Paracas, Huacachina and Nasca

  Nasca, Peru
Sunday, September 14, 2008

After a 3 hour bus ride with bingo included we arrived in Paracas to find a hotel and book a boat tour for the next day. Ordered some noodles and found out that in Peru noodles tend to be just spaghetti.

Pelicans

Up early on Wednesday morning for the boat tour. We started by cramming as many people as possible onto a little floating raft with an engine but everyone seemed to fit quite well. The trip took us to the Islas Balletas just off the coast of Paracas. They call them the poor mans Galapagos but the trip was well worth it. On the way out we passed a giant fuigure of a three pronged candelbra etched into the sand by Paracan people over a thousand years ago. It was a 2 hour trip cruising around the islands that are home to comorants, boobies and pelicans mainly but we also saw some Humboldt penguins and sea lions. The islands are covered in birg droppings (50 metres deep in some places)called guano which is apparently a good fertilizer. So good in fact that there was a Guano War of 1865-66 involving Spain and the nearby Chincha islands!  

View of Huacachina

After the boat trip we headed to Hacachina. Now this was a pleasant surprise. It was basically a little Oasis in the dessert surrounded by a few palm trees, guesthouses and restaurants. The weather was lovely and it was a nice opportunity to relax. On Thursday we took a dune buggy ride into the dessert to try our hand at sandboarding. It was great fun and the odd mouthful of sand wasnt going to put us off. The buggy ride was also a lot of fun with some skillful driving up and down sand dunes at some ludicrous angles.
Friday 12th we headed to down the Pan American for 2 hours to Nazca. Had a Chinese (South America is full of them!!) and watched a very interesting show about the Nasca lines at the planetarium. The next morning we took a wonderful flight over the nasca lines and we able to clearly see many forms such as the monkey, hummingbird, whale, dog, condor and more. The flight was in a 4 seater Cessna liht aircraft and was surprisingly smooth, although due to the twists and turns the pilot did for us to see the figures, Joans breakfast made a reappearence!! 

The Spaceman