Lima The Return
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
74
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
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Lima,
Peru
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Well, after our fantastic Peru trip, we finally returned to Lima for our onward flight to Los Angeles. However, before we departed Peru for good, we had just one more tour to embark on.
We arrived at our Hotel in Lima in the early evening and so decided to head straight downstairs for some dinner. The menu in the Hotel restaurant was absolutely hysterical offering us "fascinating shrimps" and "Crème Brulee - already burnt". Obviously no English speaking staff had been on hand to proof-read the menu before it went to print. Still, it provided us with endless.......minutes...of hilarity.
After this it was straight to bed at 9pm. The next day we got collected at 4am!!!! (hence our early night) for our tour to Nazcar Lines. We were collected in a really nice people carrier with seats that levered down almost horizontally and we were provided with blankets. Excellent! So after a brief chit chat with the tour guide, David and I promptly fell into a deep snoring sleep wrapped up in blankets like Trout wrapped up in foil and the tour guide also slipped quietly into 'nodding dog snoozeville' while only the poor driver was awake. Always a good thing though...if you're driving a car....
Finally, we arrived at Paracas, about 5 hours drive away. This was our first stop before Nazcar Lines. It was to see some marine wildlife. Exciting stuff but not really something to set my heart a-blazing. Or so I thought anyway. How wrong I was. Paracas is a National Reserve on the Peninsula.
It's important to always look your best....
You can only see the marine wildlife from the water so we had to take a boat trip out to the Islas Ballestas. The area is absolutely flaming stunning and the water is the colour of glinting sapphires. All of a sudden we saw birds. Millions of them. On rocks. Herons and penguins other sea birds, gliding over you like an eery scene from Hitchcock's The Birds, or standing about on rocks, and floating on the bobbing waves. It was absolutely incredible. Then the boat took us around and we saw sealions wallowing in the heat of the sun, their fat faces all soppy and smiley. There were birds everywhere, millions of them surrounding you and the stench!!!!! My god, the stench of bird poo is incredible. So strong like the odour of mouldy cheese knifing you in the nose. The boat trip was only about a couple of hours but it was fascinating (like the shrimps!) and beautiful. (David: The Bird poo - guano - is one of the reasons Peru became independent. Where the US has tea at the heart of its road to independence, Peru has shit. It's the world's best fertiliser, and the Spanish were taxing it too high. It used to be several metres thick in some places... )
After lunch we went to see The Nazca Lines. This was what David had been waiting for. Bless him. He was like a child waiting to go to Gamleys. Hopping from one foot to the other and saying "are we going to Nazca today? Is it today? Is it? Is it?" (David: ?!?) I didn't know much about The Lines apart from what David had told me and they did indeed sound fascinating.
Cuctus in the sand..another Nazca-like enigma
Basically, they are a mass of enormous figures and symbols which have been drawn into the ground. Very much like The Long Man of Wilmington on the Sussex Downs or the White Horse drawing near...?? However, you can only see The Nazca Lines from the air. From the ground they just look like sandy paths that you would get in a large park. This is because the area covered for these symbols is approximately 190sq miles!!!!! Why on earth were they constructed in the first place? No one really knows. There are a million and one theories. Astrological purposes? Spiritual purposes? Religious? But the mystery surrounding them is that when these symbols were drawn there was no such thing as an aeroplane or any tele-communication devices. So if you can only see them from high up in the sky, was one man/team constructing and another man/team somehow up above guiding? But if this were the case then what was used in the sky to guide down below? A hot air balloon?? One scientist seemed to think so, but his theories came to nothing after extensive research. (David: The most popular US theory is that they're a sign for visiting aliens... but that's Americans for you...)
We flew over The Lines in a small light aircraft with another couple. I was quite excited. David sat in the front with the pilot. However, it was all a bit of an anti-climax for me. Although it was fascinating and one of the world's mysteries, they were massive lines that you could actually barely see from the sky. David and I swapped the camera regularly depending on whose side the lines were on but I could barely see the flipping lines.
A few birds
What was I taking a picture of?? Trees?? Some of the lines were very noticeable but most of the time I spent just looking at the clouds. It was all a bit mad to be honest. I was mad!! We were paying for a flight in a light aircraft to see some flaming lines drawn in the sand thousands of years ago! Take me down to the beach and I'll show you some flaming lines!!! With my stick! I'll be a millionaire overnight!! Stick THEM into a National Geographic Magazine!! I'll now hand this bit over to David as he had more of an interest and can probably provide you with more historical information and fervour!! Roger. Over and Out. David: er... oh, ok then. Yes, some were a bit faint. But if you looked out of the window with your eyes open you could see them. (Lois: good point!) They were quite cool. They're oddly quite fragile when you see them on the surface. They're protected by a hot layer of air that keeps the wind at bay, otherwise a couple of windy storms would have wiped them out by now. They're also not as big as I was expecting. But that's just the figures, the actual lines themselves go for miles. It's pretty obvious that it's an astrological chart of some sort, a five minute glance at a map of them shows that. But, I can't be bothered to explain, other than to say have a look at a map and see how the lines converge on two main points.
Hey, it's Lois again now! So, after this fascinating little jaunt up in the clouds, we then drove for about 20mins where we climbed a big scaffold tower to see one particular Nazca Line more clearly.
The first one to see a bird.....
