Huacachina

Wake up early.
Go back to sleep.
Wake up again.
Go back to sleep.
Wake up again.
This has got to stop.

Internet, I AM A SANDBOARDER!!! Huacachina is a small lagoon surrounded by ginormous sand dunes, the kind of sand dunes that show up in Webshots. Our LOUD hostel rents us some sandboards, and up we climb. Up we climb. Up we climb. Up we climb.

And then we whooooosh down the dunas. Sandboarding is awesome. When you are standing, strapped into the board, you just feel cool. Alternative-hip cool. And then when you can stay standing while your board drags your body down the hill, you feel even cooler. Despite the fact that I collect several cups of sand in my shoes, socks, and pants, the experience is AWESOME.

Pulse after climbing dunas:
Me: 132
Wade: 120

After two runs (really, there was no way I could claw my way up those heights again), we leave the hostel. I repack my bag. In the trash go my tennis shoes. They were really old Pumas, and they did me well. I brought them on this trip because I knew I could toss them along the way without regret. Sadly, the medicine tupperware got the axe as well. It was just too bulky and heavy. I don´t know what I was thinking when I packed my three point one ounces of medicine in a two pound plastic box. Sorry Abbey, I´ll make it up to you.

We take a taxi to Ica and catch a combi to Nazca just as it is leaving. The luck gods, they are with us again. Although this combi contains less than twenty-one people, it is still a nueva experience because we get to ride up front with the driver. And with our packs. It is a bit squishy. Wade is nearly sitting on the stick shift.

end of day two

What a long day. We pack up and catch a bus to Ica, just as it is pulling out of the station. We have us some mean luck, we do. The bus is moving as we walk aboard, and I have to grab ahold of seats as I pass. We walk to the back and dump our packs on some empty seats, taking our own seats across the aisle. Sadly enough people board the bus along the way that we are forced to sit with our packs. Wade is sitting pinned against the seat back with his pack on his lap. I am half sitting / half crouched on my seat with my pack in front of me. My right leg just barely fits in between Wade´s leg and my pack, and my left leg is all bent and pointed skyward, in the manner of gyno stirrups. I try to jam it down, but my pack is too big and in the way. Thus I remain, for twenty minutes. I begin to feel like I have to pee. Not an ideal position.

When the bus pulls into Ica, we flag down a tico-taxi to Huacachina. At this point, pee situation is quite urgent. Tico-taxi drops us off at Hostel de Avida, a COOL, LOUD, RESORTY HOSTEL. SEE HOW LOUD IT IS? I HAVE TO SHOUT.

There is a central, multi-layered plaza with rooms surrounding and overlooking it, and the whole thing feels very open and fresh. There is also a swimming pool. I consider going swimming, but think better of it, as you shouldn´t jump in a dark pool whose cleanliness you didn´t check in the light of day. Wade conks out on the bed, and I write postcards home in faux Spanish.

We take dinner in the hostel, dinner of (surprise!) cheese sandwhich. I must admit here that Thai cheese sandwhiches beat Peru cheese sandwhiches. SO FAR.

This being a COOL, LOUD RESORT, we liquor it up! The national drink of Peru is called a Pisco Sour, and every single food establishment advertises their Pisco Sours with large fonts and loud colors. This COOL, LOUD RESORT is no exception, so we order two and sit on a swingy chair on the pool patio. Pisco Sour is made from Pisco, a locally produced grape brandy, bitters, egg, and sweet & sour. It is OK. We watch our fellow travelors drink and dance, and then go to bed.


What did we learn today?

Wade: It will take him several days to get used to civilization.
Me: Peru has many, many more pineapple products than USA.

where the sidewalk ends

Eventually, the beach homes give way to sandy desert. We walk and walk and walk on a sidewalk next to the water, talking about LIFE and LOVE and HOLY SHIT WHERE WILL I BE IN FIVE YEARS. We walk and walk and walk, and find ourselves parallel to the Park entrance, only far, far away through the sand. We decide not to pay, and instead to take our sidewalk to the park. Only, it ends. The sidewalk ends. All of a sudden. In the middle of the sand, in the middle of the desert, a mile from shore and a mile from road, the sidewalk simply stops.

