After finishing the chocaquiera trek, Alex departed to do a tour of the salt flats, Joe and Lyle to do the Ausangate trek, the highest altitude trek in Peru. Feeling like we had done all we wanted to in Cusco, me and Niall set off to Nazca, where we took a small (8 person) plane over the Nazca lines.
There wasn’t really anything else to do in Nazca, so we stayed a day and moved on to Huacachina. Huacachina is a desert oasis, just outside the city Ica. Whilst there we did a dune buggy and sandboarding trip.
The first dunes we sandboarded down were small, and I thought it didn’t seem that great. That changed…
We were given wax to put on the board to reduce friction and go down the dunes faster. I decided at this last huge dune it would be fast enough without putting more wax on. Then just before going down, I thought “well it’ll be a bit boring if I don’t put at least some on?”. You can also slow yourself down by putting your feet into the sand. Supposedly. I thought I may aswell put plenty of wax on so I can go as fast as I want, but have the option of slowing down by digging my feet into the sand hard. This didn’t really work out and I went extremely fast down the dune, before hitting loads of bumps at the bottom and getting bruises all over – but it was fun!
Next up was paracas, where we met back up with Lyle and Joe. Paracas had 2 main attractions, the Ballestas islands (the “poor mans Galapagos”) and the national reserve, including Playa Roja, the red beach. The “tour” that we did of the reserve was particularly interesting, because our “tour guide” seemed to have never been there before. He didnt speak any english, and our spanish was bad, he walked around reading all of the signs and taking selfies everywhere, having a great time! He also named some places and asked us where we wanted to go first (our spanish was sufficient to understand that), but we didnt know any of the places, we wanted him to choose and guide us! It was certainly a funny experience, and provided many great views.
Next up were the Ballestas islands, which were a ~20min speed boat ride from the shore. We saw some pelicans (which you see all over the beach and harbour in paracas), a few penguins, a lot of sea lions and millions of birds.
In addition to masses of pelicans, paracas is also home to hairless dogs, which have been voted the ugliest dog breed in the world!
Paracas also offered some of the nicest non-peruvian food so far. Pizzeria Venezia, was a great pizza place ran by an italian, that we visited twice. Fruzion did unbelievable pancakes, aswell as unbelievably nice, huge frozen smoothies. However quite bizarrely, rather than listing the different fruits that could go in a smoothie, and allowing you to choose which ones you wanted, they had a whole page listing pretty much every single combination (100+). On two different visits i asked for a combination that didnt seem to be listed (Mango, Passionfruit, Orange – cant remember other one) only for the waitress to instantly know its not a listed combination and to not be allowed it! Despite there being many similar smoothies involving all of them ingredients. The pancake/smoothie place was so nice, that i am somewhat ashamed to say that we visited 6 times in 3 days… (breakfast and lunch….).
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