Scintillatingly heart-stopping....... (David: Hang on, you missed out the bit where we had some lunch next to a swimming pool in a hotel because they were doing some building work in the restaurant, and the bit where a couple in their 90s came out in swimwear made from string...) Lois: oh yeah, I've blocked that bit out from my memory bank...thanks darling. On the way back then to the Hotel, which involved a drive of about 6 hours, one of the tour guides decided he would chat to us and practise his English. He was a really lovely man and got out his tiny piece of paper with English phrases written down on it and as he practised his English so we practised our Spanish. His English was good but not brilliant and our Spanish was pretty dire really so it was quite a comedy sketch, all 3 of us trying to 'chat' about Christmas, what we eat, what we drink, how many brothers and sisters we have and what the weather is like in our home countries. It was more like a game of charades quite frankly. We stopped off on the way home because the guys wanted to buy some alcohol as Christmas presents for their families so by the side of the road was a shop selling Pisco Sours and wine and the guys bought bottles of the stuff and piled it into the back of their car. (David: It was a really nice place by the side of the road, with shelf upon shelf of wine and spirits. Like an open air off license complete with special offer boards and tinsel. How on earth do they close up shop, or stop everything being stolen by a drive by drunk.
18, 19, 20..Ok! Coming to find you! Ready or not!
It was then that I realised how safe Peru is.)When we got back to the Hotel, we were absolutely knackered and had another early night. The next day, our flight to LA was not until 11pm so we decided to hang around Lima and visit some museums etc. We got a taxi to the Cultural Museum nearby. This was a 1960's-style concrete monstrosity that was absolutely massive. The size of an airport. We thought we would find some interesting educational facts about Peru, being the Cultural Museum. We got completely lost in the place! We went right to the top floor first of all. We came out of the lift into a Ghost Floor. No one was about, it was dark and there were builders tools and materials lying about. Signs of some renovation work going on perhaps? But we were free to roam around and explore with no staff around. So we got back into the lift and went to the floor below. No. This was also dead and dark. The floor below? People got in the lift, we were told the museum was the floor below this still. It was ridiculous! The floor below, did indeed show signs of museum type displays. A photographic history of a war that occurred in Peru in the 80's. Quite disturbing images but some stunning shots taken. So, that was that floor. The floor below had some Peruvian pottery. And the floor below that had some Peruvian tools in glass cabinets. Oh and a dead woman's head with her hair and teeth still intact. Obviously preserved in Brine or something! Quite gruesome. THAT was the Lima Museum of Culture. Ooooooooook. The building was absolutely massive yet inside was a miniscule array of cultural exhibits and most of the floors were in darkness, locked up or a building site.
All of the black on the rock...are birds!!!!
Very odd indeed. As it was a Sunday, we decided to just head back into the centre of Lima and mill about so we got another taxi there. Taxi's in Lima are funny. No matter how beaten up or small they are, they can be a taxi. Ours was like a Fiat Punto and had the bumper hanging off, sellotape holding the seatbelts onto the car walls and half the dashboard ripped out!!! But it went from A to B so it a taxi it was! We did a bit of window shopping, watched some more hang gliders over the beach then took a slow walk along the promenade where we walked up a street and happened upon a fantastic little Mexican restaurant. Great! We had dinner there and drank beer, killed a few hours back at the Hotel in the Internet room and then we got collected and driven to the airport. Night flights are a pain in the neck because you have to check out of your room and then just hang around all day.
The airport was great fun! Not. First of all, once again no seats had been reserved for us because of the communication problems between LAN ticketing office and the check in desk! LAN ticketing office say "yes, you have a seat reserved on this flight" LAN check in desk say "no, you do not have a seat reserved!!" Then, we had to go with the check in desk staff member to the LAN customer services desk to verify whether we had to pay a penalty because we were (apparently) not reserved a seat. After a long wait in the queue, no penalty to pay. Then upstairs in the airport, we discovered we had to pay airport tax.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
When we initially bought the Round the World ticket, we paid for all taxes up front and had the paperwork to prove this but still the tax clerk at the counter insisted we would not be let on our flight if we did not pay for the airport tax there and then and produced a receipt to say so. Talking to a supervisor and showing him our Round the world invoice was a waste of time. So back downstairs to the LAN customer services lady again, back in the queue, to show her our Global ticket and invoice to show that we had paid all taxes already (David: This had worked previously in Argentina). No, we still had to pay the airport tax for this flight. So back upstairs to the tax desks and no we could not pay for taxes by card. Only cash. So back out of the tax area to find an ATM. Back to the tax area, once more to pay for the tax and we got let through to the boarding gate area. What a flaming PALLAVA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (David: And the tax was £60!!!)Finally, we got called up for our flight. There were two queues to walk down to the aeroplane. At the front of our queue was an x-ray scanning machine with a member of staff searching bags. At the front of the other queue were just some crew checking and ripping tickets and sending you onto the aeroplane. If you had a bomb in your bag in our queue you would be found out via the x-ray scanning machine. But, what if you had a bomb in your bag and you were in the other queue and not searched? What if we had a bomb in our bag and we quickly slipped into the other queue without the x-ray scanning machine?? Nothing made sense, it was ridiculous! Such a waste of man-power.
Onto LA!!! Let's go!!! (David: No-one had a bomb, by the way. Peru was one of my favourite places, the history is amazing, the scenery is amazing, the people are amazing, the different cultures are amazing... Cusco really does need to be seen to be believed, as does Machu Picchu - and you don't have to be mad buggers like us and clamber to the death defying top of Wayna Picchu. Dizzying altitudes that make your head spin and crystal clear haze free skies that let you see for miles are also an experience not to be missed. And everything is so clean. Great place and top of my list to go back to.)
Love us xxxxx