We eat another lunch of apples and manjar, apricots, and peanut butter M&Ms. A short discussion later, we are in agreement that we don´t actually have to REACH the Park. We had a great time walking and catching up, we saw some awesome Peruvian desert, and honestly, our efforts were enough to claim that we went there. So, internet, today we went to Paracas National Reserve. It was awesome.

On our way back to Pisco, we catch a combi with twenty-one people inside.

pisco / paracas

Pisco is a small town. We only spent about ten minutes in Pisco proper, walking through Plaza de Armas and through the market. Wade bought a charming monkey wallet. We found a combi bound for Paracas and hopped on board. Every several hundred feet, the combi would stop and a woman would hand over a straw lunch box through the window to the driver-helper-boy (DHB) with some money. The combi held about fifteen people and twenty-five lunches. As we neared Paracas, the combi would stop every few blocks, and the DHB would hop out with a few lunches and drop them at the security gate of buildings. It was a lunch delivery system!! Peru is awesome!

We are headed to the National Reservation of Paracas, which according to the Good Book, contains wild animals and guano (bird shit!! it´s an export!!). We have a quick lunch of bread and cheese and piña Nutri Grain, then walk through the boardwalk and into a neighborhood in the direction we presume to be the Park. A uniformed policeman informs us that it is too far, but we decide he is in cahoots with the taxi driver to his left, and so ignore him.

We walk and walk and walk, through a neighborhood that leads to beautiful beachfront homes. Do Peruvians have money like this? We imagine they may be condos or timeshares, and discuss the possibility of sitting in their lawns to rest. We continue.

PERU DAY TWO

This morning I woke up at five. I gazed at Christina for a few seconds, then went back to sleep.

Then I woke up at six. I woke up Wade so I would have some company. He made me go back to sleep.

Then I woke up at eight. I woke up Wade again (what´s the point of having a travelling companion if they can´t be there for you in your neediest moments?). Then I went to the bathroom and then back to sleep.

I woke up a final time at ten o´clock.

PERU DAY ONE

I chose the hostel in Miraflores for two reasons:

1. Lonely Planet, my bible, said it was popular with Israelis
2. It was called the Witches' House

The Witches' House was everything and more. A tudor style mansion in the middle of a quiet neighborhood. A crude picture of a witch drawn on the front gate. Lots of 'Raelis. Lots of beds. Internet. DVDs. Cheap.

In the morning I found Wade in the living room. YAY, WADE!!! (Hi, Wade!) He had just met two nice Israeli girls, Donna and Yael, who were also beginning their trip in Peru. Turns out Donna worked last summer as a Mishlachat at Hess Kramer! There are only four Jews!! After Wade repacked my pack, the four of us set off to central Lima. I had a successful go at the Aeromexico office, changing my tickets to stay an extra week.

Lime is a huge city, with traffic, poverty, loud noises, and trash. We spent all day walking around with our packs gazing about as if on drugs. A summery of our peulot:

