Paracas
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2007
1
67
220
Trip End
Jun 17, 2009
Paracas,
Peru
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
The bus struggled through the city and eventually moved onto a main road running southwards along the coast, with enormous rock and sand dunes inland and occasional views of blue sea fronted beaches. We passed through a few small towns, each one a little less developed than the previous one
Earthquake cracks in Paracas promenade
. Occasionally we would see shanty towns, where the 'houses' were made of (sometimes) a brick base, with woven palm leaf side panels and either palm leaf or plastic tarpaulin roofs. These were grouped together in mini 'towns'.As we reached progressive bus stops people would get on or off and we would be joined by street sellers, something we had first seen on the Ecuadorian buses, who had anything from water, to snacks to newspapers. There were also ticket inspectors and I think our tickets were checked five times in the four hour, 250 Km (160 miles) journey that had cost us 19 Peruvian 'New Sols', approx 6 US dollars (Peru is a dual currency country) or 3 pounds sterling. We made good progress and were only delayed at one point where a lorry had shed a front wheel and nosedived onto the road surface, coming to rest right in the centre of the road with oil and water running all over the place.
Eventually we got off and boarded a minibus that took us the fifteen minutes to the small coast town of 'Paracas' near 'Pisco'. A clean and friendly hostel where we dropped our bags and then went for supper to a small restaurant along the promenade by the sea. After a delicious fish and seafood meal, serenaded by a local guitarist, we retuned along the prom and could see wide cracks in the tiled surface, that had been quickly repaired by filling them with sand and the opposite edges of the cracks were not level. This was caused by the big earthquake (7.8 Richter) that had hit the coastal area centred on Pisco last August. I now remembered seeing something about it on our home news, when sadly over 500 people were killed.
A tired night's sleep, which was not helped by the hostel's 'air conditioning', a floor stand fan that, even on its slowest setting, sounded like an aeroplane engine
House damage in Paracas
. It cooled us down but it was like sleeping in a Cessna test hangar! Wednesday 23rd
We planned to take a local boat to the nearby 'Ballestas Islands', to see sealions, penguins and seabirds - novel? The penguins were genuine because a part of the Humbolt current comes ashore here and makes the waters cold. There were dozens of other tourists waiting at the jetty but the mist obscured the islands and there was a red flag flying, which we understood was a local police control because of strong winds forecast. We waited and watched large pelicans march up and down the beach, being fed fish that tourists had bought from the "pelican man', whilst gannets dived into the sea, cormorants bobbed about for breakfast and a few vultures cruised along the beach line. Around the area we could see cracked and demolished houses that had been abandoned after the earthquake. What was good to see was a significant amount of new build houses that had replaced damaged ones. After an hour the sea mist was getting thicker, so we revised plans and returned to the hostel to take the 'van', our minibus, southwards.
