6 months of holiday time. We were surprised at the young girls
traveling by themselves. We had met one
in Paracas, and then another on the bus to Ica.
This has been the same all through Peru.
We thought it odd and dangerous.
We buckled in the dune buggy and away we were with 4
other passengers. One was a travel agent
from Cusco so we think we were given an extra dose of “extreme” dune
riding. We skirted the tops of dunes, we
flew over a couple, we fishtailed around and down, riding sideways on one of
the dunes I thought we may have been on only 2 wheels. It was fast and dirty, my first experience in
a dune buggy. I had purple palms from
hanging on and a bruised body from slamming into the metal rails. When I thought I could hang on no more we
stopped to sand board. This is a 3 ft
board rounded on both ends with Velcro strapping for your shoes. I was not going to stand having just
recovered from an ankle injury. The
driver handed out pieces of wax to rub the bottom of the boards to go faster. I was first.
Hesitant wasn’t really what I was feeling as I was teetering the top of
a dune, belly down on board, hands wrapped in straps, elbows in, legs out but
not touching, head up. I had more of a,
“what the hell am I doing” ticker tape running through my head. The chattering monkeys competing between
expressing exhilarated anticipation of fun or the probability of me falling off
the board and rolling through the sand scrubbing my skin for 300 or 400
feet. And then came a slight push and I
was laughing and screaming down the sand dune.
What a ride. Captain Don didn’t
scream but he certainly had a huge grin coming down. We had to walk a bit to the next one. It is not easy to walk in this powdery soft sand. We became winded and tired quickly. The others in the group tried standing to go
down, making it a little ways and then falling.
It is harder than it looks and one fellow said he had a lot of experience
snowboarding but this was much harder.
We did learn a lesson; you must cover your camera in plastic while in
the sand!
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| dune buggy w/driver |
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| ok, focus, what is he saying, arms, legs, yes - I think I'm ready |
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| it was a long way down |
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| King of the mountain |
The hotel was kind enough to let us shower after check out. Back on a bus and onto NASCA. This was one of Captain Don’s big “to dos”. We were hustled right from the bus to a cab
and onto a hotel that had a tour operator standing by. A packaged deal awaited us complete with hotel,
transportation, plane and English speaking guide. We were on a plane with 2 Korean boys within
a couple of hours of our arrival. There
are limited flight times and afternoons are the best. (I’m pretty sure they
tell the morning flights that mornings are the best!) The plane was a tiny 4
passenger with single prop. We were
given headphones to hear our guide and mask the engine noise. An explanation of the route we’d be taking
passing over each of the major lines twice, giving both sides of the plane
opportunity to take pictures.
The lines were made by scrapping trenches into the
ground. There are over 13,000 lines,
depicting 18 birds, a dog, a spaceman, trees, hands, a lizard, spider, killer
whale, shark, and our favorite, the monkey.
Research claims the lines were dug over a period of 800 years starting
in 370 B.C. The dry desert climate has
kept them preserved along with the high oxide content of the ground and damp
night time winds that sweep away the daily sand deposits. Theory runs from the idea the figures were
messages to the gods, or ritual roads as part of the Nasca peoples worship, or
even exact astronomic charts. Maria
Reiche who studied the lines from 1946 until 1998 thought the lines a calendar
with alignment of stars to tell when to plant, harvest, summer and winter
solstice. Not all of this has been
proven which still leads into the mystery of the Nasca. Why were they dug? Are the symbols representatives of gods or
tributes to gods? Is this a religious
ceremonial area? Is it a navigational
aid for aliens? My my, the quandary of
it all. It depends on what you believe
in I suppose or how vivid your imagination is.
I watch a lot of science fiction, so I have my own story. Whatever your belief, the reality of them
brings to life many, many questions?
Thousands of lines, miles of carved sand, desert in every
direction. Why there? How did they survive while there?
Not too many good pictures of the lines because the zoom
and focus was full of sand from our last adventure. We’ll have to have it cleaned somewhere.
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| inside plane |
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| look very close, this is the monkey |
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| another opportunity to spot the monkey |
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| amazing landscape |
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fly over of roadside observation tower
Back at the hotel and in our room, we were not
comfortable. Recalling the hustle of
earlier, the condition of the room, we left and booked a 10 p.m. bus to
Arequipa. We would travel all night in a
sleeper bus and arrive at 8 a.m. |
Continued Part IV Peru- Out of the sand and into the
Andes
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