• We witness the changing of the guard at the Palace of the Plaze de Armas. Much like Buckingham Palace in London, only the crowd gathered to watch was mostly locals.
• See a ginormous and beautiful Cathedral
• Banco Museum of Money, which has on display Peru´s past currency. Sigh.... USA has the most boring paper bills. When will we get colors? When will we get differently-sized bills? When will we get a kick-ass hero pictured, like Tupac Amaru, the cowboy-hat-wearing native who started an Inca revolution against the Spanish?
• Patronize a panderia and buy cheese and unknown conitas de manjar. Manjar turns out to be caramel, and is now our favorite word. MANJAR, HOW I LOVE THEE.
• A protest (for education?) is going on, and one of the major streets is blocked off from traffic. We sit in the center divider, eating bread and cheese. A gang of kids comes to keep us company. We give them bread. They are cute until they start spitting on my back. As they leave they start play-fighting in the blocked-off street.
• Museo Monastary de San Francisco. I must quote the bible here: "The underground catacombs are are the site of an estimated 70,000 burials and the faint-hearted may find the bone-filled crypts unnerving - if only for the conservationalist's bizarre decision to rearrange the skulls and femurs into striking rings of concentric circles." FABULOUS.
• Deeners and Wade gain instant celebrity status as a school on a field trip (all wearing matching brown track suits with pictures of Madonna and child on back) cross their paths. They all go fucking nuts waving and shouting HI HI HI and asking our name, mobbing the street corner we stand on, giving high-fives, etc.
• Stamp Museum of Peru and Post Office. You know how much I like stamps. I learn the word sello and Estates Unidos.
• Metro super market. Who doesn´t love a good, foreign market? It is here we first see frankfurters in a jar, and buy our first container of manjar.
• Pass a building with naked tiger-mermaid doorknobs
• Walk a bazillion miles (ten blocks) to bus station, where we are told they don´t have busses to Pisco for the rest of the day. Luckily, before Deens loses her shit, we find out that a different company down the block has a bus. We buy tickets and the bus leaves five minutes later.
• On the four-hour bus ride to Pisco, we are shown two disturbing yet bizzarly captivating movies, one a martial arts movie dubbed in Spanish with English subtitles, and two that featured a baby with four eyes (two in each pupil) floating in a jar of formaldehyde. Sadly, we left the bus before we could figure out what happened.

In Pisco, we stay at the wonderful Hostel Belin. Most definitely the best part of the hostel was the large, framed poster of Christina Aguilera above our headboard. God Bless Hostel Belin.

finally in Peru!

FINALLY IN PERU!!!!

At the airport, while in line for customs, the bloke in front of my turned around and started talking to me about travelling in Peru. His name was Kim, and he was from Australia, tooling around South America for who-knows-how-long. (I don´t know how long because he didn´t know how long.) I guess I am as white as they come, and therefor clearly a tourist, "safe" for another gringo to talk to. We ended up sharing a cab to the hostel in Miraflores, but not before we were followed around the entire parking lot and back up to the second floor of the airport by Juan, a guide slash taxi driver slash tour tout slash most annoying person ever. I was trying to find the Aeromexico Airlines office, in order to switch my plane ticket, and Kim said that he would come with me. Kim made the STUPID ERROR of talking to said annoyance Juan instead of saying NO really loudly and then ignoring him while striding forward at a brisk pace. Juan kept trying to lead us around and give us advice, but I am really wary of foreign people approaching me trying to help. I have found that ninety three percent of the time they just want to take you to their buddy´s restuarant or their sister´s cloth store. I like figuring things out for myself, taking a long time to think about how to procede, so that I don´t get ripped off.

Aeromexico office was closed, and that is when Kim made SECOND STUPID ERROR by letting Juan take us in his "taxi" to our hostel. We were going to the neighborhood of Miraflores, to a hostel near a plaza called Plaza Bolognesi. We agreed upon a price to Miraflores with Juan. Halfway there he asks for the address, and I tell him it is norte de Plaza Bolognesi. He takes us to a Plaza Bolognesi and asks to have the address. Hostel doesn´t exist. I show Juan the map, and he gets all huffy and mad at me because my hostel is on the Plaza in MIRAFLORES, while he has taken us to the Plaze in CENTRAL LIMA. CLEARLY IT IS ALL MY FAULT.

Juan demands twice the price plus airport tax to take us to Miraflores, despite the price we had agreed on at the airport. Kim the useless turd does nothing. I get really mad at Juan but my Spanish sucks at this point and he is the one at the wheel, so I am rather at his mercy. Juan drives us to the correct hostel and helps unload our bags. We pay his exorbitant fee. And then Juan has the balls to stand there with a faux worried expression, head shaking, hands outstretched, asking, TEEP? NO TEEP?

NO TIP, JUAN. SUCK IT.

Ripped off my first night here. Awesome!